The novel “Home and the world” is written by famous Indian author Rabindranath Tagore and it was originally published in 1916. The story of novel revolve around a woman named Bimala who is married to man who love her for infinity and support her in every phases of her life.
THE HOME AND THE WORLD BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Summary of The Home and the World By Rabindranath Tagore
The Story of novel centers around three major characters named Nikhil who has just completed his B.A graduation and now pursuing his M.A, and his faithful wife Bimala who is fully devoted to him, and Sandeep who has joined Swadeshi Movement of Bengal. The story starts with Bimala, a devoted wife who always try to fulfill her husband wish and love living like a traditional woman like waking up early in morning, worshipping god and wearing vermilion etc. Nikhil parents had died a long time ago, and his grandmother was mistress of the house. He was the jewel of her grandmother eye.
Nikhil is open minded and very supportive husband who has given complete freedom to his wife to do anything in life. He believe that husband and wife are equal in love because of their equal rights on each other. He always force Bimala to explore outer world and start interacting with other people. He even hires an English tutor named Miss Gilby to teach English to his wife, Bimala.
The story now jumps to an era of Swadeshi Movement. The people who have been involved in Swadeshi movement are requesting all the people to boycott foreign goods and start using domestic goods. There comes a third important character named Sandeep, a leader of Swadeshi Movement and a good friend of Nikhil to whom Bimala meets when she joined Swadeshi movement by requesting her husband. The first time she met Sandeep was when he was giving motivational speech to his troops on boycotting foreign goods. Furthermore, she starts attending all the rallies and motivational speeches of Sandeep because she is deeply influenced by his charisma and later on she starts attracting towards him.
Bimala request her husband to invite Sandeep for dinner at their home, on which Nikhil didn’t say much but agrees to do so. When Sandeep came to dinner at Nikhil house he request him to use his house as headquarter for few weeks and Nikhil without hesitancy allowed him. As the story moves forward we learns that the attraction between Sandeep and Bimala is growing day by day and he has started meeting Bimala in her home when Nikhil was not around. Nikhil is also acquainted about the attraction of Bimala for Sandeep but still he doesn’t mind and ignores it like a open minded person. One day, Sandeep came at Nikhil’s home with his troops and ask him boy to boycott foreign goods on which Nikhil disagree his request because at that time foreign goods were less expensive than domestic woods because there were no Indian factories in India.
Afterwards, Sandeep aks Bimala to give him fifty thousand rupees for the welfare of his troops on which Bimala hesitate at first but then she agrees to give him money and she sold all her marriage Jewellery to arrange fifty thousand rupees for Sandeep and later on we learns that Sandeep just run away after taking all the money from Bimala.
Bimala starts feeling guilty about her sins because she has betrayed her husband for another man who just run away after taking all her money and she decide to apologize to her husband when he returns home. When Nikhil came home he was in rush because troops are abusing women so he decide help them, on the other hand we have Bimala who is waiting for her husband to come back so that she can apologize but when Nikhil came back, he was on stretcher in very bad condition. When Bimala saw him she started crying and in the end we don’t know whether Nikhil live or die.
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