Ratan- the Postmaster

Ratan is one of the simplest and yet one of the most enigmatic feminine characters in Rabindranath Tagore's short stories. She is village girl, simple, honest, caring. She is illiterate at the beginning of the story but slowly learns to read and write under the guidance of the postmaster. she does the odd jobs for him. She is well-behaved and obedient to her master. She is an orphan and suffers from a deep-rooted agony of absolute solitude. Thus in the postmaster's acts of education and storytelling about his own family back in Calcutta, she glimpses a loving company of familial relations. Her need for love and be loved is accentuated and the way she starts to refer to the postmaster as 'dada' is a sign of growing intimacy.

The most interesting feature of Ratan unfolds when she maternally looks after the ailing postmaster and at the end of the story when he goes away permanently, initially she wants to go with him. But when he tells her it is simply not possible, she never utters another word. This is the pinnacle of her silent maturity, the mystery of her distinctly feminine desire and her extreme simplicity in not being able to understand the unbridgable gaps between the urban and the rural and thus the absurdity of her going away with him. She does come out ultimately to see him for the last time after circulating his house. She refuses his money and leaves the job of domestic help once and for all.