The Cabuliwallah quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary genres best describe "The Cabuliwallah"?

   • Modernism & Surrealism
   • Correct answer: Realism & Domestic Fiction
   • Gothic Fiction & Horror
   • Romanticism & Sentimentalism
   • Allegory & Fable

   Realism & Domestic Fiction is correct. Tagore grounds the story in the everyday life of a middle-class Calcutta household, using precise social observation and unembellished prose to explore a friendship between a child and a street vendor. The emotional power comes from recognizable human experience rather than dramatic artifice.

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2. 2

   Question 2. What is Mini's most distinctive personality trait when the story begins?

   • Her quiet patience while sitting at her father's feet near his table
   • Her habit of running to her mother's protection whenever a stranger appears
   • Correct answer: Her nonstop chattering, never wasting a single minute in silence
   • Her blind belief in every story, like Bhola's elephant in the clouds

   The narrator says Mini "cannot live without chattering" and that he believes she has "not wasted a minute in silence" in all her life. This constant talk is what draws her to Rahmun — she finally finds a listener as patient as her father.

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3. 3

   Question 3. Why is Mini initially terrified of the Cabuliwallah?

   • She is frightened by his turban and the strange language he speaks
   • She thinks he is the villain from a fairy tale her mother told her
   • She believes he is a policeman who has come to take her father away
   • Correct answer: She believes his large bag contains two or three kidnapped children

   Mini has a "blind belief that inside the bag, which the big man carried, there were perhaps two or three other children like herself." This childish fear later gives way to delight when Rahmun wins her over with nuts and almonds.

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4. 4

   Question 4. What is the double meaning of the "father-in-law's house" joke that Mini and Rahmun share?

   • Correct answer: A bride's new home to Bengali families, kept from Mini; slang for jail among Rahmun's people
   • It means a wedding party to Mini, but is slang for the yearly trip home among Rahmun's people
   • It is the riddle about the elephant in Rahmun's bag, the joke that always makes Mini laugh
   • It is a sly hint that Rahmun means to carry Mini off to Cabul, just as her mother fears

   Most small Bengali girls know that "father-in-law's house" means where a bride goes after marriage, but Mini's parents had kept these things from our child, so the question only bewilders her. Among men of Rahmun's class it is a euphemism for jail — the place where we are well cared for, at no expense to ourselves. This double meaning becomes tragically literal when Rahmun is imprisoned.

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5. 5

   Question 5. How does Mini's mother react to the Cabuliwallah's regular visits?

   • She is indifferent to his visits and pays little attention to Mini's activities
   • She admires his exotic goods and purchases shawls and dried fruits from him
   • Correct answer: She fears he might kidnap Mini and repeatedly begs the narrator to watch him
   • She warmly welcomes him and insists he stay for meals with the family

   Mini's mother is described as "a very timid lady" who suspects every stranger of being a thief, drunkard, or worse. She fears the big foreign man could "carry off a tiny child" and repeatedly begs the narrator to keep watch, though her fears are never specific enough to justify banning him.

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6. 6

   Question 6. What does the narrator feel when he imagines Rahmun's distant homeland of mountain peaks and camel caravans?

   • Correct answer: Romantic longing for the free, independent life of the mountain wilds
   • Scholarly curiosity about the politics of Afghanistan and the Frontier
   • Fear and anxiety about the dangers lurking in Rahmun's distant homeland
   • Irritation at the interruption to the seventeenth chapter of his novel

   The narrator confesses that he leads "such a vegetable existence that a call to travel would fall upon me like a thunder-bolt." Rahmun's presence transports him in imagination to "arid mountain peaks" and "the free and independent life of far-away wilds" — a romantic yearning that contrasts with his sedentary life.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What crime leads to Rahmun's arrest and imprisonment?

   • He threatens a policeman who tries to confiscate his bag of merchandise
   • He is falsely accused of kidnapping a child from a neighboring household
   • He breaks into a neighbor's house one morning and steals an expensive Rampuri shawl
   • Correct answer: He strikes a neighbor who falsely denied owing him money for a Rampuri shawl

   A neighbor owed Rahmun money for a Rampuri shawl but "falsely denied having bought it." In the quarrel that followed, Rahmun struck him and was convicted of murderous assault. He is led away in blood-stained clothes with a knife as evidence.

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8. 8

   Question 8. What is deeply ironic about the scene of Rahmun's arrest?

   • The crowd of boys following the police recognizes Rahmun and calls out his name in greeting
   • Correct answer: Mini innocently asks if he is going to the father-in-law's house, not knowing it literally means jail this time
   • The narrator realizes he should have listened to his wife's warnings about the Cabuliwallah all along
   • Rahmun laughs and waves goodbye as though he is going on vacation rather than to prison

   When Mini appears on the verandah and asks her usual joke — "Are you going to the father-in-law's house?" — Rahmun replies "Just where I am going, little one!" The euphemism for jail has become literal truth. Mini does not understand, and the moment is both comic and heartbreaking.

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9. 9

   Question 9. What happens to the memory of Rahmun during his years in prison?

   • Correct answer: Both the narrator and Mini forget Rahmun almost entirely as years pass
   • Mini writes letters to Rahmun in prison and visits him every month
   • The narrator frequently thinks of Rahmun and wonders about his release date
   • Mini keeps Rahmun's almonds and raisins in a special box as a keepsake

   The narrator admits with shame that "the thought of the once free mountaineer spending his years in prison seldom or never occurred to us." Even Mini forgets her old friend as she grows up, spending time with girls her own age instead of visiting her father's room.

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10. 10

    Question 10. When does Rahmun return from prison?

    • During a large dinner party the narrator is hosting for his publisher
    • During Mini's school graduation ceremony in the family courtyard
    • On the anniversary of the day Rahmun and Mini first became friends
    • Correct answer: On Mini's wedding day, during the Puja holidays in autumn

    Rahmun returns on the day of Mini's wedding, during the Puja holidays. The timing is devastating — he has come expecting to find the chattering five-year-old he remembers, but instead finds a grown bride. The narrator initially considers his arrival a bad omen.

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11. 11

    Question 11. What precious keepsake does Rahmun show the narrator?

    • A small drawing of mountains that his daughter made as a farewell gift
    • A faded photograph of his daughter taken before he left Afghanistan
    • Correct answer: A piece of paper bearing the ink-smeared handprint of his little daughter Pārbati
    • A letter from his wife describing how much their daughter misses him

    Rahmun unfolds "a small and dirty piece of paper" bearing "the impression of a little hand" — not a photograph or drawing, but the literal ink-smeared handprint of his daughter. "This touch of his own little daughter had been always on his heart" throughout his years selling wares in Calcutta.

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12. 12

    Question 12. What does the handprint primarily symbolize in the story?

    • The cultural tradition of Afghan fathers keeping handprints as family records
    • Correct answer: A father's enduring love for a child he cannot see, carried across years and thousands of miles
    • The poverty that forces Afghan men to leave their families for work in foreign cities
    • Rahmun's guilt over the violent quarrel that sent him to prison and kept him from his own daughter

    The handprint is the story's most powerful symbol — a physical trace of a child's touch that Rahmun has preserved through years of street selling and imprisonment. It represents paternal love that endures across distance and time, and it is what finally breaks down the class barrier between Rahmun and the narrator.

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13. 13

    Question 13. What realization does the narrator have when he sees the handprint?

    • He recognizes that his wife was right to be suspicious of the Cabuliwallah
    • Correct answer: He sees that he and Rahmun are equals as fathers, regardless of class or culture
    • He realizes he should have protected Rahmun from the neighbor who cheated him
    • He understands that Mini's childhood is truly over and can never be recovered

    The narrator says: "I forgot that he was a poor Cabuli fruit-seller, while I was—. But no, what was I more than he? He also was a father." The handprint dissolves the social distance between them, revealing their shared bond of paternal love.

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14. 14

    Question 14. How does Mini react when the returned Rahmun asks the old "father-in-law's house" joke?

    • She runs to Rahmun laughing and calls out their old greeting, exactly as he had imagined
    • She replies with ready tact, "Are you going there?", and the two old friends laugh together as before
    • Correct answer: She blushes and looks down, unable to reply to their old joke now that she understands its meaning
    • She hides behind her mother in terror, exactly as she did during their very first meeting

    Dressed in her wedding red silk, Mini "now understood the meaning of the word father-in-law" and "could not reply to him as of old. She flushed up at the question, and stood before him with her bride-like face turned down." The innocent joke has become real, marking the irreversible passage of time.

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15. 15

    Question 15. What sacrifice does the narrator make at the end of the story?

    • He writes a letter of recommendation to help Rahmun find honest work in Calcutta
    • He insists on paying for the almonds, raisins and grapes, although Rahmun refuses the money
    • He invites Rahmun to the wedding feast as an honored guest, despite the objections of the ladies
    • Correct answer: He gives Rahmun a banknote to return to Afghanistan, forcing him to cut wedding expenses

    The narrator gives Rahmun a banknote and says "Go back to your own daughter, Rahmun, in your own country." This gift means he must "curtail some of the festivities" — no electric lights, no military band. But "the wedding-feast was all the brighter for the thought that in a distant land a long-lost father met again with his only child."

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16. 16

    Question 16. How does the passage of time function as a theme in the story?

    • Correct answer: Time transforms people irrevocably — Mini grows up, Rahmun ages in prison — while memory stays frozen in the past
    • Time heals all wounds — Rahmun's prison years end, and he and Mini revive their old friendship exactly as before
    • Time changes nothing — Mini remains a chattering little girl, and Rahmun returns from prison as vigorous as ever
    • Time rewards patience — Rahmun serves his prison sentence and returns to Afghanistan a wealthy, successful man

    Time is the story's cruelest force. Mini transforms from a chattering child to a silent bride; Rahmun ages from a vigorous man to a diminished ex-convict. Yet both Rahmun and the narrator carry frozen memories of their daughters as little girls. The gap between memory and reality is what makes the reunion so devastating.

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17. 17

    Question 17. How does the story explore prejudice and cultural difference?

    • Correct answer: Mini's mother fears the foreign stranger, and even the narrator initially recoils from Rahmun's criminal past
    • Mini's mother welcomes the foreign stranger, but the neighbors spread hostile rumors about Rahmun's past
    • The narrator treats Rahmun as an equal from the start and never feels uneasy about his criminal past
    • Rahmun himself distrusts the Bengali family, and even Mini turns her face away from him because he is a foreigner

    Mini's mother suspects Rahmun of being a kidnapper simply because he is a large foreign man. Even the liberal narrator, who daydreams about Rahmun's homeland, recoils when the ex-prisoner appears on the wedding day — "my heart shrank within itself." Both characters must overcome their biases, and the handprint scene is where the narrator finally does.

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18. 18

    Question 18. Which season recurs at the story's beginning and end, creating a cyclical structure?

    • Winter — representing the cold isolation of Rahmun's years spent in prison
    • Spring — representing rebirth and the renewal of Rahmun's freedom after imprisonment
    • Summer — representing the heat and intensity of the friendship at its peak
    • Correct answer: Autumn — framing both the friendship's height and the bittersweet reunion years later

    Tagore sets the friendship's peak in "autumn mornings, the very time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest" and stages the reunion in autumn during the Puja holidays. The seasonal cycle suggests that while nature repeats, human lives move forward irreversibly — the same autumn, but utterly different people.

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