Home-coming - Questions & Answers

The title "Home-Coming" suggests a return to one's home, yet Tagore complicates this simple meaning through Phatik's three distinct homecomings, each revealing deeper truths about what "home" truly means. The first homecoming occurs at the story's beginning when Phatik returns to his village home after the log incident, only to be blamed and beaten by his mother who believes Makhan's false account. This homecoming provides not comfort but punishment and rejection. Phatik experiences the harsh reality that physical location alone does not constitute home—his mother's lack of love and belief in him transforms his village into a place of pain.

The second homecoming occurs when Phatik, desperate and feverish, attempts to run away from Calcutta and return to his village. However, police bring him back before he reaches his destination. This failed homecoming represents Phatik's inability to escape his suffering or find refuge anywhere. The third and final homecoming is Phatik's death—his return to his mother's love, albeit too late to save him. When delirious, he believes "the holidays have come," confusing his approach to death with arrival at home. This final homecoming is the most meaningful emotionally but also the most tragic, as Phatik receives his mother's full affection only as he dies.

Through these three homecomings, Tagore redefines home not as a physical place but as an emotional state—a place where one is loved and understood. True homecoming occurs not through geographic return but through emotional acceptance. Phatik's journey reveals that without love and belonging, physical presence in one's birthplace is not homecoming. Conversely, true homecoming happens when Phatik is finally loved by his mother, even though it occurs as he departs life. The complicated structure of homecomings demonstrates that home is fundamentally about human connection, and that its absence, however geographical proximity, leaves one homeless and adrift.

Tagore structures "The Home-Coming" around a fundamental geographic and emotional contrast between village and city. In the village, Phatik lives in open spaces with freedom to roam, play, and lead companions in mischief. The village represents natural, unstructured childhood—wide meadows for kite-flying, streams for swimming, mud-flats for play with peers. Though his mother is cold and he is blamed unjustly, the physical environment allows him agency, movement, and social connection. He is "the leader" of his companions, suggesting capability and status. However, this village freedom comes without emotional warmth; his mother's love is absent.

Calcutta represents the opposite: cramped houses surrounded by walls, no open spaces, structured school environments, and isolation. Phatik is enclosed both physically and socially. Where he was once a leader, he becomes "a victim" of bullying. Teachers beat him; students mock him; his aunt neglects him. The city's urban structure—buildings, walls, narrow streets—literally and metaphorically confines him. He stands "wistfully by the window," separated from the world outside. Yet Calcutta offers education and presumably opportunities for advancement that the village cannot provide. It represents adult progress and civilization, yet proves emotionally sterile for a vulnerable child.

Tagore uses this contrast to argue that place matters less than love and understanding. The village's open spaces cannot compensate for maternal coldness. The city's opportunities cannot substitute for human warmth. Phatik's longing is not ultimately for physical location but for emotional belonging—for a place where he is loved. The contrast between village and city ultimately reveals both as incomplete: the village offers freedom but not love; the city offers opportunity but not understanding. True home requires both physical and emotional comfort, neither of which Phatik finds. Through geographic contrast, Tagore explores how environment shapes childhood development, but also how even ideal physical circumstances cannot replace human emotional connection.

Through "The Home-Coming," Tagore critiques the rigid family and social structures of his time that failed to recognize and respond to children's emotional needs. He portrays a family where the mother, overwhelmed and prejudiced, favors one child while rejecting another based on unfair judgment. She lacks the emotional capacity or willingness to understand Phatik's perspective or needs. Uncle Bishamber, though ostensibly acting in Phatik's best interest by offering education, fails to provide emotional care or recognition of Phatik's suffering. He maintains a practical distance that allows Phatik's deterioration. The school system, represented through harsh teachers and bullying peers, actively damages vulnerable children rather than supporting them. Tagore suggests that the very institutions designed to nurture and educate children—family and school—often fail their most vulnerable members.

The story also critiques society's invisibility of childhood suffering. Phatik's pain is ignored or misinterpreted as misbehavior. Adults around him see only outward behavior—timidity, withdrawn demeanor—and interpret these as character flaws rather than signs of distress. No one asks "What is wrong with this child?" Instead, they punish, reject, or maintain indifference. Society's failure to truly see and understand Phatik's emotional state demonstrates how vulnerable individuals—especially children without advocates—can suffer in plain sight. The police who find Phatik see a runaway, not a child in psychological crisis. His mother sees a problem child, not a son desperately seeking her love.

Finally, Tagore suggests that true home requires more than physical shelter—it requires emotional recognition and love. Society's definition of home as mere location is exposed as insufficient. Phatik's story implicitly argues for a more humane, emotionally aware society that recognizes children as complex beings with legitimate emotional needs. The story's tragic ending—Phatik dying just as he receives his mother's love—serves as indictment of a society that tolerates such preventable tragedies through indifference and misunderstanding toward its most vulnerable members.