Red Oleanders (Raktakarabi) is one of the more than sixty plays, dance dramas and dramatic sketches by Asia’s first Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. The play, written in 1923-24, was begun during a visit to Shillong, Assam, and inspired by the image of a red oleander plant crushed by pieces of discarded iron that Tagore had come across while walking. A short time later, an oleander branch with a single red flower protruded through the debris, as if, he noted, “created from the blood of its cruelly pierced breast.” It has been suggested that the play’s title might appropriately be translated as Blood-Red Oleanders to indicate the beautiful but toxic nature of the flower and its association with beauty and death in the play.[1] The writing process was not a straightforward one and involved some ten drafts and various titles such as Yakshapuri (a mythical city of unparalleled wealth) and Nandini (after the heroine who seeks to tear down the barrier behind which the king is secluded). Curiously, the Bengali version of the play was staged only once in the Poet’s lifetime by his family in their Jorasanko residence, and it was only in 1954 that a successful staging was accomplished under the direction of Sombhu Mitra’s Bohurupee Company.
