THE PRICE OF FLOWERS -summary – PRABHAT KUMAR MUKHOPADHYAY

THE PRICE OF FLOWERS – PRABHAT KUMAR MUKHOPADHYAY

SUMMARY

INTRODUCTION:

The Price of Flowers is a short story which is written by Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay. It was written in Bengali and it has been translated into English by Lila Ray. The Price of Flowers is a touching story by Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadyay. The story was set in London during the pre independence era. In this story Mukhopadhyay had portrayed the life of a poor English family. Mr.Gupta is the narrator of this short story who was an Indian civil servant undergoing training in London.

CONTENT:

Gupta was an Indian living in London. Once he met an English girl in a vegetarian restaurant. Her name was Alcie Margaret Clifford. She was called Maggie. She was thirteen years old. She was working as a typist in a nearby office. She belonged to a poor family. She wanted to know if Gupta was an Indian. Her brother Frank was in Military service in India. Mrs Clifford, Maggie’s mother thinks that India was a land of tigers, snakes and fevers. So her mother was worried about her son.

Mr Gupta meets a teenaged girl in a restaurant.  Her interest in him arouses his curiosity.  He later becomes friends with her and learns her story.  She lives with her widowed mother in a poor neighbourhood.  Her only brother Frank is in India serving the British army.  They have no information from him for several months and they are worried.
When Mr.Gupta visited their home, Mrs.Clifford requests him to look into the crystal of a ring sent by Frank from India.  They believed that the ring has magical powers and a Hindu will be able to see the future and predicts if he concentrates on the crystal.  Mr Gupta tries but fails.  This disappoints her.

Later Mrs Clifford falls ill.  Maggie requests him to come home and look once again into the crystal and tell her mother that Frank is alright.  As this would help her to recover, he agrees to tell this harmless lie.  But by the time he tells this, Frank was already dead.  Later Gupta comes to know that Frank had died in the war. Gupta feels very sad. Then in the morning of his last day in London, Maggie came to see him. He was packing up things. She gave him a shilling to buy flowers and place them on her brother’s grave in Punjab and bid farewell to each other.

CONCLUSION:

The story is a really touching one.  The one shilling that Maggie gives him is hard earned money.  At first Mr Gupta thinks of returning it.   But later he decides to take it as he does not want to deny her this joy of sacrifice.  What is the price of those flowers?  It is not certainly one shilling.  The flowers are priceless when we consider Maggie’s feelings towards her brother.  So the title of the story is an apt one. The story opens and ends with the meeting between Mr Gupta and Maggie.