Near the end of the story, when the Postmaster is on his way home to Calcutta by boat, the narrator combines a simile and personification to describe the water around the man:
When he was on the boat and it had set sail, when the swollen flood-waters of the river started to heave like the Earth’s brimming tears, the postmaster felt a huge anguish: the image of a simple young village-girl’s grief-stricken face seemed to speak a great inarticulate universal sorrow.
The simile the narrator uses here—“the swollen flood-waters of the river started to heave like the Earth’s brimming tears”—is also an instance of personification. This is because that which the river is being compared to is not literal but figurative—the Earth is not a person so cannot cry. The combination of these literary devices is evocative—readers can picture the “swollen flood-waters start[ing] to heave” while feeling the melancholy that comes with heaving tears in this way.
With this passage, Tagore is intentionally presenting the water as a mirror for the inner emotion of the Postmaster—though part of him knows he has to leave Ratan in Ulapur, another part feels “a huge anguish” knowing that he is leaving her to a life without companionship or food security.
