Do you think that Shesher Kobita as a novel is focused entirely on Amit Ray?

Examine
with respect to the women characters as well as Amit.

Shesher Kobita remains one of Tagore’s most celebrated expositions of love, conjugal relationships,
and a woman’s right to choose, even in a consensual relationship. The novel was written in 1928 and
serialized in the periodical Prabasi in 1929. It was published in book form later the same year. Shesher
Kabita is Tagore’s answer to his detractors within the Bengali literary establishment, particularly
those associated with the Kallol group and others belonging to Shanibarer Chithi and Kalikalam. It is
the first novel by Tagore in which the action of the narrative is contemporaneous with the time of the
novel’s composition. Tagore portrays how far love can survive the touch of social conventions, the
author claims to speak for both the man and the woman and he claims to present a solution which we
need to scratch and question.

Tagore created extraordinary characters, inspired by the many women he met in his lifetime. From
Binodini in Chokher Bali to Charulata in Nastanirh , each argued his case for a progressive, liberal,
and inclusive society where women were empowered and had complete agency over their bodies. But
even then, no other character has the kind of sway over Tagore’s followers as Labanya – arguably, his
most complex and nuanced character – from Shesher Kobita (The Last Poem), a story about two
people who are drawn together by their love for stimulating conversations. Perfectly matched in their
intellect and wit, they eventually decide to stay apart in acknowledgment of their unbreachable
differences. Between Amit and Labanya it’s more of an intellectual exercise than love. Labanya is
careful about Amit from the very beginning. She doesn’t fall headlong for him, like it usually happens
when one falls in love. Labanya keeps her eyes open. She enjoys the intellectual exchange but doesn’t
quite trust Amit. On the hand, Amit is extremely self-obsessed. A big sign of romanticism is self-
obsession, forgetting ‘the other’ always. Amit’s sense of ‘I’ is so deep that love, marriage... all this is
impossible for him. He never had that deep love for anyone. He flirts with women and when he meets
Labanya he feels he has to win her over.

“Their relatives had given up hoping that Amit would ever marry. They had concluded that, being
unfit for the responsibilities of married life, he dreamt of the impossible and went about trying to
impress people with his perverse talk” – “Speaking of Amit”, Chapter 1.

What Labanya feels for Amit is not the love of surrender, the kind she can have with Sovanlal. With
Sovanlal, Labanya had a kind of professional animosity initially. She felt her father loved Sovanlal
more and so he did better than her in the exams. But with Amit, it’s a more mature Labanya can be
seen.

“In the BA examinations, he had secured the first place and Labanya, the third. That had been a
major blow to Labanya’s self-esteem. The reasons were twofold: first, that Labanya was often stung
by Abanish’s deep respect for Shobhan’s intellect.”- “All About Labanya”, Chapter 4.

In contrast with Labanya, Katy Mitter (Ketaki) is a vital character in the entire love story. She is
completely in love with Amit, she still wears Amit’s ring which he removed from his finger and
transferred to hers seven long years back in England. She could never imagine that Amit would meet
someone else and fall in love. Katy is the person who gets back with Amit and lets herself be moulded
the way he wants. She sheds all her Western influences and tries to be the Indian bride that Amit had
always eulogized. Maybe it was a problem of the time that the women could not negate the
overpowering dominance of men but even then, Labanya remains as relevant as she was. She is
portrayed as a woman who makes her own choices and lives by them, loves unconditionally, and
expects her lover to do the same. She also refuses to lose her identity in an intense relationship, and
does not expect her lover to do that either. “Space” and “taste”, both matter to her as much as it would
matter to a man. It makes perfect sense to revisit it even as we deal with the wave of toxic masculinity
unleashed by the “Kabir Singhs” of the world in 2021.

Jogamaya is another side of womanhood, she is motherly towards Labanya

and tried to be a matchmaker for Amit and Labanya. Being a mother of a young girl Saroma, she is
close to her daughter’s governess (Labanya), she is even protective towards her which can be noticed
in Chapter 15 of the novel during her interactions with sissy and katy who came to her house to
enquire of Amit. She even went on blessing Amit and Labanya with a gold chain on their hands.

“She stood the two of them side by side, and placed Labanya’s right hand on Amit’s. Removing the
gold chain from Labanya’s neck, she used it to bind their hands together. ‘May your union be
everlasting!’ she proclaimed.” – Jogamaya blessing Amit and Labanya, chapter 10.

Amit revels in projecting himself as a contrarian, a rabble rouser, and an ardent critic of Tagore, while
secretly obsessing over his poetry. He likes to cast himself as a misfit in the aristocratic, westernised
society of colonial Calcutta and escapes his social network to “seek solitude in Shillong”. Labanya on
the other hand, is with her quiet learnedness, her brilliant mind and her independent streak – a woman
who can fire up one’s imagination, and yet remain distant. It’s this quality that elevates Labanya from
the pit of predictability to a feisty woman who commands her own narrative. Amit, shackled by his
narcissism, fails to see Labanya for what she is. He is enchanted by her learnedness and her love for
poetry (the two converse in verses by their favourite poets) – his social circle in Calcutta has never
thrown up such a discovery. During one of their meetings, he marvels at how books on her table
“reveal themselves” unlike books in a “public library that just remain there, unnoticed.” In Labanya,
he finds the woman who can match him in wit, verse, and spirit. But Labanya approaches this affair
with trepidation. She realises that Amit wants his Pygmalion in her. She understands that they have
differences that will inevitably kill the beauty and purity of their love. The reason she decides to reject
an ordinary life with her extraordinary lover is that she does not want to exist as a figment of his
imagination.

So even when Amit celebrates their impending engagement, she remains worried, confessing that she
is scared whether this is a time for her to be “captured”. She also tells him that he is not the kind of
person who would be happy in a marriage because in her assessment, she senses an “immaturity that
cannot survive the mundaneness of marriage”. When Amit shares his dreams of a married life where
both of them would inhabit their separate physical space throughout the day, only to come together for
their union in the night, she remains cold to his fantasies. She reminds him, bluntly, that there is
enough of a distance between them already. The refusal to commit to a relationship has always been a
male prerogative. Yet it is also something that Tagore subverts with Labanya.

The story is bittersweet and open-ended one because both Labanya and Amit move on to marry
partners they had left behind in their past. But there is no melodramatic snapping of ties with each
other either: While Amit hints at polyamory, suggesting that it is possible to love more than one
person at the same time, Labanya remains the enigma that she was at the beginning of their fateful
affair. She sees fulfilment in her separation with Amit, believing that being soul mates and cherishing
a special bond is better than tarnishing it with the stigma of marriage.
“You don’t bear the slightest responsibility for the inner bond that exists between us. I don’t say this
in anger;.... Let my love be immaculate, bearing no mark, no shadow, of the external world.” –
Labanya to Amit, Chapter 17, “Liberations”

I tried to figure out the essence of Shesher Kobita, which is about man-woman relationships and the
institution of marriage. Tagore revolved the plot around Amit but women are the main focus of his
novel . The last poem, shesher kobita (Kaaler jatrar dhwani), is also written by Labanya. In Labanya,
we find the last romance, that is never meant to be realised – only desired. I realised there is a
Labanya in every woman. A woman who longs to be desired, not to be conquered. A woman, who
knows the privilege of the last romance.