Review: The last poem by Rabindranath Tagore 0

The last poem is a book by the Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore which was written in 1928 , and reading the book again highlights the worsening status of educated women in India in 2019. The main male character of the book is Amit Ray, the son of the richest lawyer in Calcutta, who is sent to England for further studies. He does not work as a lawyer, instead he whiles away his time enjoying with his friends. Tired of the life in Calcutta he decides to take a holiday in Shillong, the hill station for some time. He ridicules Tagore, and writes poetry himself which he then claims is written by someone else.

Here he meets the main female protagonist Lavanya. Unlike most female characters in Indian novels, The main female character of the book is a single woman Lavanya, who has a MA degree, and is financially independent. She is working as a teacher to a young girl, and she does not face any kind of harassment, especially by the intelligence and security agency employees in British India. Her father was the principal of a college in western India, and though his favorite student Shobhanlal was interested in her, Lavanya does not reciprocate the feeling.

Amit Ray is attracted towards Lavanya and proposes to her. Though Lavanya enjoys his company she feels that their characters are extremely unlike and they are not compatible. Since Amit Ray extends his stay in Shillong for a long time to spend time with Lavanya, his sisters Cissie and Lissie are worried and visit Shillong along with their westernized friend Kitty. Kitty was engaged to Amit Ray when they were younger and living in London. However Amit Ray broke off the engagement. When Amit informs his sisters and Kitty that he is engaged to Lavanya, Kitty is very upset, and she reveals that Amit Ray was engaged to her earlier

When Lavanya hears that Amit was engaged to Kitty, she asks him why he broke off the engagement. He says that Kitty has changed for the worse, then Lavanya tells him that he himself is responsible for the changes in her. Amit Ray has to leave Shillong for some time, and when he comes back he finds that Lavanya and the family she was teaching have left the house he rented. He returns to his life in Calcutta and revives his friendship with Kitty who starts using her indian name Ketaki.

In contrast nearly a century later , the condition of educated women in India has worsened greatly with the indian government openly involved in the identity theft of hardworking harmless single woman engineers from top colleges, falsely claiming that google, tata sponsored goan call girls sunaina, sidhi, cheater housewives like nayanshree hathwar, riddhi nayak, robbers like veena, school dropouts like the gujju housewife naina who looks like actress sneha wagh, asmita patel and other frauds who did not answer JEE, have the resume, savings , of the engineer to pay all these frauds a monthly indian government salary while the engineer is defamed in the worst possible manner.

The indian government is also wasting a huge amount of Indian taxpayer money to defame, cheat and exploit hardworking educated women, denying them their fundamental rights. Hence it appears that only brahmin and bania men benefited when the British left india,the condition of women in India has greatly worsened after the british left, and the mainstream media is too cowardly to cover the endless atrocities on hardworking educated women. Though the book has a large number of poems, the prose is extremely well written, far better than most indian authors today .

Highy recommended for those who like reading poetry, Tagore and wish to find out how the condition of women has drastically worsened in “independent” india in 2019, compared to British india in 1928

The Last Poem
Author: Rabindranath Tagore
Publisher: Harper Collins Perennial
Pages : 152