The spotlight was on Amartya Sen at the reading from The Last Poem, a translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s Shesher Kabita, on New Year’s Day. The Bengal Club Library event, presented by The Telegraph, was a star-studded affair with actor-director Aparna Sen, husband Kalyan Ray and film-maker Goutam Ghose reading passages from the book by Dilip Basu, a professor of history at University of California, Santa Cruz, and the original novel. The Nobel laureate, the chief guest at the event, was there for a short while. “In chapter six, Rabindranath says that after hearing Amit’s overtures Labanya forgot to look at her watch but I won’t be like Labanya,” smiled Sen, apologising for his early departure. Sen praised the book calling it a “wonderful translation of a very exciting novel”. One of the features of the novel, he elaborated, is that it came at a time when Rabindranath was already famous and well established. “But unlike many people who go on doing the things that got them success, Rabindranath was constantly experimenting. It also has the distinction of being a novel in prose, which merges prose and poetry as it goes along. It is very difficult to translate but it has been done with a lightness of style that Rabindranath would have admired,” said the second Nobel laureate from Santiniketan. Sen added that for him, personally, one of the merits of the books was Dinkar Kowshik’s paintings. “I did have the privilege of knowing Rabindranath but I was very young.... Dinkar Kowshik I have known for a very long time and I greatly admired him.” The reading was attended by former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, Sugata Bose, Krishna Bose, Bharati Ray, Roopen Roy and others. Pictures by Pabitra Das