SynopsisThe eternal conflict in the age-old ‘man-woman’ relationship, which typically arises when any one of the two partners seeks both solace and passion in a single partner and is often unable to savour the joys of both together, is the central theme of Two Sisters (Dui Bon by Rabindranath Tagore, 1933). The central character Shashanka, is torn between two women, undecided between his homemaker wife Sharmila and her younger sister, the vivacious and playful Urmimala, who abhors domesticaiton. The two women revolve round their common love interest and are overwhelmed by the intensity of desire, guilt and agony, in an endless cycle of happy conjugality giving way to the blinding intoxication of passion, finally leaving a toxic taste in the mouths of all the protagonists.
The longing for a doting ‘mother’ to take care of all his needs often remains strong in a man smitten by a woman and desirous of her favours. Contemporary society is not devoid of this trait and this novella is thus universal and timeless in its approach.
Enjoying reading this book?
Binding: Flexiback
About the author
Rabindranath Tagore was born in 1861. He was the fourteenth child of Debendranath Tagore, head of the Brahmo Samaj. The family house at Jorasanko was a hive of cultural and intellectual activity and Tagore started writing at an early age. In the 1890s he lived in rural East Bengal, managing family estates. He was involved in the Swadeshi campaign against the British in the early 1900s. In 1912 he travelled to England with Gitanjali, a collection of English poems, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore was knighted in 1915, an honour he repudiated in 1919 after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. In the 1920s and 1930s he lectured extensively in America, Europe, the Far East and Middle East. Proceeds from these and from his Western publications went to Visva-Bharati, his school and university at Santiniketan. Tagore was a prolific writer; his works include poems, novels, plays, short stories, essays and songs. Late in his life Tagore took up painting, exhibiting in Moscow, Berlin, Paris, London and New York. He died in 1941.?
