Review on Devdas

Devdas

 Saratchandra Chattopadhyay

Translated by Sreejuta Guha

Devdas is a story written by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay in the early 20th century. It is a tragic love story about a man who fells in love with his childhood friend but is unable to marry her due to pressure of parents and society.The novel touches you deeply at emotional level not only because the turns that the story takes but also how it is presented. Saratchandra Chattopadhyay has carved each character and then presented it to us in a beautiful manner. Nowhere in the novel you feel that it is a work of fiction, it is rather like a biography of people compiled together.

The novel is a realistic fiction, the characters behave in a way as they would have in real world. Nothing is idealized, each character has his own flaws and each one of them act in an unpredictable manner. This makes you relate to the characters easily. The characters are not described to us they are revealed to us in the coarse of the story. We have the full freedom to develop our own understanding of the characters, they are not imposed on us. Even the dialogues give us a feel that they were actual conversation between two people. This makes us get involved in the story and also give us the freedom to reconstruct the characters with our own imagination.

Another beautiful tool used by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay was dramatisation of interactions between characters throughout the novel. For example when she asks Paro to run away with him even after she was married or when he asks Chandramukhi if he could call her his wife and never gives any reason. This makes reader think about them as there is no fixed structure given to the characters by the author.

An interesting fact that was evident in the novel is that Paro referred to Devdas as Dev-da meaning elder brother. This was because the two were playmates in childhood days and this is how she referred to him. But this gives a complexity to the relation. Devdas towards his ending days once says that Paro was more like a sister to him. He chooses to call Chandramukhi his wife and not Paro. This confuses the readers and the status of their relationship is never clear even towards the end of the novel. This however is never enlightened in the novel. This doubling draws the reader more into the novel.

The translation of the novel is done by Sreejata Guha. The translation of the novel is smooth. Never in the novel we have to go back to understand the text. The novel just goes in a flow, in fact once we start the novel we never feel like leaving it before finishing it.

The novel starts of with childhood days of Devdas mostly describing how he used spend his days with Paro. This gives us a better insight of the relationship between them and gives a sound reasoning for whatever that came next.Hence, the novel beautifully drifts from their childhood to adulthood explaining the sequence of each event.

Devdas, the main character of the novel is neither the romantic hero nor he is an ordinary man in any sense. Devdas had a very flexible character, he was uncertain in his actions. He rejects her proposal and realizes that he loves her only after he drops the letter.When he rushes to her and proposes to her he finds that she has already been married. Helpless Devdas takes up drinking and becomes miserable. Through his friend he meets Chandramukhi who then supports him in his ending days.

The women in the novel are strong, proactive and indomitable. We see transformation in both the women in the novel. The transformation in Parvati is from that of a girl to a women. We see that the experiences in her life makes her more matured than women of her age. Although deep down she loved Devdas, she served her lawfully wedded husband with all her soul and mind. She never looked to her step children as her husband's children, she rather saw them as their own although they were elder than her. Parvati finally turns to charity and helps every needy that comes to her door steps. Similarly, Chandramukhi also goes through a transformation after she meets Devdas, she leaves her business and goes back to the village, there she used to get money from Devdas regularly which she used to give away to villagers as loan without asking for any interest. Ultimately she goes back to the city to search for Devdas and after finding him she helps him get better.

Devads is a novel of love, loss, desolation and destruction. Devdas's tale evokes pathos more than anything else. It deeply touches us and even while reading it our heart remains sunken maybe because at points we are able to relate to the characters. Though it was a novel of just thirty thousand words it evokes in us emotions of more than a million words.