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Literary Review
Iconic text
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The reasons for Devdas' popularity may lie in Saratchandra's conservatism regarding the man-woman relationship, says MEENAKSHI MUKHERJEE.
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BEGUILED by the enchanting face of Aishwarya Rai on the cover, the unsuspecting reader who picks up the book after being introduced to Devdas through Sanjay Leela Bhansali is likely to be surprised. There is no opulence in the original Bangla novel — now translated into English with scrupulous care by Sreejata Guha — no lavish display of wealth and beauty. It is in fact a stark narrative, with an understated beginning and a ruthless end. In the last pages of the novel the unclaimed dead body of Devdas is taken away by the doms and chandals (the translator refers to them as "the lowest of the low castes" ) who "did a hash job of burning it ... and threw the charred cadaver to one side; crows and vultures perched on it, dogs and wolves snatched at it." A far cry from the tragic/ romantic ending of most of its film versions.
The Bangla novel was published in 1917 — when the author was past 40 and at the zenith of his career. But the actual writing was done years earlier by a young man in Bhagalpur still unknown to the literary world. Although I have not found any substantiation of the popular belief that Saratchandra wrote Devdas at the age of 17, it was most certainly an early work — finished quite some time before he left for Rangoon in his mid-twenties in search of a livelihood. Saratchandra's meteoric success as a writer began while he was in Burma. His novels serialised in various Bangla magazines created such a huge demand for the work of this new writer that publishers got hold of his earlier writing from his friends and began to print them indiscriminately. Saratchandra was quite opposed to Devdas being published at all. In the definitive biography of Sarat written by Vishnu Prabhakar (Awaara Maseeha, 1973) we find a quote from the novelist's letter to a friend written in 1913: "Devdas is not satisfactory, Pramatha, not satisfactory at all. I do not want it to be published." Then again in another letter: "Don't give Devdas to them. Don't even think of it. It was written in a drunken state. I am ashamed of the book now. It is immoral. There is a prostitute in it and god knows what else." Nevertheless the book not only got published four years later, it enjoyed unprecedented popularity first in Bangla but eventually in a number of other Indian languages as well. Subsequently it had an afterlife through at least 10 films in four languages made over six decades
This iconic text appears for the first time in English translation now — more than a century after it was written and 85 years after its publication. This is a commissioned work — as the translator tells us at the end of her perceptive and useful Introduction. The publisher's calculation of cashing in on the success of the much-hyped film has paid off, because the English version is already on the best-seller list in several cities. It needs to be remembered however that till the fag end of the 20th Century Saratchandra Chattopadhyay never needed to be translated into English. He must be the only Indian writer who achieved grass root popularity in many languages of India through spontaneous and direct translation from Bangla without the mediation of English and without any official patronage. His appeal was purely indigenous. Westerners or Indian readers who knew only English never formed his constituency. It is only in the last decade that Saratchandra's novels have begun to be translated into English. This makes one wonder if the status of English has changed in our country or just that a new generation of readers have emerged who are totally monolingual.
Devdas is marked by an unevenness that may be attributed to the fact that it was an apprentice work. Terseness alternates with verbiage, objectivity with sentiment. The racy childhood chapters are delightful; but after that the novel begins to get bogged down by maudlin attempts to evoke sympathy for a weak-willed and self-obsessed hero. Buddhadev Bose had once pointed out that Sarat was at his best when his characters were "chronological adolescents instead of chronic ones. For in growing up they threatened to outgrow their author and he hardly knew how to deal with them." The continued popularity of this flawed work has always intrigued critics. Rajendra Yadav, the well-known Hindi writer had once suggested that the spirit of an age is sometimes epitomised by a literary work whose psychological appeal defies logic. Anandamath was one such text written during the colonial era "which showed the frustrated readers a way out of their anguish and inferiority through the path of action and hope. Devdas in a later generation embodied, on the other hand the romanticised despair of youth. It celebrated their inaction and defeatism."
But that will not explain why in 2002 the novel was filmed at such enormous cost — and was enjoyed by so many people, or why the English translation of the novel is selling well. In our fiercely competitive and so-called globalised world, can passivity or inaction be still made to look attractive? What makes today's viewer/reader still empathise with a hero who wills his own failure? These are not easy questions to answer. Seen simply as another variation of the archetypal story of unfulfilled love like Laila-Majnu or Sohni Mahiwal, Devdas could at the most be accorded a mythic status. But Saratchandra's forte is social realism — not allegory. The novel is rooted in history, geography and local custom. The real reason why Parvati cannot be married to Devdas is that she comes from a family which takes bride-price — a practice which had a social stigma not attached to the more prevalent bridegroom-price or dowry. Devdas can afford to squander his unearned income because his family was the beneficiary of Lord Cornwallis's Permanent Settlement of land in Bengal. Many such details tether the novel to specific place and time
One of the secrets of Saratchandra's continuing popularity could well be his essential conservatism. Despite his reputation as a rebel, he never destabilised the basic middle class values regarding man-woman relationship. In his novels women achieve their salvation only through seva and sacrifice while men retain the right to act arbitrarily or not to act at all. Devdas's self-indulgent path of ruin is exclusively a male prerogative. Parvati could not have chosen such an escape route. The physical wound Devdas wilfully inflicts on Parvati's forehead and the verbal insults he hurls at Chandramukhi only make them more abject and self-abnegating. Whatever external changes might have taken place in the 21st Century, evidently these male fantasies still endure.
Devdas: A Novel, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay , translated by Sreejata Guha, Penguin Books, 2002, p.128, Rs.99.
Meenakshi Mukherjee is a noted writer and literary critic based in Hyderabad.
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