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What made Devdas human
A look at Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel and Bhansali's screen interpretation
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Simanta Roy
Only Sarat Chandra Chatterjee could make a hero out of a drunkard with erratic, often dangerous moodswings --- out of a man who always seemed to make mistakes in his life and never quite had control over what he said.
How else did Sarat Chandra make us cry for Devdas as we saw him slowly deteriorate into oblivion and disappear, his body left to rot, with not a loved one in sight to shed a tear?
Chatterjee was a philosophical genius. Why, then, did Sanjay Leela Bhansali not trust this legendary writer's judgement?
The previews of the epic movie Devdas, starring personalities like Madhuri Dixit, Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai inspired me to explore the original Bengali tale written in 1917. I wanted to see for myself what it was exactly that Devdas, the story, had to offer.
I consulted my mother, the biggest Sarat Chandra fan I knew.
Word by word, line by line, chapter by chapter, she read Devdas to me in Sarat Chandra's own words. I, with my sufficient written Bengali skills, followed. As the story progressed, I could not believe my ears. Some phrases and paragraphs were so rich with ideas, philosophies and emotions that translation from Bengali seemed impossible. There was so much to be taught, valued, remembered.
Devdas was a treasure chest of epic proportions that truly demonstrated the power of the written word.
I developed a personal relationship with the sweet Chandramukhi, the enigmatic yet pitiful Devdas, and, of course, the lovable and unselfish Paro. I explored their inexplicable bond --- their unconditional love for one another for which there was no true name. The story was powerful, intended to represent what it really meant to be human and wish and belong, and what it was like to have everything --- money, riches, class --- and have nothing at all.
Sarat Chandra's Devdas worked and flowed with no more than ten characters, of which three were the core. Bhansali, it seemed, needed at least five more, some fabricated and never conjured by Sarat Chandra, to keep the story going.
The Bengali writer wished for the focus to be on Devdas and his impulsiveness, not in-laws and their strict adamancy. You see, Sarat Chandra's main villain lay within Devdas, not outside, in a sister-in-law.
Otherwise, what would make Devdas different from every other love story? This was the beauty of the tale of Devdas --- the existence of an internal enemy and eventual, albeit too late, realisation.
Sarat Chandra's Devdas tells us what it is that humans crave for --- belonging --- and why. It tells us what makes us sad; it tells us what causes us to hesitate. Maybe Bhansali should have looked for these things when he read Devdas. Not for signs of what would make a juicy soap opera but the conveyance of a message.
As a child, Devdas was a naughty little boy who smoked a pipe in a bamboo patch and bossed around a naive Paro who loved him even then. He was Devda. I could not find this anywhere onscreen.
Paro and Chandramukhi, Sarat Chandra's heroines, despite their low places in society, were transcendentally beautiful. They loved with their entire beings, selflessly, and they gave their emotions to those who needed them. They were perfect and, despite everything, on pedestals in the readers' mind.
Bhansali has no trouble achieving this. However, it is hard to swallow that Paro, who lives in a house with glass doors, elaborate lighting and lavish furniture is poor, as she is supposed to be. And, it does not seem like Chandramukhi ever had a hard life, which she did, when we find her onscreen.
The two never met. They were both goddesses of their own territory, each of whom owned a different part of Devdas' essence. Paro knew Devdas' childhood and his inner nature, while Chandramukhi recognised inside him all that he ever wanted to be, as a man. A rendezvous in the context of Sarat Chandra's Devdas seems unreal, unlikely, and too ideal in comparison to the overall mood of the tale.
The bond between Paro and Devdas was quite a bit more delicate, too; Sarat Chandra never details a bold scene with the pair, whose love was too pure to allow so, before or after he comes back from Kolkata.
Devdas died alone, anonymous. A man of high caste, he never did get to see Paro. He dies under the tree waiting for her, after a very slow, agonising journey to her home. In the end, his body was only half-cremated, and he was left to be eaten by the birds circling overhead.
Sarat Chandra reprimands his audience sadly, saying that no one should have a life or death quite like this poor man's --- he lived for one thing but had nothing and got nothing. He never got to see a single tear shed for him before he left his body; he never got to see all the love he really had in store. He left alone.
And so, Sarat Chandra's Devdas is not only the tale of a love story that never got to happen. It is about a love that never saw its beginning or end.
There is strength in Sarat Chandra's tale, without lavish jewellery or houses or corridors. There is strength in the message, in the literature, and in the human mind. Above all, Sarat Chandra was human. His modest, unpretentious tale shows it well.
18-year-old Simanta Roy is a resident of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and plans to pursue a dual degree in Literature and Journalism from Boston University
Also Read:
Eternal, timeless-The Devdas Special