Debdas

Devdas

Devdas novel – Bengali book, front cover
Author	Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay
Country	India
Language	Bengali
Genre	Novel
Publisher	GCS
Publication date	30 June 1917
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)

Devdas (Bengali: দেবদাস, Debdas; Hindi: देवदास, Devdās) (also called Debdas) (1917) is a Bengali-language romance novel by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay written when he was only seventeen years of age.

Devdas is a young man from a wealthy Bengali Brahmin family in India in the early 1900s. Parvati (Paro) is a young woman from a middle class Bengali Brahmin family. The two families lived in a village called Taalshonapur in Bengal, and Devdas and Parvati were childhood friends.

Devdas goes away for a couple of years to live and study in the city of Calcutta (now Kolkata). During vacations, he returns to his village. Suddenly both realise their easy comfortability in each other's innocent comradeship has changed to something different. Devdas realises Parvati is no longer the small girl he knew. Parvati looks forward to their childhood love blossoming into their lifelong journey together in marriage. Of course, according to the prevailing social custom, Parvati's parents would have to approach Devdas' parents and propose marriage of Parvati to Devdas as Parvati longed for.

Parvati's mother approaches Devdas's mother, Harimati, with a marriage proposal. Although Devdas's mother loved Parvati very much she wasn't so keen on forming an alliance with next door neighbours. Also, Parvati's family had a long-standing tradition of accepting dowry from the groom's family during a marriage rather than sending dowry with the bride, which was the established custom (and still is, in many parts of India). This alternative custom influenced Devdas's mother's decision of not considering Parvati as Devdas' bride, because she considered Parvati's family to be "trading low caste" (becha-kena chotoghor) family, despite the fact that Parvati (like Devdas) was a Brahmin. The "trading" label was applied in context of the marriage custom followed by Parvati's family. Devdas's father, Narayan Mukherjee, who also loved the little Parvati, did not want Devdas to get married so early in life and wasn't very keen on the alliance. Parvati's father, Nilkantha Chakravarti, feeling insulted at the rejection, finds an even richer husband for Parvati.