Debdás - Provdaná – Čattopádhjáj Šaratčandra (2018)

Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay (1876–1938) opened up to the Bengali readership a world of simple, uneducated, and poor people, vagabonds, courtesans, and drunks, who, despite widespread condemnation and the stigma of the fallen, maintained their inner innocence and nobility. In both of his novels, Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay tackled one of the sensitive topics of his time: love marriages standing against the prevailing unions arranged by parents. While Debdas ends tragically, in the later novel The Married Woman (Parinita), the author grants both lovers a happy ending. Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay narrates the life stories of his heroes with emotional authenticity and linguistic ease, which helped him become so familiar in various Indian states that he is considered a local author, making him the most read and translated Bengali writer in India. Particularly, the novel Debdas is a common part of the broad cultural consciousness, and the name of the main character has become synonymous with unrequited love, similar to Romeo or Werther in the European cultural sphere. In India, Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay is still referred to as the 'unattainable prose writer,' 'the author of compassionate stories,' and given his largest readership, which consisted of women, also as the 'artist of the kitchen.'