Paro, the love of his life, sees her loss when she sees him throwing himself away in drink and dissipation, sheer depression and inability to get past loss of her, pretty much a boat that has lost its sails and sailor and is at mercy of all winds and waves, and hears him telling her that if only she had been there she could have taken care of him and his household, his home, his mother who is at mercy of the other - the only now that he is alone - daughter in law, and he would have been free to not worry.
Devdas is stylistically deliberately slight, and it's only after spending 100 pages with Chattopadhyay's prose (in translation, at least) that one begins to realise that we are being manipulated and beguiled by his sparseness, and entranced as much by what is not-shown as by what is that the author can quite happily spend 30 pages highlighting a seemingly trivial point of Devdas and Paro's relationship during school but equally skip over a year, or two, or five and we comfortably pick up the story as if there is no gap or loss. The true reason for the success of Devdas as fiction is less in the melodramatic emotions of love and passion of the kind seen in the famous 2002 movie version – though they are, in part, there – and more in the subtle nuances, the reasons that provoke that tragedy and loss, and the realisation that this tragedy could have been avoided if subtle, small conversations had turned out differently that's ultimately difficult to accept. On turning the last page of Devdas, a short novella that I could hardly bear to put down, whilst one is forced to confront feelings of sadness and loss at the tragedy that has just unfolded one is further provoked, not to weep, but to try and understand and explain them.
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