Na Hanyate (It Does not Die)

I do not usually read Bengali novels but I am glad that my grandmother forced me to read this one.

Amrita ( Maitreyi Devi's nickname) always wanted to understand the feeling behind Tagore's songs expressing love and heartbreak and she finally experienced both of it in extreme. Mircea Eliade was 23 years old when he came to Kolkata to study with Surendranath Dasgupta ( Indian philosopher) and Maitreyi Devi ( Surendranath's daughter) was 16 years old when they first met. Their love story was like an open secret to the others in the house except her Parents .

Young Mircea Eliade

Young Maitreyi Devi

Mircea was loved by all including her parents and he thought that they would accept him as Amrita's beloved . They were deeply in love but this sweet dream of theirs was broken by Maitreyi's sister when she told everything about them to her parents . Maitreyi's father was a learned scholar and had progressive thoughts but he ultimately succumbed to the society's way of thinking and did not agree to make Mircea their son in law as he is from a very different background. Maitreyi was given full education but still she felt trapped . This again proved that how women were kept trapped to save the image of men's sense of pride in the society . She was married off to a well to do Bengali family and she self sacrificingly fulfilled her duties as a daughter, a wife and a mother throughout her life.

It has such a beautiful narration done by Maitreyi Devi and I am definitely in love with Mircea Eliade. This book was written in response to Mircea's book "The Bengali Nights" which was mostly based on his fantasies about their love, recalling a true account of their love. It's honest and heartfelt and it has the power to make you feel all of it along with her.

Maitreyi’s memoir begins in 1972, 42 years after their love affair had been destroyed, when she has a visit from a Romanian student of Eliade’s, someone who has read his novel, who was so moved by it that he felt he had to meet her. The main effect of the visit is that it plunges her into an almost paralytic state . It is so real that all of the time they had spent together flashes in front of her eyes and she felt that they were never really separated.This book gives an account of the events of 1929, Maitreyi’s reflections on them, the subsequent repercussions taking place in 1972 and concludes with a meeting in Chicago with Eliade himself as she comes to know that he has almost turned blind. The book ends on a sad tone but it fills a sense of contentment in your heart.

"In 1973, Maitreyi Devi was invited by Chicago University to give lectures on Rabindranath Tagore. She went to Mircea Eliade's, who was a professor in the same university, office unannounced. During the next two months of her stay, they met several times, which was condensed to a single one at the end of her book."

All over it is an excellent book to make you believe that you never let the feel of being in love for the first time die . A tale of life , love and interest told by an Indian woman with no regrets and no embarassment .

Movie Adaptations Done from both of Maitreyi's and Mircea's books are as followed :

The novel by Maitreyi Devi ' Na Hanyate' was loosely adapted as the 1999 Bollywood film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

Film based upon the Mircea Eliade 1933 Romanian novel 'La Nuit Bengali', Bengal Nights, directed by Nicolas Klotz and starring Hugh Grant, Soumitra Chatterjee, Supriya Pathak and Shabana Azmi.

//Thank you so much for reading . I hope to upload more of such content .//