Devdas

by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay

It’s not in the nature of experienced and intelligent people to precipitately form an opinion in the instant that they are faced with something. They examine the object or the problem in depth, looking at it from this side and that before proclaiming its faults or its advantages. However, there is another type of persons who act exactly in the opposite way, they do not have the patience to think for very long about anything. No sooner that something comes into their ken, they know instantly that it is good or it is bad, scrutiny is too much of an effort for them, and logic is replaced with a sort of blind faith. For these people, if fate is kind, the highest success is theirs; if luck is against them, they descend to the darkest depths of life, and there they lie like stones, blind to light and hope. To this latter class of people belonged Devdas.

“Listen, Parvati, too much pride is not a good thing. Nor is too great a beauty. It increases vanity and pride.” He paused,”That is why the beautiful moon has marks on it, that is why the black bee mars the beauty of the lotus by hovering on it. Your beautiful face deserves a mark too.”

I know that love is one thing, and lust or the fascination of beauty, quite another, but they are often mistaken for the same thing.

People who have something to hope for in their lives, think in one way, but those who have nothing to hope for think in another. The hopeful ones can feel pain or joy or anxiety; their thought are lively and can tire them out, but the ones without hope – they feel neither pleasure nor pain, yet they can be content, they are untouched as life breezes past them.