Saratchandra Chattopadhyay
Complete works of Sarat Chandra (শরৎ রচনাবলী) is now available in this third party website:
http://sarat-rachanabali.becs.ac.in/i...
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (also spelt Saratchandra) (Bengali: শরৎচন্দ্র চট্টোপাধ্যায়) was a legendary Bengali novelist from India. He was one of the most popular Bengali novelists of the early 20th century.
His childhood and youth were spent in dire poverty as his father, Motilal Chattopadhyay, was an idler and dreamer and gave little security to his five children. Saratchandra received very little formal education but inherited something valuable from his father—his imagination and love of literature.
He started writing in his early teens and two stories written then have survived—‘Korel’ and ‘Kashinath’. Saratchandra came to maturity at a time when the national movement was gaining momentum together with an awakening of social consciousness.
Much of his writing bears the mark of the resultant turbulence of society. A prolific writer, he found the novel an apt medium for depicting this and, in his hands, it became a powerful weapon of social and political reform.
Sensitive and daring, his novels captivated the hearts and minds of thousands of readers not only in Bengal but all over India.
Some of his best known novels are Palli Samaj (1916), Charitraheen (1917), Devdas (1917), Nishkriti (1917), Srikanta in four parts (1917, 1918, 1927 and 1933), Griha Daha (1920), Sesh Prasna (1929) and Sesher Parichay published posthumously (1939).
"My literary debt is not limited to my predecessors only. I'm forever indebted to the deprived, ordinary people who give this world everything they have and yet receive nothing in return, to the weak and oppressed people whose tears nobody bothers to notice and to the endlessly hassled, distressed (weighed down by life) and helpless people who don't even have a moment to think that: despite having everything, they have right to nothing. They made me start to speak. They inspired me to take up their case and plead for them. I have witnessed endless injustice to these people, unfair intolerable indiscriminate justice. It's true that springs do come to this world for some - full of beauty and wealth - with its sweet smelling breeze perfumed with newly bloomed flowers and spiced with cuckoo's song, but such good things remained well outside the sphere where my sight remained imprisoned. This poverty abounds in my writings."
“Women's liberty", "women's independence" are words on everybody's lips these days, but they stay on the lips and don't go any further. Do you know why? I've found out that liberty can be obtained neither by theoretical arguments, nor by pleading justice and morality, nor by staging a concerted quarrel with men at a meeting. It's something that no one can give to another - not something to be owed or paid as a due. ..you can easily understand that it comes of its own accord - through one's own fulfillment, by the enlargement of one's own soul.”
“...if true love breaks as easily as a delusion, on what can we rely? What will people pin their hopes on?" [Nilima]"They'll have the sweet, intimate memories of a lost paradise, and beside it a sea of sorrow.... People looking on from outside think all is lost... What remains when everything is lost can be held in the palm, like a jewel. It can't be flaunted in a pageant, so the lookers-on are disappointed and jeer as they return home.." [Kamal]"...Jewels are not meant for everybody, certainly not for the rabble. People who're only happy when decked out with gold and silver from top to toe won't understand the value of your tiny diamonds and gems. Those who want a lot feel secure only after tying knot upon knot. They put a price on something only by its weight and show and bulk. But it's useless to try and show the sunrise from a western window..[Nilima]”
“Even today, regardless of the quarrels women may pick in the cause of emancipation, the reality is that, in the present world order, it's the men who eventually grant emancipation, not we women. ... it's the masters who freed the slave of the world, people belonging to the masterclass who fought for the cause. The slaves didn't earn their freedom by wrangling or arguing. That's the way things are. It's the law of the world: the strong emancipate the weak from the bondage of the strong. So also, men alone can liberate women. The responsibility lies with them.”
“... But I'm annoying you to no purpose with my arguments. A person whose house is only open on the west can't see the sun rise at dawn; it's only seen when the sun sets at dusk. If one tries to compare the color and appearance of the two, one will go on arguing forever......The fault lies not with the vision but with the closed windows. If you look out of only one opening till the day you die, you'll ever see anything new.”