Maitreyi Devi
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Mircea Eliade
A secret love affair between a Romanian scholar and a Bengali Poet in the 1930s led to a lifelong battle of words and a couple of amazing motion pictures for the big screen, a thread.
In one of the initial scenes of the 1988 movie The Bengali Night, we find John Hunt’s character roaming through the narrow streets of Calcutta laden with Tram tracks only to find a drunken Hugh Grant lying on the stairs of a building, bereft of his senses.
The film then follows a passionate love affair between Hugh Grant’s character Alain, an engineer, and the daughter of his Bengali Employer played by Supriya Pathak. A loose re-telling of Mircea Eliade’s stay in Calcutta, the film had caused quite a furor back then.
The real lady in question was poet and author Maitreyi Devi. One of 6 children of Sanskrit scholar/philosopher Surendranath Dasgupta and his wife Himani Devi, Maitreyi was only 16 when Mircea Eliade, a young Romanian scholar entered her life.
Mircea Eliade was born in Bucharest; from the very onset, he had a particular fascination with languages and the occult. At the age of 14, he had taken up the studies of Sanskrit, Persian, and Hebrew languages and was eager to know more.
Around 1926 Eliade found out that the Maharaja of Kasimbazar, Manindra Chandra Nandy, was offering scholarships to European students. He immediately applied and in 1928 he made his way to India via Egypt.
At Maharaja’s request, Eliade was to learn Indian philosophy from Professor Surendranath Dasgupta at the University of Calcutta and even be a guest at his house for the duration of his stay.
A thousand-year-old civilization trying to grasp the reality of the new modern industrial age and at the same time fighting against its colonial masters. India and its innate contradictions intrigued Eliade.
However, it is not only knowledge that Eliade stumbled upon. He fell in love with Maitreyi, his host's daughter and a teenage protege. The romance caused a furor in both of their lives and would continue to be a bane till their last breath.
Maitreyi’s father came to know about this and immediately asked Eliade to leave the Dasgupta household and strictly told him not to contact Maitreyi again. Given enough time Maitreyi might have forgotten about the whole incident but Eliade had other ideas.
Eliade soon returned to Romania, due to take part in military service. In 1933 he came out with a novel titled ‘Maitreyi’. A not-very-well-disguised story about his love affair with Maitreyi. The novel was well-received in Romania and it propelled Eliade’s literary career.
Maitreyi however was unaware of the entire incident until her father Professor Dasgupta found out during his travels in Europe in 1938. Maitreyi got to know the cultural impact when she herself visited Europe and chanced upon some Romanians who recognized her.
When Maitreyi asked a friend to translate the novel's content, she was left shocked at the details specified. By that time Eliade’s novel had already been translated into French, Italian, and Spanish.
Maitreyi’s first rebuttal came when in 1972 she wrote a series of poems published in a small volume Aditya Marichi. In 1974 she came out with one of her finest works and a fine response to Eliade titled Na Hanyate or ‘It Does not die’.
·For many western observers, ‘It Does not die’ seemed a feeble attempt at course correction, for Maitreyi however it was a bold, mature, and much-needed move. It was an overnight success; the book provided Maitreyi with a much-needed platform to tell her version.
After Eliade’s death in 1986, his wife Christine gave permission to a French co. to do a film on the novel, titled la Nuit Bengali or The Bengali Night.
Maitreyi witnessed the making of the film in Calcutta, even filing cases against it for hurting religious sentiments and being pornographic.
The film however was only shown in India and never got a worldwide release. Maitreyi’s version on the other hand was adapted for a Hindi Film by Sanjay Leela Bhansali starring Aishwarya Rai, Salman Khan, and Ajay Devgn titled Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.
It’s tough to know the true extent of the relationship even today. In disclosing and refuting they have both given us an amazing window into their creative and imaginative prowess and their ability to have a civilized discourse without stooping to the level of slander.
Sources: Ginu Kamani, A Terrible Hurt: The Untold Story behind the Publishing of Maitreyi Devi, University of Chicago Press; Sonia Elvireanu, India as Object of Mircea Eliade’s Gaze, Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, V7N2, 2015, https://rupkatha.com/V7/n2/18_Mircea_Eliade.pdf
