Gunahon Ka Devta, published in 1949, is set in Allahabad among university people. Chandar is a brilliant research student who owes much to his professor, Dr Shukla, and spends his days in the professor's house. The professor's daughter Sudha is playful, affectionate and utterly devoted to Chandar, and everyone around them senses a love that neither will name.
Chandar has built an ideal of pure, almost worshipful love and refuses to let it become ordinary romance or marriage, partly out of loyalty to his mentor and partly out of fear of his own feelings. His choices draw in other women: Pammi, an Anglo-Indian divorcee who offers a frank physicality he both craves and despises, and Binti, Sudha's cousin. The cost of his idealism falls hardest on Sudha.
The novel's lush, emotional prose made it a phenomenon among young Hindi readers, and it has gone through a vast number of reprints. Read today, it is also a critique of a hero whose high-mindedness masks cowardice and whose purity damages those he claims to adore. An English translation by Poonam Saxena appeared as Chandar and Sudha.
Book details
| Author | Dharamvir Bharati |
|---|---|
| First published | 1949 |
| Original language | Hindi |
| Translated by | Poonam Saxena |
| Genre | Romance |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 280 |
| Setting | Allahabad, 1940s |
Themes
- Platonic versus physical love
- Sacrifice
- Idealism and hypocrisy
- Duty to mentors
- Youth
Who should read it
Readers who enjoy intense, bittersweet love stories and want a Hindi classic that defined a generation's idea of romance.