Devdas abandons his studies and returns home

Devdas Mukherjee’s departure from Calcutta marks his abrupt abandonment of his studies and a decisive repudiation of the life he had been leading there. In a single evening, he packs his belongings, arranges for his debts to be paid, and tells Chunilal that he will not return. The journey home is presented not as a carefully planned next step but as a sudden break, driven by Devdas’s changed view of education, city life, and the village childhood he had once undervalued.

The Decision Takes Shape

The day before his departure, Devdas is packing his case feverishly when Chunilal comes into his room a little before dusk. Chunilal assumes he is preparing to go somewhere, but Devdas’s distracted replies leave the purpose of the packing unclear. When Chunilal asks what will happen to the belongings, Devdas momentarily seems to come back to himself. Shamefaced, he explains that he is going home that day. The brief exchange gives the decision its sudden, unsettled quality: Chunilal has not understood that this is not an ordinary trip, and Devdas has to make the finality of his plan explicit.

Chunilal asks when Devdas will return. Devdas shakes his head and says that he will not come back. He then makes the departure practical as well as emotional, handing Chunilal money to settle all his debts. If anything remains, Chunilal may give it to the household’s maids and servants. Devdas specifies that he will never return to Calcutta. His instructions close out his obligations in the city even as his declaration cuts off the prospect of resuming his life there.

Renouncing Calcutta and His Studies

As he prepares to leave, Devdas privately reflects that coming to Calcutta has cost him a great deal. He now looks back on his childhood in the village differently: days he had half-forgotten and often scoffed at seem more precious than the city’s cultivated sophistication. The contrast is not simply between two places. It registers a reversal in value, as the life he once treated as less important becomes dearer to him than the urban world he had entered for education.

Devdas gives this reconsideration an explicit connection to his studies. He tells Chunilal that education, learning, knowledge, and success produce only a false sense of happiness, serving, in his view, to indulge one’s own contentment. When Chunilal asks whether he means to stop studying, Devdas answers that he does: he has lost too much because of his studies, and says that, had he known how far he would get, he would never have come to Calcutta. The scene establishes his decision to abandon education, but it does not specify his academic results or explain the practical limits he has reached. Its emphasis is on his own retrospective judgment: study has not delivered the happiness or success he once associated with it.

The Departure and Its Finality

Chunilal asks what has happened to him. Devdas does not provide an explanation then; instead, he says he will tell Chunilal everything if they ever meet again. That conditional promise leaves the reasons for the change only partly disclosed. Devdas has named his disappointment with Calcutta and his studies, but he does not offer Chunilal a full account of what has led him to leave.

At almost nine o’clock that night, everyone, Chunilal included, watches in amazement as Devdas loads all his belongings onto the buggy and leaves the mess for good. The packing first seen in his room thus becomes an irreversible departure from the place where he has been living. Chunilal walks back inside after Devdas is gone and angrily complains that one can never tell with such inexperienced young men. His reaction underscores how little warning or explanation Devdas has given even to someone close enough to witness the change.

Narrative Significance

The episode binds a concrete departure to a larger change in Devdas’s way of seeing. He does not merely leave a room or suspend his studies for a time: he pays off his debts, directs any surplus toward the servants, and declares that Calcutta will no longer be part of his life. At the same time, his reflections on village childhood and education show that the break follows a reversal in what he values. The city’s sophistication has lost its appeal, while the past he once dismissed has gained emotional weight.

The narration places this impulsive decision within a broader description of people who judge hastily rather than follow a matter through to its consequences. It identifies Devdas with that kind of person, whose fortunes may rise high or sink into misery depending on luck. The departure therefore carries both the force of a decision and the uncertainty of an act made without patient reflection. Devdas leaves Chunilal with a promise of a future explanation, but the scene ends with the buggy carrying him away and no return planned.