Maitreyi Devi
Maitreyi Devi, also spelled Maitreyī Devī, (10 September 1914 – 29 January 1989) was an Indian poet and novelist. She was born in Chittagong, then part of British India and now in Bangladesh. Her father was philosopher Surendranath Dasgupta, and she grew up with the influence of Rabindranath Tagore, the famous poet.
She studied in Calcutta (now Kolkata) at St. John’s Diocesan Girls’ High School and Jogamaya Devi College. She published her first book of poetry in 1930, when she was 16, with a preface written by Tagore.
Devi’s life also included a famous literary figure, Mircea Eliade, the Romanian writer. He stayed at their home, and the two had an intimate relationship that caused trouble for her family. They later separated. She married Dr. Manmohan Sen when she was 20; they had two children.
In 1938–39, Tagore stayed with Devi and her husband at Mungpoo near Kalimpong, and this visit became part of their history.
Devi did many good deeds. She founded the Council for the Promotion of Communal Harmony in 1964, served as vice-president of the All-India Women’s Coordinating Council, and started orphanages.
In 1972 she learned that Eliade had written a novel about their relationship called Bengal Nights. She published a collection of poems, Aditya Marichi (Sun Rays), that year, which mentions Eliade. In 1974 she published Na Hanyate (It Does Not Die), a novel that won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1976.
Na Hanyate is often seen as Devi’s response to Bengal Nights. The two works were reissued together in 1994 by the University of Chicago Press. A film project in the 1980s, starring Hugh Grant, faced delays after Devi objected to changes to the story and to the character’s name.
Maitreyi Devi passed away in Kolkata in 1989 at the age of 74. She is best known for Na Hanyate, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 12:31 (CET).