By Charudutta Panigrahi

This inheritance, however, was never worn as a badge. Devdas never traded on his father’s name, nor did he lean on his own IAS title to command attention or legitimacy. His stature is self-earned, his brilliance unmistakable. He walks in the shadow of a giant, yet casts a luminous silhouette of his own—fluid, futuristic, and fiercely original.

In a milieu where titles are often wielded as passports to recognition, he has remained resolutely independent—anchored not in rank, but in resonance. His brilliance precedes his biography. He is not a bureaucrat who writes; he is a writer who happened to serve. And even in service, he served the spirit of culture more than the machinery of administration. 

And of course, one cannot speak of Devdas Chhotray without invoking the towering presence of his lineage. He is the son of the legendary Gopal Chhotray—a dramatist, lyricist, and cultural architect who shaped the contours of modern Odia theatre and storytelling. But Devdas has never merely inherited greatness; he has reinterpreted it. Where Gopal Chhotray gave Odia drama its voice, Devdas gave Odia lyricism its soul.

Unlike many who drape their professional garb over their creative pursuits, Devdas has always let his work speak—fluid, fearless, and unadorned by institutional scaffolding. His stature is self-made, sculpted by the originality of his voice and the emotional clarity of his craft. That is why his name alone—Devdas Chhotray—is enough to make people pause, listen, and feel. 

He simplifies because he writes from the heart. Not from the heady heights of literary calculus, but from the quiet pulse of lived emotion. Had he chosen a more cerebral bouquet—curated for juries and citation panels—his study might have bloomed with a few more plaques. Perhaps then, he’d have been ushered to the “supposedly high table” of Odia letters. But long before any coronation, Devdas was already the beloved of every street corner, every diaspora gathering, every soul that hums in Odia. Much like his senior muse Akshaya Mohanty, he lived in the people—not merely in the corridors of Rabindra Mandap. Some geniuses are not built for award circuits. They are built for memory.

His lexicon in Odia from ‘nai tutha’ (ନଈ ତୁଠ) or ‘golapi chithi’ (ଗୋଲାପି ଚିଠି) which might sound retro romance now, was liberating romance, much ahead of his times. Urbane and a sophisticate, Devdas finds solace in that romance in the hinterlands of Odisha, which he juxtaposes in urban Odisha. He has come out of Cuttack, travelled far and wide, but Cuttack has not exited him. It cannot.

Devdas Chhotray made Odia literature fluid—like a river that refuses to be dammed by genre or jargon. He is a changemaker, yes, but a quiet one. Never rabid, never doctrinaire. That’s why his style has never aged. Young readers adore him. Debashish, a young IT professional in the U.S. and a dear friend, often sends video messages set to his lyrics. “I connect with him,” she says. And he’s not alone. For many like her, Devdas is the first bridge to Odia literature—a space that often feels too distant, too dense. His work neither stagnates nor intimidates. It flows. It invites.

His recent work, Matinee Show (2023), is a masterstroke of quiet rebellion—short stories that shimmer with cinematic nostalgia and emotional immediacy. It earned him the 46th Sarala Puraskar, not as a reward for longevity, but as recognition of literary freshness. The award signals a shift: Odia literature is ready to breathe again. Ready to experiment. Ready to feel.

His earlier collection Lal Machha (Red Fish) is emblematic of his style: surreal yet grounded, whimsical yet piercing. Chhotray’s prose often dances between the poetic and the political, the personal and the performative. He doesn’t write stories to impress; he writes to inhabit. His characters are not literary constructs—they are echoes of lived Odisha, from the bylanes of Cuttack to the imagined interiors of longing.

What sets him apart is his refusal to be boxed in. His prose is not burdened by literary orthodoxy. It is fluid, like his lyrics; bold, like his screenplays; and intimate, like his poetry. Whether it’s Nila Saraswati, Hati Saja Kara, or Rama Ku Maribara Panchati Upaya, his narrative voice remains unmistakably his—gentle, ironic, and quietly revolutionary.

Devdas Chhotray’s stories are not just read—they are remembered. They do not seek applause; they seek permanence.

The Sarala recognition of this maverick—this bold, culture-shifting voice—is more than overdue. It signals a readiness for experimentation, for a literature that breathes with the times. Odia intellectualism, across disciplines, now demands a freshness of tone and temperament. It is no longer a stylistic choice—it is an existential imperative.

So original is his craft that he rarely invokes his professional title (IAS) to seek legitimacy. That restraint is rare. He is known simply as Devdas Chhotray—and that is more than enough. His admirers, scattered across geographies, notice this quiet dignity. And they are awed.

The creator of Nila Saraswati, Mallika, Lal Machcha, Hati Saja Kara, and of course, Rama Ku Maribara Panchati Upaya, has stood firm in a literary landscape that often rewards priggishness and posturing. He remains undaunted—because he has no feud, no need for validation. His originality is disarming. His taste is diverse. His vision is futuristic. That is why he is not just today’s writer—he is tomorrow’s.

Gen Z, the fortunate ones, cannot escape the Devdas effect. He is the culture changemaker of our times—subtle, genteel, and unmistakably powerful.

(Charudutta Panigrahi is an author)

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of Sambad English.