Heera

By Suhrita Das

Heera is a fast-paced period novel about a female gangster who rose above her circumstances and took responsibility not only for her children but the community. Though her ways were often illicit Heera had a moral compass within which she operated and rose to become aspirational. The book promises a deep love story too and a squeal. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blue Rose Publishers
• Release date: Feb 26, 2024

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

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Amidst research for unique subjects to develop screenplays, I came across the stories of gangsters in India. It was upon further digging into the subject that I found the unique story of Jena Baai, who was the first lady gangster. While I found Jena Baai’s story to be very compatible with a large fictional work, there was very little information on her. Not only did she survive the most difficult shortages and crises in the country, but she was also a support system for a huge community. For a single mother who started her filmmaking career late in life (though 38 is not late at all), the legend of Jena Baai feels like a true inspiration for me. Obsessed with wanting to capture her long and illustrious life in fiction, I started writing Heera. This is my first book, and it covers one-fourth of her entire journey.

1

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It is 1942, and the Students Movement to Free India from the British Raj is in its fullest fury. Dawn breaks in Dhonekhali, a remote corner of East Bengal (present-day Bangladesh). A woman in her 30s, Fatima, wakes up in her mud hut to stare at her children sleeping on thin beds spread on the dry, earthen floor. To her surprise, she finds there are only five of them; the section at the end is crumpled and vacant. Curious to locate her sixth one, she calls out, Heera? Koi geli re Maa? (Where are you, dear one?) She waits for a response. There’s no sound emitting from any section of her hut. She gets up and gathers her ‘abroo’ (cloth piece that covers her like a screen), loosely wrapping it around her worn-out saree. Fatima peers into her husband’s room.

Fatima’s husband, Abdur Haq, is a senior professor at Dhaka University. His books and notes lay strewn on his study desk as he left it two months ago when he last left home. A large photograph of Gandhi adorns his wall, and a metal crucifix and a little Radha Krishna picture hang beside a framed Alif from the Koran. Fatimaa cleans these every day when she enters his room, breathing hard to still find his smell—the stiff, bitter essence of his tobacco— lingering in the air. Nothing comes to her but memories. She then puts a cross with a pencil on the calendar hanging on the wall, marking another day gone without his return. Finding her young girl missing here as well, Fatima goes to the kitchen, thinking she might have started the earthen cooking pit to make tea for her mother.

But the empty kitchen stares back at Fatima. She growls under her breath for Heera, who must be in some part of the village helping an elder steal vegetables from the nearby farm or plucking tart berries from someone’s tree who might be still sleeping. As Fatima sits on a wooden stool and starts the fire to make herself tea, she notices grains of rice and lentils strewn on the floor. She gets up promptly and begins looking into the large earthen pots. To her shock, they are all empty. Fatima has used every grain of rice and every dot of lentil meaningfully to stretch food to her six children till the end of the month. Most of the time, she has been stuffing her stomach with the starch water drained from the rice with a pinch of salt. Her head is now bursting with rage, imagining that Heera must have taken out everything to help another home in the village. Fatima now races out of the kitchen, calling out into the hut, the surrounding thicket, and the stretch of river flowing by. Heera? Heera?? You nitwit of a girl, your father has spoilt you thick. Who do you think you are? Now come home and see what awaits you! !!!!!

The curses and threats of Fatima echo and resonate in a thick forest that once used to be gardens and orchards belonging to the Nawab of Dhonekhaali. While the forest remains unpruned and densely filled with wild boars, hayenas, and jackals, it is said to be a hiding place for dacoits and, of late, the revolutionaries. In the middle of the forest, a dilapidated palace of the Nawab gapes at the sky, waiting endlessly.

It is in this forest that little Heera finds herself a walking path while balancing the sack of rice, lentils, and potatoes. A light crunching into the dry leaves covering the earth, and Heera cautiously stops in her tracks amidst the thick forest. She looks back, high and low, with no one there, and yet she feels someone is there—someone is walking with her. She recounts the ball of paper that came into their room in the darkness of the night. She woke up with a start and opened it in the silver haze of the moonlight leaking into their room. She recognised instantly her father’s neat Bangla instructions and then, without wasting a second, followed every chore, not disturbing her five siblings and mother. She knew Abbu’s faith in her, and this was the day when she was going to prove him right.

Just when Heera feels she is about half an hour away from her destination, her worst fears come alive. She almost can’t believe her own eyes. The village money lender, Moni Laal, stands in front of her in his crisp white dhoti and kurta. A pen from England shines in his breast pocket. She doesn’t know why he is here. Heera thinks of a way to escape this man—to turn away or do something. But he has come to take Heera away, not let her go. Two boys jump from behind to blindfold her eyes, pick her up, and race somewhere. Heera hasn’t let the sack go; she holds on to it with her life while her agile, active mind ticks away. Has Moni Laal sided with the dacoits? Will he take her and sell her off in Calcutta to balance the long-due money of her Abbu? Will she ever see her parents and her five siblings again? After a