DEVI CHAUDHURANI – DWAIRATH – ENGLISH

Book excerpt: Bengal 1795, the age of Matsanyaya during the dawn of the colonial rule of India. There is complete lawlessness as the golden land of Bengal is ravaged by raiders and Marauders both from within India and across the seas. The Zamindars oppress, the Arakan, Portuguese pirates loot and pillage, the Maratha Barghis capture hundreds of Bengali men women and children and sell them in slave markets. Women are the worst victims as they are attacked by the marauders and oppressed by a tyrannical patriarchal society. In these turbulent times Prafulya, a young woman, after losing her parents goes to her in-laws and husband for shelter. Her in laws were the rich Zamindars of a province called Bhootnath, but though she was welcomed by her mother in law, he farther in law Harballav Roy Chowdhury scorned her as she belonged to a poor family. Her husband Brajasundar however saw her for the first time after they were married when they were children and he is mesmerized by Prafulya’s beauty. Prafulya is insulted brutally by her father in law and runs away from the estate. She was expecting death in the depths of the forest when she befriends a tiger cub and together they set out to find shelter which they find in a small island in the estuary. On the island Prafulya meets Mir Madan Khan, the general of Nawab Siraj-Ud-Daula. He had been hoarding the treasures of the last Sultan of Bengal. Mir Madan breathed his last in a few days, making Prafulya the custodian of the treasure. Prafulya later is attacked by the dreaded bandit leader Bhavani Pathak and she fights him bravely. Bhavani is impressed with Prafulya’s bravado and offers her to join his crew. Bhavani runs a secret paramilitary force called the ‘Santaans’ in the guise of bandits. They loot the rich and feed the poor. Bhavani suffers from a strange genetic disorder for which he has a limited lifespan and albeit being a man in late forties he looks feeble and small like a teenager. Bhavani decides to make Prafulya the next leader of the Santaans and trains her likewise. Prafulya is renamed Devi Chaudhurani and she is given the task of fighting for the poor and oppressed, but for that they have to fight the marauding enemies and above all looms the threat of the British Empire. Devi sets out to find the dreaded pirate Albuquerque to defeat him and bring an end to the terror of the Portuguese pirates as her first mission.