A daring spy of the Bangladesh Counter Intelligence; travels the world on secret missions. His life — colourful, movements — mysterious. A heart which is a blend of compassion and steely determination.
Alone; pulls everyone but never gets entangled. Stands up to injustice; every step is riddled with danger, suspense and death. Come, let us get acquainted with the daring youth; he will whisk us away from a life of banality into a world of fantasy….you are invited.
On quiet summer afternoons of the 80s, when a soft breeze rustled the trees, the occasional sound of the rickshaw bell and irregular hammering of the masons working in the distant created a surreal melody, we used to be blissfully lost in a far less tranquil world. In the pages of Rana thrillers, readers dared to challenge prosaic convention and set aside the banal heroes whose sole thrill came from drinking cheap alcohol when jilted by their love interest.
Of course, parents did not approve! How could they? Rana was the epitome of everything that mocked the meek and mild protagonist who is too polite to take out the gun and shoot at the villain or, invite the lady for an amorous one night stand.
What! One night stand!? To be honest, most hardly knew what it meant. Of course, if you told them that your favourtire hero has no qualms about taking a woman to his hotel room with a bottle of Bollinger and crackers layered with soft cream cheese for a night of unbridled hedonistic passion, they would hit the roof.
What sort of books are you reading?
Rana was the layer of hot chocolate on a society which was vanilla:
We picked up Rana in the early 80’s, say around 82 or 83, but though Masud Rana had been around for around 15 years by then, the series and the hero had a somewhat ambivalent place in society. Back in the late sixties, when Rana first appeared as a thriller for adults, the writer, Qazi Anwar Husain, had to face a court case, which accused him of gratuitous sex scenes in his books, vitiating social values. Thankfully,the writer was exonerated in the end but the case plus the liberal approach to sex and alcohol in the books remained in the minds of the people.
Rana was actually the deliciously wicked layer of hot chocolate on the bland vanilla ice cream. Society, besotted with a very stereotyped idea of the virgin, non- drinking, convention adhering protagonist, could not take the force of this comet arriving on the horizon, hell bent on shattering the conception of the rule following ‘hero’.
The young of course were overjoyed. To be honest, we actually had no desire to read about some poor soul, dying in a drunken stupor in-front of the house of his lover, married off to someone else. Nor did we have any appetite for stories which ended with a heavy moral/prescriptive tone.
We wanted adventure that had taboo written all over it, a Bengali who could fit into the image of James Bond, someone who would walk into a bar and order whisky, escargots and, end the night at the baccarat table accompanied by a ravishing lady.
Maybe take the lady back to the hotel with her consent!
It may sound sexist and perhaps misogynist to some, but then, on that audacious recipe, 007 and many other Western protagonists thrived, and still carry on without the slightest scruples.
Obviously, ‘Mod, meye r taash, ei tiney shorbonaash’, was taught to us very early on. What we were never told was that rules, regulations and discipline actually made life less tantalizing.
Rana reminded us of the famous saying by the Hollywood actress, Catherine Hepburn: “if you follow all the rules, you miss all the fun!”
The maverick ruled as guardians looked helpless:
The strict order from guardians was: “you cannot read Rana as a school student” though most didn’t pay any heed to the warning. Some put false covers on Rana books to read them at home, others created a secret hiding place for them while many plastered the cover of the Krishi biggan or Popular Stories over the books since Rana and the academic ones were of the same size.
Parents vehemently disapproved of friends who read Rana and gave explicit orders to their wards not to mix with them.
Thinking back in retrospect, one can actually see the logic in their concern. Guardians felt that one should read Rana after 18 since it had a rather liberal approach to elements which were unsuitable for teenagers.
For us, in their late forties, we can certainly see the point now as our children are growing up with the wide world of the Internet open before them.
Be that as it may, despite the embargoes plus the incessant denunciation, Rana was on top.
Once one of our friends was caught with a Rana thriller at school, the headmaster was quick to confiscate the book.
He later came and told us: “before you read Rana, have it passed by me, I will decide if it’s suitable for you or not.”
Obviously, the headmaster wanted a regular supply of the series. We obliged. Sometimes, he used to blot out certain paragraphs with black ink.
My grandmother, still alive at 99, was a strict guardian since my parents lived abroad. She always lashed out against Rana, admonishing us unsparingly: tora ki boi porish, whisky, mod ar jotoshob maramari.
An avid reader herself, grandmother hardly missed a Rana thriller.
Rana lives, though not in spotlight:
Compared to the sort of explicit material we now see everywhere, Rana’s escapades with wine and women, frowned upon back then, seem very bland today. Some of the lines in the early books which created a stir/outrage, especially the steamy conversation between Sohana and Rana in Pishach Dweep, does not seem depraved at all. A little arousing perhaps but totally acceptable.
Just imagine, on our book stores, Fifty Shades of Grey and sequels are sold with other books and, today’s teenagers are taking them back home without even thinking if these would be deemed appropriate or not.
Oh, well, that is evolution for you, I guess! Under the deluge of so much entertainment, Rana has lost the towering place it once enjoyed among millions. But books still come out; those who grew up reading them buy the new ones and now there’s talk of three Masud Rana movies with slick TV adverts being aired for the hunt to select the best person to portray the dashing spy from Bangladesh Counter Intelligence.
Resurgence on the cards, with plenty of razzmatazz:
The first Rana movie came out in 1974 with Sohel Rana playing the role with impeccable chutzpah.
Without flinching, he poured whisky, got intimate with several women and showed the mettle when it came to fighting the bad guys. Imagine such a hero in the seventies cinema when heroes had a strict ideal template.
So many years later, there’s talk of three Rana movies which will set off a modern day cinematic journey for a spy who has riveted us for so long in novels.
And believe me, picking up a Rana book, Shotru pokkho yesterday, I could find a lot of resonance with modern day incidents. The back-flap reads: An almost impossible task falls on Rana, 100 tonnes of gold have to be stolen from a vault in a London bank; Rana will be able to enter but how will be remove the gold?
Sounds familiar?

Towheed Feroze is a News Editor at Bangla Tribune and teaches at the University of Dhaka.