Heeramandi review Heeramandi thrives on opulent otherworldliness from beginning to end. It’s as though Sanjay Leela Bhansali, directing his first streaming series, is all the more insistent we miss the big screen. In Lahore, a courtesan, Mallikajaan, crestfallen and cornered by fate, weeps before a fireplace, tossing pieces of precious jewellery into the sickly flames. The entire mansion is wreathed in ghostly shadows. When a voice calls out and a curtain is parted, we catch sight of the haveli across, its indoors abuzz and aglow with revelry and laughter. It is a bewitching moment in the series, conveying more through its interplay of light and dark than any plot turn or poetic phrase There is a lot of poetry in Heermandi. As always — and certainly encouraged by the setting and time period, pre-Independence India — Bhansali telegraphs his adulation for the Sufi and Urdu greats. The song that announces the arrival of spring, ‘Sakal Ban,’ flows from an Amir Khusrow poem, and there are mentions of Ghalib, Mir, Zafar and Niyazi. One of the principal characters, Alamzeb (Sharmin Sehgal), is an aspiring poetess, much like Rekha in Umrao Jaan (1981). There are clusters of conversation virtually indistinguishable from verse. “I will serve you couplets for breakfast and poems for lunch,” Alamzeb forewarns her betrothed. She might as well be addressing the viewer.
Alamzeb is the daughter of Mallikajaan (Manisha Koirala), madam of Shahi Mahal, an elite brothel in the pleasure district of Lahore, Heera Mandi. Mallikajaan has another daughter, Bibbo (Aditi Rao Hydari), an acclaimed songstress cum revolutionary spy. It’s the 1940s, with resistance against the Raj gaining strength. The unctuous nawabs serve their foreign overlords for titles and protection. But it’s the courtesans who really call the tunes, shielding their patron’s secrets and, on occasion, leading them to ruin
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