Binodini Devi was a renaissance woman—a writer, a lyricist, a social activist, and a filmmaker. Her stories were never frivolous; they were sharp observations of human psychology set against the backdrop of the Manipuri court. She wrote Mathu Nanaba in 1976, but the story is set in the 1940s, during the reign of Maharaja Bodhchandra. The author successfully blurred the lines between autobiography and fiction, creating a narrative so raw and realistic that readers often forget they are reading a novel.