The Bandit Queens (5)
If she was this lonely, Geeta berated herself, she should get a damn dog.
Ramesh hadn’t possessed the decency to leave after a huge row; no, he absconded after a cloudless Tuesday evening—she didn’t interrupt him once, the undhiyu was not salty, he peppered her jawline with kisses before bed and she’d fallen asleep smiling. Like a goddamn idiot. His final blow: sneaking away and leaving only his debts and her dusty womb, so that everyone took turns whispering as to which terrible vice of hers had driven him away. That is, until Ramesh didn’t send for the rest of his belongings, or lay claim to their house. Even his elder brother, who lived in a bungalow a few cities away and took care of their parents, was unable to contact him. Then the whispers shifted toward foul play. Ramesh was clearly dead, there was no other explanation.
The police descended with their questions and unsubtle hints that they could be paid to focus on another case. Upon realizing Geeta had little to either her married or maiden name, they scampered away. The village, however, remained unconvinced of her clean chit, and gave her the wide berth bestowed to any social pariah. There were rumors she was a churel of old folklore: a witch roaming on reversed feet, targeting men for revenge, her twisted footprints ensuring they ran toward her rather than away.
To the village, she became a disease, her name a slur. She was, as the idiom went, “mixed with dirt.” To now say, with the acclimation five years afforded, that it had not been humiliating would be a lie. Once, early on, when she was still na?ve enough to believe not everything had changed with Ramesh’s defection, she’d paid a visit to her favorite second aunt, a spinster. After Geeta knocked on the green door, its paint flaking to piebald, a shower of rotting potato peels, tomato offal and eggshells, among other wet waste, tumbled over her. Geeta looked up to see her Deepa-aunty, her wrinkles and loathing framed by the second-story window, holding an empty pail and instructing Geeta to leave and take her shame with her.
She complied, while the neighbors tittered, her hair matted with tea dregs. On the walk home, for courage, she thought of the Bandit Queen, and the stories Geeta had compiled of her life from the radio and newspapers, though the accounts often contradicted each other. Born in 1963 as simply Phoolan Mallah, a Dalit girl in a small village, she’d been eleven when she vehemently protested her cousin’s theft of her family’s land. The cousin beat her unconscious with a brick. In order to send her away and out of trouble, her parents married her to a thirty-three-year-old man. He’d beaten and raped her, but when she ran away, the village sent her right back to him and his abusive second wife. When she was sixteen, the same diabolical cousin arranged for her to be thrown in jail for the first (but not last) time. She spent three days being beaten and raped in jail at her cousin’s behest. Soon after, she ran to or was kidnapped by—accounts varied—a gang of armed robbers known as dacoits. If Phoolan could not only survive but escape and exact savage revenge on her tormentors, then surely Geeta could walk home while people stared at the rancid rinds hanging from her neck.
Eventually, she taught herself to enjoy the perks of ostracism, as she imagined Phoolan would’ve done. The upsides of being a childless churel-cum-murderess: raucous kids never played kabaddi near her house (She’ll gobble you like a peeled banana!), vendors rarely haggled with her (She can bankrupt you with one blink!), some of Ramesh’s creditors even left her alone (She’ll curse your wife with nothing but stillborns!). Then the microfinancers came around, offering low-interest loans. City people were hell-bent on helping them—women only, please—acquire independence and income.
Hell yes, Geeta had thought, and signed her name. She’d first eaten her father’s salt, then her husband’s; it was time to eat her own. After Ramesh left, money’s importance had suddenly rivaled oxygen’s. With the first cash installment, she walked three hours to Kohra and bought beads and thread in bulk. She scavenged a wobbly desk and pinned a grainy photograph of the Bandit Queen above her workspace to remind her that if she was indeed “mixed with dirt,” then at least she was in fine company.
At first, sales were nil. Superstitious brides, it turned out, weren’t keen on wearing black magic wedding necklaces cursed by a self-made widow. But after two short-lived weddings where the brides were sent back to their natal homes, the village’s superstitions swung in her favor. If one did not petition a Geeta’s Designs mangalsutra, one’s marriage would last about as long as the bridal henna did.
She wasn’t respected here, but she was feared, and fear had been very kind to Geeta. Things were good, freedom was good, but Geeta had witnessed that survival was contingent upon two hard rules: 1) take on only one loan, and 2) spend it on the work. It was an easy trap to sign for multiple microloans and then buy a house or a television set. Poor, myopic Runi had taken on three loans for her tobacco-leaf-rolling business but had spent it on her son’s education instead. Then the money and her son were gone and, just like that, so was Runi.
Farah’s unwelcome visit had delayed Geeta’s planned errands. The sky darkened under twilight’s thumb as she closed her front door, but Geeta still needed vegetables and some grain to be ground. Her empty jute bag scratched the exposed strip of skin between where her sari blouse ended and her petticoat began. Purple and white onion sheddings lined the bag’s bottom. As she walked, she shook it upside down and the crispy skin trailed behind her, joining festival decorations that were now rubbish—tinsel, broken dandiya sticks in various colors, bright wrappers—on the dirt.