My Seditious Heart

by Arundhati Roy

I’ve tried so hard to understand how it could possibly be that so many intelligent people have not seen through this charade. I can only think that to them, a ‘True Story’ is just another kind of story. That ‘Truth’ is merely a more exciting form of fiction. They don’t believe that Phoolan Devi is real. That she actually exists. That she has feelings. Opinions. A mind. A Past. A father that she loved (who didn’t sell her for a second-hand bicycle). Her life, or what they know of it, is so implausible, so far-fetched. So unlike what Life means to them. It has very little to do with what they associate with being ‘human’. They cannot put themselves in her shoes – and think what they’d feel if the film had done to them what it has done to her.