The Bandit Queens

by Parini Shroff

But little was monochromatic in marriage and even in abuse, because there were other parts, too, parts she’d loved, parts that, when she wasn’t vigilant, still drew drops of unwilling tenderness from her.

“Is this like a murder-mentor teaching moment or something? Because I don’t think I’ve learned anything.”

all of Geeta’s childless life would evaporate upon her childless death. Perhaps that was a reason to have children: to be remembered.

“No, see, this is why the gandos always flock to you, Geeta, ’cause you use reason where there is none. What made Dipti batshit wasn’t that she was lying, it was that she actually believed it.”

People didn’t play games in these matters because it was fun, she realized, they did it because the alternative was to fling open your arms to rejection and say do with me what you will.

She resented being put in a position where those were her choices: violence or violation. She didn’t want to be built to endure, a long-suffering saint tossed by the whims of men.

She thought of entitlement and vulnerability, shame and lechery, justice and inequity, and she thought of how only half of these were available to her gender.