The Bandit Queens

by Parini Shroff

After we married, our friendship happened quickly enough, then affection, and then came a time when I couldn’t remember not loving her.”

“You’re still sleeping? It’s ten,” she said with the tacit superiority early risers felt toward night owls.

The amount of bullshit that fell from that fucker’s mouth could fertilize half of India.

I swear, Geeta, you have more causes than I have pubic hairs.”

Questioned masculinity, she’d learned, was a dangerous gauntlet.

It must be difficult, Geeta thought. To birth a son with a sigh of relief because now you had someone to carry you in your dotage, only to have that son collapse on your stooped back instead.