The Bandit Queens

by Parini Shroff

“What’s its problem?” BB asked, jerking his chin toward Bandit. “Just shoot it,” Ramesh said. “No!” Geeta shouted. “Don’t you dare.” But she needn’t have worried because BB looked equally appalled. “Are your brains scrambled?” he demanded of Ramesh. “I’m not shooting a dog.” “What’s the big deal?” “Shooting people makes me a don; killing dogs just makes me a psychopath.” “Wow,” Saloni drawled. “Even the criminal holding three women hostage thinks your moral compass is fucked. Let that sink in for a second.”

Geeta blinked, no longer concerned with the lizard’s migration. “Wait, wait. They don’t just . . . go back to normal after you’re done?” Farah chuckled, but Saloni’s laugh was a honking bray. She abruptly stopped. “Shit. I just peed a little.”

Ramesh thumped the heel of his palm against his forehead. “BB, they’re manipulating you, yaar. Let me cut these bhosdas!” Farah’s eyes saucered. “Hold on, cut?” She turned to Geeta and Saloni for clarification. “Cut? Cut what?” “But there’s so many of them now,” BB whined. “What use do I have for three fingers?”

“Help me?” BB said, his voice cold. His body had grown very still. After all his fumbling and indecision, this purposeful transition spilled dread down Geeta’s neck. Questioned masculinity, she’d learned, was a dangerous gauntlet. And the resulting destruction was usually borne by her kind, not theirs.

How there was always just enough affection to keep her hoping for more, how it’d been easier to obey than fight, how angry she’d been with herself; if she could just behave, he wouldn’t need anger. Ramesh had waited until everyone who ever loved her was gone before dismantling her. When he was done, he showed her how he saw her: small, worthless, stupid, unloved, unlovable.

“Why did they deserve it?” Ramesh demanded, the jut of his chin belligerent. “Just because you thought so?” “They were molesting children,” Khushi said. “They deserved far worse than death.” Ramesh quieted. “Still?” “You knew?” Geeta blinked, stunned. Her ears roared. “And you never said anything?” Ramesh tried to shrug. “I mean, yeah, it’s kinda fucked up, they’re little girls—but what, I’m gonna tattle on my friends? No way. There’s a code to these things you’ll never understand. Besides, it’s not like I touch little girls.” “So you’re not a pervert, just a coward?”

When Geeta pulled the gun from BB’s waistband and shot Ramesh in the face, she was not reacting impulsively. Later, when the women would tell the twins the story, they’d fill in what they assumed: Geeta’s instincts overcame her. She would not correct them, she would not try to explain how in that moment time was generously slow, allowing the far-reaching dendrites of her mind to leap several places as she first squeezed the trigger and then squeezed harder when she met resistance. She thought of the hanging tree on the village’s edge, those young girls strange fruit. She thought of Darshan’s hands on her, Ramesh’s hands on her. 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. She thought of how much she hated male cowardice and the way they all protected each other and got away with it every time. So, no, then. Geeta did not react. She decided.

‘Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.’ ” “I have forgiven him. In that I expect and want nothing from him,” Geeta said. It was true; Phoolan Devi had spent her truncated life vacillating between terror and rage, understandably, but Geeta now knew she didn’t want to live that way. “But forgiveness doesn’t mean I’m right back where I started.”

The unfortunate status quo is that it is tough for women everywhere, and female friendships are what will carry us through the darkness and absurdity of life. Such connections, however, are not always easily forged in a world keen to divide, mark, and label as “other.”