57 The Bandit Queens Parini Shroff
This is a tale of the hardship of life in modern day rural India encompassing both the ills of the caste system (supposedly outlawed, but widely practised) and the appalling manner in which women are treated by their menfolk. The central character is the childless Geeta, widowed or so the villagers believe, in fact her husband has merely disappeared. Geeta has a certain mystique about her as far as her female neighbours are concerned, rumour has it she killed her husband Ramesh, although there is no evidence to suggest that, Geeta just goes along with that perception she half enjoys the layers of fabrication that swirl around her, in which she is viewed as a formidable force to be reckoned with. Life is certainly more comfortable for her without her wife beating and pretty useless partner. In that she's envied, most men in the village are reviled by their wives. This book isn't a sympathetic portrayal of the Indian male, in that an Indian woman's lot isn't good if much of this book is to be believed. Several women in the village form themselves into a latter day coven with a reluctant Geeta at the centre, they're looking to her for the wherewithal to knock off their appalling husbands and to join Geeta in the preferable state of widowhood. How can Geeta pull off the perfect undetected murder? when in fact she has no idea what she's doing. I probably wouldn't have selected this book myself, it was chosen by my book group, having said that it did throw up an interesting discussion around the reprehensible caste system, the Dalits, previously known as The Untouchables, never being able to emerge off the lowest rung of the ladder and consigned to doing all the dirty work other castes wouldn't sully themselves with. Anyone who thinks the class system here is bad ought to acquaint themselves with how set in stone the social strata in India is, justified by the notion that members of the lowest caste will be in that state because of being a bad person in a previous existence. The other aspect which does reach our newspapers is the terrible crimes committed against women, particularly how they literally take their lives in their hands to go into the fields for calls of nature, particularly early in the morning and lay themselves open to being attacked by prospective rapists who would pick them off as they are so often unaccompanied. Although the book had flashes of humour and quite a lot of bad language it was for me primarily a fierce critique of rural Indian society. One of the inspirations for the book was the real life character of Phoolan Devi, a Bandit Queen herself, born into rural poverty, sub caste status, married off aged 11, sexually abused, raped, joining a bandit group who rob higher caste villages, holding up trains and vehicles, thus becoming a sort of female Robin Hood type heroine. Eventually after a revenge massacre she was to serve time, but on her release from prison, subsequently became a politician. Unfortunately she was assassinated outside her house in 2001.
It's hard to reconcile the advances India has made to become a world power with a space programme and the backward rural poverty in the villages where inside toilets are relatively unknown and a fridge is a veritable luxury, although almost deemed not worth getting because of the constant power cuts and to raise money for anything was via loan groups, which was another integral part of this book.
then do park yourself right here and tell us about it, where I'm sure you'll have a captive audience.