Phoolan, with Vickram Mallah’s gang, is hiding in the jungles. This is her last night with Vickram, the night that turns into a nightmare without end. Shri Ram, the red-haired demon, takes his toll...
I was relieved when, at last, night came. I was glad the day had ended. A bed had been prepared for Vickram under a tarpaulin hung across some branches to keep the rain off. He lay down on it, exhausted. With my pillow under my arms, I asked Bare Lal where I should sleep. Vickram reached over and touched my hand.
"Come to me," he said tenderly.
"No, you’re tired."
"Yes, come here close to me."
Since his injury, I usually let him sleep alone. The doctors had said he needed to get his strength back. Though he never complained about it, I could see that the gunshot lodged in his back was still giving him pain. In any case, in the jungle, we were mindful of the others and we slept apart for safety’s sake too. But I hadn’t been able to lie close to him for so long, I wasn’t used to it. I told him it was dangerous, and I felt shy, but he insisted.
I lay down beside him. He took my rifle and put it next to his, at arm’s reach.
I heard Bare Lal whisper in the dark. "Phoolan, we’ve found a bed for you."
"It’s all right," Vickram said. "She’s here with me."
We were so weary, so exhausted. The rain fell gently on the canvas and the wind rustled the trees, and I must have been too tired to heed the ominous quiet. Why did I let myself doze off, why that night after so many wakeful nights spent on the alert, a night when I knew something was dreadfully wrong? The reassurance of having him near me removed all my anxiety, and I fell with him into a deep sleep.
It was to be our last night together, the only night we ever ignored our rule of safety in the jungle and slept together like husband and wife.
I didn’t know where I was when I heard the shots. There was a deafening explosion, then more explosions. My ears were whistling from the noise of gunfire and my head was spinning as though I had been drugged. Vickram was still beside me, but his voice was faint, far away in a fog. "Phoolan. It’s him. The bastard has shot me...."
I groped for our guns in the dark but they weren’t there. Vickram raised himself up, reaching for his rifle, and Shri Ram fired another bullet into him.
"Give me my rifle and I’ll show you how brave you are, you bastard!"
Shri Ram kicked him in the chest. "Phoolan," he said. "I’m dying!"
"No, no," I said. "It’s nothing. I can’t see anything...."
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I still thought I was dreaming. Vickram was still sitting up and talking, as though nothing was wrong. The shadowy figure in front of us, I saw now, was Shri Ram. He had fired two or three times at Vickram, but I wasn’t hit.
"Filthy dog!" he spat. "You thought you were the leader of this gang, you thought you could tell them what to do!"
I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I couldn’t get up. I was dizzy, and there was a nauseating smell in my nostrils that I recognised. It was the chloroform we used for kidnappings. I could feel it all over my face, in my mouth and my eyes. I didn’t know where I was but I could hear Shri Ram somewhere cursing us. Then I saw him smash the side of Vickram’s head with the end of his rifle barrel.
"Stop," I moaned. "Don’t kill him. Kill me instead!"
He hit me with the rifle butt and I fell to the ground.
Where were the others? I thought. I crawled back up on the khat and saw Vickram lying on the ground.
"I’m dying, Phoolan, I’m dying..." he stammered.
Shri Ram grabbed me by the hair, someone took me by my feet and someone else held my arms. I could hear myself wailing alone in an immense forest that echoed with the sound of my voice.
"Kill me! Kill me!"
I couldn’t see Vickram. I didn’t know if he was still alive or not. But I was still alive, somewhere in the dark.
Then I saw the bodies of four of our men on the ground. Uncle Bare Lal was dead. There was a rag that must have been soaked in chloroform next to his face and a pool of blood under him.
The other four were tied up, but I couldn’t see who was alive and who was dead. The rain on my face woke me a little from the heavy, nauseous sleep. I guessed they had drugged the men and taken their rifles. That was what they had been planning for two days; that was why they had slept so soundly the night before. But I was still alive—and I realised with terror they weren’t going to kill me right away....
Kusuma fell on me, tearing at my jewellery. She pulled at my bangles and the gold necklace I wore, all the presents Vickram had given me. The thieving hyena pulled everything she could from me, laughing. She took my watch, and a ring I wore bearing the head of Durga. Then she tore my clothes from me, leaving me naked for the men to tie my feet and hands.
They threw me into some thorn bushes, kicking me back with their feet on my chest to force me into the bush. They knew what they were doing. I could feel each thorn of the babool bush piercing my flesh like a knife. Then they carried me to the river and dumped me in the boat.
I heard them untying the rope and the boat set off. In the clear night I began to comprehend the horror that awaited me; they were going to torture me....Lying bound in the bottom of the boat I looked up and saw the red-haired demon. He was grinning. "Well?" he sneered. "What are you going to do now?"
"Why didn’t you kill me too?"
"Oh, you can still be a great deal of use!"
I was still conscious. I could hear the sound of the oars and the water splashing against the hull. I could see the sky and the stars and feel the rain falling on me—and I prayed. I tried to persuade myself that Vickram wasn’t dead, that he was going to protect me. Then I felt the boat hit the shore again and they put a blindfold over my eyes.
I was in a village. I didn’t know which one. I heard Shri Ram wake the villagers with a shout.
"She killed Vickram the Mallah! The little whore, she killed him? But we caught her! Come and see!"
I heard people there as I was thrown to the ground. Then it started...Shri Ram was the first, then the others, thakurs, anyone who was around.
I heard Shri Ram encouraging them, telling them to use me, to take advantage of me while they had me tied up like that.
They passed me from man to man.
"Say it!" shouted Shri Ram. "Tell them what happened to Vickram. Admit it, bloody bitch! Admit you killed him."
For the first hour, I still had the strength to beg. I implored Kusuma to help me. I couldn’t see her but I could hear her voice, as dry as a crow’s. "Call your husband to save you now!" she cackled. "You were so proud, you thought you were so clever, now you’re getting what you deserved!"
I didn’t know what village we were in. I didn’t know how many hours it had been, how many days and nights. Four or five times at least we went from our village to another, and each time I was paraded naked in front of the villagers. Each time, Shri Ram called me a mallah whore. He said I was the one who had killed Vickram and, hurling me to the ground, told the villagers to use me as they pleased.
I heard the voices of men, but I could feel nothing. My being no longer existed. I thought I had died, like Vickram.
"Kill her," I heard Lala Ram saying to his brother, "but don’t trail her around like this from village to village."
I even begged them to kill me as well. They fell on me like wolves. They dragged me and picked me up and I fell and they dragged me up by my hair again. I saw things I would never to able to forget. I saw crowds of faces and I was naked in front of them. Demons came without end from the fires of Naraka to rape me. I prayed to the gods and goddesses to help me, to let me live, to let me run through the damp fields, climb the ravines, to let me have my revenge and slay the red-haired demon. Then the darkness returned, and another man was grunting over my body, an old man, a spirit sweating with the stench of death.
And then it ended.
I was on a khat. I could feel the sun behind my eyelids—and then I felt the heat all over my body, burning my wounds. I was outside a village somewhere, still naked, but without a blindfold now.
I could hear men shouting. "No, no, she’s dead. I’m not touching her!"
"She will die soon if you don’t give her some water." It was a woman’s voice.
She gave me a sip of water. With blinking eyes I followed the end of the rope that still bound me, until I saw a hand gripping it firmly like the leash of a dog.
My body was covered in blood and bruises. I didn’t know how many days and nights it had lasted.
"I beg you, sister, cover me. Please cover me. I too am a woman like you."
But the woman disappeared and Shri Ram was standing in her place.
"You piece of shit! Mallah bitch! You thought you could bully us around and give us orders. You understand now who you belong to? You remember now why you were born?"
The woman covered me with a blanket. I curled up under it and closed my eyes in pain and horror.
He lifted me and threw me off the khat. He started beating me again with a lathi and the blanket fell away. Then he lifted me up by my hair to look in my face.
"Now you are down to your level—nothing but dirt."
I could hear them arguing. One of them wanted to kill me right away. "Otherwise she will die and then you won’t be able to shoot her."
Behmai. The scene of crime, and punishment. The massacre that led to the chief minister’s resignation, the revenge that became folklore and changed Phoolan’s life.
An informer had told us that Shri Ram and his gang were hiding out in a village named Behmai. The region was one of high, barren hills carved with deep ravines, with few trees for cover. Behmai was tucked away in one of the ravines, far above the banks of the Yamuna. The men agreed to go after the two brothers as soon as we heard they were there. Three boats carried us as close as possible by river an we set off on foot up the sandy hillsides to reach the village.
We discussed our tactics as we marched through the night: Baba Mustakim, Balwan, Man Singh and myself. We knew that Shri Ram’s gang was large and well-armed. They were all thakurs and they could get everything they needed from the villages in the region, be it food, guns or women. We would be on their territory, but Baba Mustakim’s men were excited and I was too. Soon we came to a shepherd village called Ingwi comprised of straw-covered, mud-walled huts. We made camp nearby while it was still dark. I couldn’t sleep, knowing my vengeance was at hand.
In the morning, Man Singh went to Ingwi to find out if anyone had seen Shri Ram. "This was the place they brought you," he said when he returned. The villagers had told him how to reach Behmai. They said Shri Ram was there. And there was more.
"That was where he humiliated you," he said.
It was midday when we halted again at the top of a ravine to eat. The month of Magh had passed and Phalgun had begun. In a few weeks, it would be spring. The sky was clear, a pale, soft blue above the sandy orange hillside, and the sun was high. Out of the silence a voice came screeching through a powerful loudhailer.
It was the amplified voice of Shri Ram echoing in the ravines. He owned a loudhailer powered by a heavy battery, I knew. He was probably bellowing at us from the roof of one of the houses in Behmai and he was insulting Baba Mustakim.
"You think you can get me, Mustakim? Me, Shri Ram the thakur, you and your Muslim pigs!"
He insulted Balwan too. "And you Balwan, a shepherd, a caste of shit! We have already given you one lesson and now you want another."
He had been tipped off. We had lost our chance of taking him by surprise.
The men had their boots back on and their arms at the ready in a few minutes. We spread out, advancing in the direction of Shri Ram’s voice. The ground was hard and dry and there were no trees for cover but we still couldn’t see the village until we had wound our way further up the ravine. All the time we could hear Shri Ram taunting us.
We decided to split into three groups. Baba Mustakim was to lead his men around one side of the village and I would take my men around the other. The third group, led by Balwan and Ram Avtar, was to take the main path into the village. Shri Ram would have no choice but to retreat. Then we would have him in our trap. We were counting on Balwan’s group to drive him out and into our crossfire.
As I came around my side, I could hear Balwan yelling from the village and rifle-fire cracking like thunder. His men were terroris-ing the villagers. I was following a dry creek across some bushy terrain for cover, wondering what was going on in the village. Shri Ram had insulted them so much, pouring abuse on Balwan’s shepherd caste and on Muslims, that they were insane with resentment by the time they entered the village. The men were still firing and the villagers were screaming. They must have been rampaging like mad men in search of Shri Ram and his gang. Suddenly, ahead of me, I saw some men fleeing from the rear of the village and I realised it was Shri Ram and his gang.
As I fired in his direction, I heard Baba Mustakim calling to Balwan and his men to join us. I shouted the same thing. "Over here! They’re getting away!"
But Balwan and his men must have been too preoccupied with their looting. In the heat of the moment, I hadn’t noticed that two of my men, Man Singh and Baladin, had gone to join them.
Baba Mustakim and I met up beyond the village with our men and together we chased Shri Ram and his gang. I had seen about five or six men escaping from houses at the rear of the village and now they had a headstart on us. We were too far behind to see who they were but I was sure Shri Ram was somewhere in front of me, hidden in a crag or lying flat behind a bush. I could see figures flitting from rock to rock, setting off clouds of dust and firing in our direction before vanishing again. They had fled before Balwan and his men and it was impossible to approach them now. The cowards didn’t dare to face us.
We exchanged fire for a while, driving them further up the ravine, but at about a thousand yards from the village they stopped shooting back. They must have retreated and run. They knew the terrain and we didn’t. If we advanced now, we might find ourselves in a trap. We decided to return to the village in case they tried to double back and trap us from behind. Baba Mustakim was furious and I was beside myself with anger. We had missed Shri Ram by a whisker of his red moustache.
As we headed back along the path towards the village, I heard women wailing and the shouting and whooping of Balwan and his men as they fired shots in the air.
"Long Live Phoolan Devi! Victory to Phoolan!" they were shouting.
More than twenty men were killed that day, twenty thakurs.
Madness had taken hold. Women were running in every direction, screaming and begging for mercy before the noise of gunfire.
Balwan wanted to torch the village.
"Imbecile!" Baba Mustakim yelled at them. "It’s out of the question. There are families here. You are crazy!"
Instead, Baba Mustakim gave the order to retreat.
"It is a disaster for us," he said. "The newspapers will be full of it! All the police in India will be chasing us! If we stay together now we haven’t got a hope. We must split up."
Balwan left the gang and we never heard from him again. Baba Mustakim took three or four of his men, including Ram Avtar, and I took seven men including Man Singh.
The chase Baba Mustakim predicted began. It was going to last a long time.
Over the next few days, the radio didn’t stop talking about Behmai, the little village in the arid heartlands of Uttar Pradesh, and Phoolan Devi, the dacoit who had gone there to slake her thirst on the blood of thakurs.
The Queen of Bandits came with her entire gang to kill us, villagers said, because Shri Ram had killed Vickram and raped her. Shri Ram was a thakur and the men they killed were thakurs too. Phoolan was the one who did it, the villagers said. They had seen her, and denounced her to the army of police officers that arrived in the devastated village, now inhabited only by goats, children and widows.
IN all the newspapers Man Singh was able to find they called me a bloodthirsty madwoman, the Bandit Queen of Chambal, the badlands where the Chambal river meets the Yamuna. There was such an uproar the chief minister resigned from his post because of me. The story swelled like the neck of a snake. I was described as a monster. Some witnesses said I was two yards tall, some said I was ugly as an ape, others said I was beautiful as a goddess, and one day there was even a photo of me in a magazine. But it wasn’t me. Nobody had ever taken my photo. Only the villagers of my district knew what I looked like. The newspapers called what happened a massacre of thakurs by low-caste dacoits. I was called the Bandit Queen, a poor mallah girl who, ever since her lover was killed by thakurs, had wielded the fearsome sword of Kali, the patron saint of thuggees.
Then we heard on the radio that the new chief minister in Kanpur had called for reinforcements. The entire state was on alert. The army had been called in and they had orders to shoot us on sight. The worst of it was that Shri Ram, my only real enemy, was still alive, while I was being tracked through the jungle like a blood-crazed tigress accused of devouring little lambs.
But nothing was going to stop me finding him.
If I heard that someone had been sheltering him—and usually it was someone who had some kind of connection with the police—I would deal with them. I didn’t kill wantonly, I punished.
All the time, the only one I wanted to find and punish, to cut into pieces and throw to the dogs, was Shri Ram. I wanted to see the dogs devour him, tearing at his flesh and gnawing at his bones. My only craze was for his blood.
I was told about a certain Pradhan, a corrupt man with a reputation for dealings with the police, who had hidden Shri Ram in his village for a time. Like Shri Ram, this Pradhan was always on the lookout for a helpless girl to satisfy his lust.
We arrived at his house in the night, pretending to be sipahis. I was wearing my uniform, and carrying my rifle, with a white turban over my red headband. Man Singh and the others were dressed in their uniforms too. The Pradhan let us in without imagining for a moment that it was Phoolan Devi in his house. He gave us money, thinking I was a young police officer and that Man Singh was my superior. It was his custom to grease the palms of the police, and he offered us whisky too. In the jungle, nobody ever drank alcohol. We asked for water and got him talking.
After a while, I told him my chief would like to loosen up a little. "You don’t have a woman around here, do you? We heard you always had one."
"Oh yes, I have many, many! I have to have one every day. You just have to take one from the village, there is no shortage of the little things. I have had them all at one time or another!"
"How much do you pay them?"
"Pay? What do you want me to pay those bitches for? A good kicking is enough for low-caste bitches like that."
The men listened without saying anything as he proudly told us of his exploits. Then he decided he would get two women for us.
"Only two," I joked. "What are we going to do with two. We need one for each of us."
He laughed nervously and called his servant, sending him to the village with instructions to fetch the daughter of so-and-so and the wife of someone else. He gave a list of names.
While we were waiting, I mentioned Shri Ram. "Why did you let him stay here?"
"Oh, Shri Ram is a very good man for getting girls. He finds them in every village, everywhere he goes. He knows exactly how to get them."
"What sort of women?"
"Mallahs, jatavs, whatever you like."
"The thing is, my chief would like you to let him have your wife for the night...."
"Oh no, he cannot have her. She is a Kshastriya! We are all Kshastriyas here, and we don’t do such things. Tell him to be patient and we will find him a very pretty girl, very pretty."
Two young girls arrived, poor girls with dark skin, dressed in rags. They must have been fifteen or sixteen, perhaps even younger. The Pradhan started telling them what they would have to do for us, dribbling with lust as he spoke. I could only think of myself at that age, hiding in fear from men like him, hiding in trees and cow-sheds and whimpering with humiliation.
"Hey, Pradhan, I heard there was a very pretty girl in the next village...."
"Yes, the daughter of a Brahmin. She is very beautiful."
"We’re going there later. We have heard that Phoolan Devi and her gang are around here and maybe she knows where they’re hiding!"
"Let me come with you! She is much more beautiful than the girls around here. They are all dark-skinned and horrible. My sons prefer girls with light skin, too, and the Brahmin’s daughter is so light-skinned and pretty!"
"We can’t take you along. If our superiors found out we might lose our jobs."
"That’s really too bad. Well, anyway, we still have these two. You go ahead...I will help myself to another drink."
He was intoxicated but we had drunk only water. He was reeling as he took his shirt off and ordered one of the girls to lie down. She obeyed without a word of protest. She shut her eyes and waited, terrorised and downtrodden by the knowledge that her caste didn’t have the right to refuse this pig, a member of the so-called martial caste of Kshastriyas.
I pulled off my turban, and shook my hair so it fell to my shoulders, putting the barrel of my rifle right under his nose. "You filthy bloody dog! Do you know who I am?"
"No. What is happening here?"
"You wanted a woman?"
I smashed him between the legs with my rifle butt and he fell on all fours moaning with his behind in the air. I beat his arms and legs. The two girls huddled in the corner, trembling like lambs. I gave them both a slap.
"You come when you’re called, is that it? He whistles and you lie down...."
"He would beat us. He wouldn’t let us have any food." "Then get away from here, don’t stay here in this bloody village. Go and live somewhere else." He looked ridiculous, naked, on all fours, pleading with us to excuse him. We tied a rope around his neck like a pig and dragged him through the village calling everybody out, all the girls and women he had raped.
"When he assaulted you, did you ever see him naked like this? Take a good look," I shouted. "Make him turn around and dance for you!"
His wife came out and begged me to be merciful to him. She said she had children to feed and she would be helpless without him to provide for her. Were they all cowards, every last one of them? Was I the only one who rebelled?
"Today he begs me to pardon him but tomorrow when I’m gone it’ll be the same as before." It was pitiful. "Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill him. He will live, but he will never be the same as before."
I called to one of my men.
"Cut this thing off!"
"Eh? Why don’t we just kill him?" "Cut it, or I’ll do it myself!" "If you are able to do it, Bahanji, then I am able also!"
He took out the long razor he used for shaving and sliced off the Pradhan’s serpent.
But my men decided it wasn’t enough. They said we ought to cut off his nose as well. He was an informer, mixed up with the police, and police spies had their noses cut off! That way, in future, everybody would be able to see whose side he was on.
I gave his wife enough rupees to take him to the hospital, with his serpent tied around his neck.
Some weeks later, I saw him again in his village. I asked what had happened and, still quaking with fear, he told me he had to pee through a plastic tube.
"Have you come to kill me this time?" he asked pathetically.
"Why should I bother? You can’t harm anyone now. Who are you going to hurt with that plastic tube? Who are you going to denounce with a hole instead of a nose?"
That was how I punished some of them. The first time, it had been in an outpouring of rage, not long after Vickram’s death. Then I said to myself it was justice pure and simple for them. Without their organs they wouldn’t be able to persecute women any more.
But I never killed without reason.
