The Bandit Queens (18)
Karem gestured toward his head. “You have…”
“What?”
“Straw.”
“Oh.” She patted her crown until she found the offender.
They headed south, past the outskirts of the village, where the local Dalits lived in closer quarters. The thatched roofs of the huts were too squat to be seen past the trees surrounding the area, but some taller homes, mud and cement, were visible. Geeta recognized the hanging tree. While not actually called that, she’d heard the story as a child and since then, she always thought of it as such—though never aloud.
One early morning, long before Geeta was born, two lower-caste girls—thirteen and twelve—were found lynched by their dupattas, their pants pooled around their ankles, dew dripping from their fingertips. The cops came and the girls’ illiterate parents signed a report authorizing the police to investigate the rape and murder. But what they actually signed—what the cops had been instructed to draft in advance—was a false confession stating the parents had discovered that their daughters were promiscuous, so they’d hung them to preserve their family’s honor. Off they went to jail, the entire family ruined by dawn.
Geeta looked away from the hanging tree. Whether it was a true story or a myth, she knew the village panchayat had recently been hearing complaints of an unknown man in a balaclava assaulting Dalit girls at dawn, when they left their beds to relieve themselves in the fields; he first choked, then groped them. The five members of the panchayat were elected by the villagers in a direct democracy meant to allow the village to self-govern. Here, however, the panchayat could only extend its sympathies to the families; justice was elusive because there was no way to identify or catch the culprit.
Fields, some green, some brown, some gold, blurred on either side of the road. Once, their truck braked hard to let a seemingly endless mass of buffalos cross. Karem held fast, swaying sideways before righting. Geeta did not manage to steady herself in time and flopped onto the straw. Karem had the decency to pretend not to notice. They were paused near an active construction site with a large pile of bricks. A queue of girls walked, each carrying a brick or two on her head to add to the cairn. Around them, herds of goats and cows grazed, their red-turbaned shepherds wielding long sticks. At times, Geeta forgot how verdant this land was.
After what felt like forty minutes but was more likely twenty, they stopped at a neighboring village and Karem’s friend came to the back to dump stacks of sugarcane around them and the unflappable buffalo. The engine rumbled and they were off again. Karem extracted a long cane from a stack and offered it to her. When she shook her head in refusal, he gnawed on one end, extracting the juice and spitting the desiccated fibers onto the road.
Unbidden, Geeta tried to imagine him drunk—giggly or slurring or violent or amorous. The last of the list startled her and she turned, squinting into the sun because she couldn’t look at him as he picked a stray cane filament from his tongue. And it was the sun, obviously, that heated her cheeks. Hers wasn’t the kind of skin that blushed, unlike Saloni’s, and it was perhaps the only time in the annals of Indian history that a woman felt gratitude for a dusky complexion.
When they arrived in Kohra, Geeta turned to Karem, intending to pick a meeting point in a few hours. But he had other ideas.
“Let’s go.”
“What? No. I have my own errands.”
“This’ll be quick. We’ll do your errands right after.”
“It’ll save time if I just go alone.”
“What time needs saving? That guy’s not coming back for us until five-thirty.”
When she opened her mouth to protest, he sighed. “Geetaben, if you want to be alone, that’s fine. But first let me show you something. Then you can do whatever you’d like.” He pinched the skin of his throat. “Promise.”
She capitulated with a sigh. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”
They walked toward residences rather than the bazaar nearby, which unsettled Geeta, and stopped before a large two-story home with an intricate parapet delineating the terrace. Children played near a low gate that blocked a short, flower-lined pathway to bright blue double doors. She heard dogs barking but saw none.
As they opened the gate latch, a man in his midforties came outside to greet Karem with widespread arms. A swing with rusted hinges but polished chains sat on the porch, flanked by large plants. “Karembhai!” The two embraced while Geeta lingered behind. Over Karem’s shoulder, she saw the pale, blank island of the man’s crown. They were about the same height, but the older man bore a stomach that was testing the limits of his polo shirt.
“Geetaben, this is Bada-Bhai.”
Bada-Bhai pressed his palms together in a namaste, which Geeta returned. “Your elder sister?”
“No, just a friend,” Karem said, while Geeta felt every one of her wrinkles and grey hairs. “She’s come to Kohra for business only.”
“Does she also have a first-class secret tharra recipe?” Bada-Bhai joked, leading them inside. As they shed their shoes, she noticed the lemon and green chilies strung near the doorway. Ramesh had had her keep a similar decoration under their bed to ward off the buri nazar—evil eye. As though he weren’t its very incarnate. “If it’s as good as yours, Karembhai, I may have to switch suppliers.”
“No, no.” Karem laughed as Bada-Bhai shepherded them into a sitting room with three sofas and a television. A woman in long sleeves and house slippers approached with a tray of water glasses. After Geeta drained hers and returned it to the tray, she noticed the tribal tattoos of the Rabari decorating the woman’s hands. Geeta tried to establish eye contact so she could mention that her village housed Rabari herders every winter—was the woman from Rajasthan or Kutch? But her gaze was fixed on the floor, and Geeta realized with growing unease that something was amiss. It was peculiar that any member, let alone a woman, of a nomadic tribe would have a city job as a helper.