The Bandit Queens (52)

“Not surprising. Given her father.”

“Well, he can’t hit her anymore. You did that, Geeta. Now that girl might stop smacking kids long enough to make a friend.” Saloni coughed. “And about last night: you were wrong about plenty, understand? Plenty. But I guess…you were right about my being a little controlling.”

“A little? In sixth standard, you made that girl Sonali change her name because it was too close to yours.”

“Hey, I helped Radha, okay? She found that Krishna boy and moved to a bungalow in Ahmedabad. I did that. And I didn’t even get a wedding invite, much less a thank-you.”

Geeta rolled her eyes. “You’re an emotional guerrilla, yes, but at least you’re not like that mukkabaaz. You never actually hit anyone, right?”

“No! I can’t even manage to spank Arhaan when he acts over-smart. Talk about emotional guerrilla. Big cow eyes.”

“Wonder where he gets those from.”

“Yeah, yeah. But the boy could’ve also inherited my grit, na? And hunger wouldn’t kill him either. He’s soft.”

“I thought people always wanted better for their kids.”

Saloni traced her cup’s rim with her index finger. “No, you’re right. We do. But we also want them to learn. Suffering is where you get your fire from. I don’t want him to suffer suffer, but he should know…I dunno…lack.”

“So do it.”

She let out a plosive scoff. “With the motherin-law from hell on my back? No way, her little yuvraj gets whatever he wants, whenever he wants. You know she hired a clown for his birthday? Meanwhile poor Aparna barely got a party. Anyway, what were we talking about?”

“How you and your lackeys are extorting me into killing a man.”

“Ah, yes, correct. That’s actually why I came over.”

“No!” Geeta feigned astonishment. “It wasn’t just about delivering a clay pot of rubbish?”

“Hey! Those are some high-quality bangles—”

“Saloni!”

“I know you’re worried about the Darshan…situation.”

“How are you not? When did everyone in this village get so casual about murder?”

“They do a million things worse than murder to us every day all over the world, and no one blinks.”

“We’re not the gram panchayat that we can decide fates like this.”

“Aren’t we, though? We’re not being cruel or arbitrary here. It’s a judicious punishment, Geeta, based on their crimes. Karma.” Saloni regally stretched her arms toward the heavens, her head tipped back. “We are facilitators of karma.”

“Isn’t karma for the next life, not this one?”

Saloni’s hands fell. “You’re always so pedantic.”

Geeta was too deep in thought to strike back. “You know, female bonobos band together to protect themselves from males. That’s not karma, though, that’s just nature, right?”

Saloni blinked. “What? Geeta, quit fucking around. We have to move quickly if we want to keep the twins on your side. Darshan doesn’t drink like Samir did, so we need a new way.”

“Don’t you get it? It’s too soon after Samir. We can’t kill him any way without it looking suspicious.”

“The man treats butter like a vegetable. He could easily have a heart attack.”

“Okay, so tell Preity to ghee him to death then.”

“You know,” Saloni said, moving around Geeta’s home. She dragged a finger along the desk, adjusted a jar of black beads. “In Kerala last year, a group of girls made a suicide pact. Their maths teacher gave them failing marks and they were too ashamed to go on. They left a note and poisoned themselves with suicide-tree fruit.”

“That’s terrible, but—”

Saloni took a draught from her steel cup. “Some people don’t buy it. Some people think the girls were murdered to keep them quiet about their maths teacher molesting them. That the note was forged.”

Geeta sat on her bed. “O Ram. How awful.”

“Isn’t it? I mean, four fourteen-year-olds dropping dead of heart attacks. That’s what it looked like ’cause the tree’s poison is undetectable, you know, even in an autopsy. A simple heart attack. Only suspicious ’cause of the…well, volume. And the note, of course. Otherwise just an ordinary, flat, boring old heart attack.”

“Saloni, I swear, your stories—”

“You know, Samir’s family has owned Farah’s house for as long as I can remember. When we were kids, his brother once invited me over to study. Well, ‘study.’ Pervert tried for chakkaring—don’t they all? But anyway, I smacked him around and he got the message. Then we played some games in their backyard, which was lined with a nice hedge. I’d never seen a hedge—well, I’d never seen a proper garden or yard either, you know, since my folks were so poor—but this hedge had these pretty white flowers and fruits that looked like mangoes. Now,” she laughed, “you remember back then I’d eat anything, I was always so damn hungry. But he stopped me, told me they were poisonous. ‘Pong pong,’ he called it. Cute, na? Not many of them here, but they’re everywhere in Kerala, where they call them—”