The queen’s gambit

Author Parini Shroff accomplishes in actualising a universe where a feminist story could materialise in a setting that celebrates the courage of women who continue to navigate a deeply misogynistic and sexist world every day, writes Saurabh Sharma

The Bandit Queens

Parini Shroff

San Francisco-based practising attorney Parini Shroff’s debut novel The Bandit Queens (HarperCollins, 2023) is a riot of a novel. It is on this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist, along with books by NoViolet Bulawayo, and past winners Maggie O’Farrell and Barbara Kingsolver. The book opens with a group of women, who run a microfinance set-up in rural Gujarat, discussing how to pay back loan sharks Rs 200. As money is involved, the tension unveils their natural defence: each of the women start spelling out their concerns except Geeta, whose husband disappeared five years ago. Rumour has it that she murdered him. For how else can someone vanish just like that, villagers reasoned? But that’s not the only conflict that drives this category-defying, insanely funny debut. There is a plethora of them and each one unfolds immaculately when their time comes in the narrative.

While other women — Saloni, Farah, and the twins Priya and Preity — pass subtle comments about the “joys” of motherhood in Geeta’s presence to get the better of her, the latter takes everything in her stride casually, for she “regards herself as a self-made woman” and not “a self-made widow” as everyone thinks her to be.

Meet the bandit queen

Some cheeky remarks and clever observations later, one is introduced to the woman that inspired this novel and helped the author create the world of these women who eventually decide to take ownership of their lives: Phoolan Mallah. Or Phoolan Devi as the popular Dalit icon is known across the world.

Parini meticulously weaves in both the fiction and uncontested truth surrounding her persona that lives on and continues to inspire generations. Because of her aura, several grapevines were accepted as facts. However, some inevitably left an element of doubt. For example, the one about leaving a handwritten note by her husband’s dead body. But the aim of this novel was not to exploit her lived experiences to tell a story. The goal, which Shroff accomplishes exceedingly well, was to actualise a universe where such a feminist story could materialise. A setting that not only benefits from the daring of Phoolan Devi and her fight against upper-caste oppressors but also celebrates the courage of women who continue to navigate a deeply misogynistic and sexist world every day.

Help me remove my nose ring!

What kickstarts a series of unforgettable moments in this book, however, is Farah reaching out to Geeta with a request. It’s not a deliberate but organic choice, for only one invisible can seek help from another in a desperate situation. All this while this ‘request’ gets processed, the events, the dialogues, and the characterisation leave you in splits. While Farah gets the requisite help, others reach out to Geeta with the same plea: to help them remove their nose rings. (And for that very purpose, Elena Giavaldi’s cover design deserves special appreciation.) But Geeta doesn’t get herself involved in this consultancy business of helping husbands disappear. At least not right away because she must have wondered, won’t it automatically be deduced that she’s behind Ramesh’s disappearance, too? Or best, it’ll confirm that she murdered him.

As she puts this thought aside and goes about business as usual, during an ungainly encounter with Bada-Bhai, whom she meets courtesy of Kareem — a neighbour and tharra supplier, she was left with no choice but to bring home a rescue dog she fondly names Bandit. While in the presence of Kareembhai, she is “confronted with her sexuality after five years of dormancy”, she’s reluctant to mimic the Bandit Queen and pursue the proposals to help women in this village where “her name was mixed with dirt”.

Of bonobos & self-made widows

One day, she hears about bonobos in Africa on the Gyan Vani channel. “Female bonobos,” the radio declared, “though not kin, forged alliances to obtain food and ward off male harassers.” Several such clever pieces of information are slipped in to help build the collective psyche of the women who are about to do the unthinkable. Leave alone the characters, the myth-histories, the festivals, the cultural explanations, and even a Kabaddi, Kabaddi, Kabaddi that Geeta murmurs nervously, everything appears both a strategic and an amusing choice, making this book a thoroughly original work of fiction.

What sets it apart from an overtly feminist work — not that they’re not enjoyable — is the fact that it places the cultural and critical remarks in the context of the experiences of its characters, which is why nothing appears out of place or forced.

This is to say that it’s evident that the author was heavily invested in telling the story in its natural way and letting the characters speak organically. Which is why a sentence like this during a crucial section of the book works: “For Indians, superstitions were so embedded within blessings and religion, it was difficult to divorce silliness from tradition.”

Or the comment around marital rape leaves the impact it does: “Those times, Ramesh usually prevailed. Not by brute force, but by censure — at times silent, at other times not — as though by obstructing access, she was failing. But that was simply a part of marriage — everyone knew the law: it wasn’t rape when it was marital.”

But above all, because its protagonists are middle-aged housewives, who, as the author rightly notes, are the most invisible of all, the real discovery for the reader would be to figure out whether they can get away with things.

The treat, however, is not in that discovery — the end result — but in the manner in which Parini helps the story unfold, how sensitively she manufactures an environment to critique caste, class, and misogyny, and how effectively she manages to bring everything back to the full circle, in the end, makes The Bandit Queens an immensely powerful debut.

(The author is a Delhi-based writer who frequently reviews books and writes on gender. Instagram/Twitter: @writerly_life.)