Khushwant Singh's Book of Unforgettable Women

by Khushwant Singh

  I have no idea what became of the Saxenas whose nuptial consummation I had been witness to. It is likely that by now they had produced a small brood of Saxenas. He is probably a full professor teaching romantic poetry and occasionally penning a verse or two to some younger lady professor (‘like a sister to me’) or to some pig-tailed student (‘like my own daughter’). Mrs Saxena probably tries to retain her husband’s interest through dog-like devotion and prayer and with the help of charms brought from ‘holy’ men. On the rare occasions when the professor mounts her, she has to fantasize about one of his younger colleagues (‘exactly like a real brother to me’) before she shudders in the throes of an orgasm with the name of God on her lips—‘Hai Ram’.

  The Saxenas are luckier than most Indian couples because they live away from their families and are assured a certain amount of privacy. To most newly-married Indian couples, the concept of privacy is as alien as that of love. They rarely get a room to themselves; the bride-wife sleeps with women members of her husband’s family; the husband shares his charpoy placed alongside his father’s and brothers’. Occasionally the mother-in-law, anxious to acquire a grandson, will contrive a meeting between her son and his wife: the most common technique is to get her to take a tumbler of milk to the lad when other male members are elsewhere. The lad grabs the chance for the ‘quickie’. Hardly ever does the couple get enough time for a prolonged and satisfying bout of intercourse. Most Indian men are not even aware that women also have orgasms; most Indian women share this ignorance because although they go from one pregnancy to another, they have no idea that sex can be pleasurable. This is a sad commentary on the people of the country that produced the most widely-read treatise on the art of sex, the Kama Sutra, and elevated the act of sex to spiritual sublimity by explicit depictions on its temples.

  Phoolan Devi

  It was the afternoon of Saturday, 14 February 1981. Winter had given way to spring. Amidst the undulating sea of ripening wheat and green lentil were patches of bright yellow mustard in flower. Skylarks rose from the ground, suspended themselves in the blue skies and poured down song on the earth below. Allah was in His heaven and all was peace and tranquillity in Behmai.

  Behmai is a tiny hamlet along the river Jamuna inhabited by about fifty families belonging mainly to the Thakur caste, with a sprinkling of shepherds and ironsmiths. Although it is only eighty miles from the industrial metropolis, Kanpur, it has no road connecting it to any town. To get to Behmai you have to traverse dusty footpaths meandering through cultivated fields, and go down narrow, snake-infested ravines choked with camelthorn and elephant grass. It is not surprising that till the middle of February, few people had heard of Behmai. After what happened on Saturday the 14th, it was on everyone’s lips.

  There was not much to do in the fields except drive off wild pigs and deer. Some boys armed with catapults and loud voices were out doing this; others played on the sand bank while their buffaloes wallowed in the mud. Men dozed on their charpoys; women sat in huddles gossiping as they ground corn or picked lice out of their children’s hair.

  No one in Behmai noticed a party dressed in police uniforms cross the river. It was led by a young woman with cropped hair wearing the khaki coat of a deputy superintendent of police with three silver stars, blue jeans and boots with zippers. She wore lipstick and her nails had varnish on them. Her belt was charged with bullets and had a curved Gurkha knife—a kokri—attached to it. A Sten gun was slung across her shoulders and she carried a battery-fitted megaphone in her hand. The party sat down beside the village shrine adorned with the trident emblem of Shiva, the God of destruction.

  The eldest of the party, a notorious gangster named Baba Mustaqeem, instructed the group on how to go about their job: A dozen men were to surround the village so that no one could get out; the remaining men, led by the woman, were to search all the houses and take whatever they liked. But no women were to be raped nor anyone except the two men they were looking for, to be slain. They listened in silence and nodded their heads in agreement. They touched the base of Shiva’s trident for good luck and dispersed.

  The girl in the officer’s uniform went up on the parapet of the village well, switched on the megaphone and shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Listen you fellows! You bhosreekey (progenies of the cunt)! If you love your lives, hand over all the cash, silver and gold you have. And listen again! I know those madarchods (motherfuckers) Lal Ram Singh and Shri Ram Singh are hiding in this village. If you don’t hand them over to me I will stick my gun into your bums and tear them apart. You’ve heard me. This is Phoolan Devi speaking. If you don’t get cracking, you know what Phoolan Devi will do to you. Jai Durga Mata (Victory to the Mother Goddess, Durga)!’ She raised her gun and fired a single shot in the air to convince them that she meant what she said.

  Phoolan Devi stayed at the well while her men went looting the Thakurs’ homes. Women were stripped of their earrings, nose pins, silver bangles and anklets. Men handed over whatever cash they had on their persons. The operation lasted almost an hour. But there was no trace of Lal Ram Singh or Shri Ram Singh. The people of the village denied ever having seen them. ‘You are lying!’ roared Phoolan Devi. ‘I will teach you to tell the truth.’ She ordered all the young men to be brought before her. About thirty were dragged out to face her. She asked them again, ‘You motherfuckers, unless you tell me where those two sons of pigs are, I will roast you alive.’ The men pleaded with her and swore they had never seen the two men.

  ‘Take these fellows along,’ she ordered her men. ‘I’ll teach them a lesson they will never forget.’ The gang pushed the thirty villagers out of Behmai along the path leading to the river. At an embankment, she ordered them to be halted and lined up. ‘For the last time, will you tell me where those two bastards are, or do I have to kill you?’ she asked pointing her Sten gun at them. The villagers again pleaded ignorance. ‘If we knew, we would tell you.’ ‘Turn round,’ thundered Phoolan Devi. ‘The men turned their faces towards the green embankment. ‘Bhosreekey, this will also teach you not to report to the police. Shoot the bloody bastards!’ she ordered her men and yelled, ‘Jai Durga Mata!’ There was a burst of gunfire. The thirty men crumpled to the earth. Twenty died; the others hit in their limbs or buttocks lay sprawled in blood-spattered dust.

  Phoolan Devi and her murderous gang went down the path yelling, ‘Jai Durga Mata! Jai Baba Mustaqeem! Jai Bikram Singh! Jai Phoolan Devi!’

  The next morning, the massacre of Behmai made front-page headlines in all newspapers all over India.

  Dacoity in India is as old as history. In some regions it is endemic and no sooner are some gangs liquidated than others come up. The most notorious dacoit country is a couple of hundred miles south-west of Behmai, along the ravines of the Chambal river in Madhya Pradesh. In the Bundelkhand district of Uttar Pradesh in which Behmai is located, it is of comparatively recent origin and the State police suspect that when things became too hot around the Chambal, some gangs migrated to Bundelkhand where the terrain was very much like the one they were familiar with. The river Jamuna, after its descent from the Himalayas, runs a sluggish, serpentine course past Delhi and Agra into Bundelkhand. Here it passes through a range of low-lying hills covered with dense forests. Several monsoon-fed rivulets running through deep gorges join it as it goes on to meet the holy Ganga at Allahabad. It is wild and beautiful country: hills, ravines and forests enclosing small picturesque hamlets. By day there are peacocks and multicoloured butterflies; by night, nightjars calling to each other across the pitch-black wilderness flecked by fireflies. Nilgai, spotted deer, wild boar, hyena, jackal and fox abound. It is also infested with snakes, the commonest being cobras, the most venomous of the species. Cultivation is sparse and entirely dependent on rain. The chief produce are lentils and wheat. The peasantry is amongst the poorest in the country. The two main communities living along the river banks are Mallahs (boatmen) and Thakurs. The Thakurs are the higher caste and own most of the land. The Mallahs are amon
gst the lowest in the Hindu caste hierarchy, own little land and live mostly by plying boats, fishing and distilling liquor. Till recently, dacoit gangs were mixed: Thakurs, Mallahs, Yadavs (cattlemen), Gujjars (milkmen) and Muslims. But now, more and more are tending to becoming caste-oriented. There is little love lost between the Thakurs and the Mallahs. Behmai is a Thakur village; Phoolan Devi, a Mallahin.

  No stigma is attached to being a dacoit; in their own territory they are known as bagis or rebels. Hindi movies, notably the box office hit of all time, Sholay, in which the hero is a dacoit, has added romance to the profession of banditry.

  Dacoit gangs are well-equipped with automatic weapons, including self-loading rifles acquired mostly through raids. A police note on anti-dacoity operations records that Jalaun district which includes Behmai, has fifteen gangs of between ten to thirty members each operating in the area. Phoolan Devi and her current paramour, Man Singh Yadav, have fifteen men with them. In the last six months, the police have had ninety-three encounters with dacoits in which they killed 159 and captured 137. Forty-seven surrendered themselves. 439 still roam about the jungles and ravines, hunting and being hunted.

  I sat on the parapet of the village well, on the same spot from where Phoolan Devi had announced her arrival in Behmai a year and a half earlier. In front of me sat village men, women and children and the police escort provided for me. An old woman wailed, ‘That Mallahin killed my husband and two sons. May she die a dog’s death!’ A man stood up and bared his belly which showed gun-shot scars. Another bared his buttocks and pointed to a dimple where a bullet had hit him.

  ‘Can any of you tell me why Phoolan Devi came to this village and killed so many people?’ I asked.

  No one answered.

  ‘Is it true that Lal Ram Singh and Shri Ram Singh were in Behmai?’

  A chorus of voices answered: ‘No, we have never seen them.’

  ‘Is it true that a few months before the dacoity they had brought Phoolan Devi with them, raped her for several weeks before she managed to escape?’

  ‘Ram! Ram!’ protested some of them. ‘We had never seen the Mallahin in this village before the dacoity.’

  ‘Why then, did she ask for the two brothers? How did she know her way about this village?’

  No one answered.

  ‘You will not get anything out of these fellows,’ the police inspector said to me in English. ‘You know what these villagers are! They never tell the truth.’

  I gave up my cross-examination and decided to go around Behmai. I started from the village shrine with the Shiva’s trident, came back to the well and then to the embankment where she had killed the twenty men. I went up a mound where the police had set up a sentry box from which I could get a bird’s-eye view of the village, the Jamuna and the country beyond. The police sentinel on duty who had been in the village for several weeks volunteered the following information: ‘Sir, I think I can tell you why Phoolan Devi did what she did. You see that village across the Jamuna on top of the hill? It is called Pal, it is a Mallah village. Mallahs used to come through Behmai to take the ferry. Thakur boys used to tease their girls and beat up their men. I am told there were several instances when they stripped the girls naked and forced them to dance. The Mallahs appealed to Phoolan Devi to teach these Thakurs a lesson. She had her own reasons as well. Her lover Bikram Singh had been murdered by Thakurs Lal Ram Singh and his twin brother Shri Ram Singh. And they had kept her imprisoned in this village for several weeks raping and beating her. She managed to escape and rejoin her gang. She also suspected that these fellows have been informing the police of her movements. It was revenge, pure and simple.’

  ‘For every man this girl has killed, she has slept with two,’ said the superintendent of police in charge of ‘Operation Phoolan Devi’. The police estimate the number of men slain by her or one of her gang in the last year and a half to be over thirty. There is no way of finding out the exact number of men she murdered or was laid by. But it is certain that not all the killings nor the copulations were entirely of her own choosing. On many occasions she happened to be with bandits who were trigger-happy; and being the only woman in a gang of a dozen or more, she was regarded by them as their common property. She accepted the rules of the game and had to give herself to them in turn. It was more a resignation to being raped than the craving for sex of a nymphomaniac.

  I was able to reconstruct Phoolan Devi’s past by talking to her parents, sisters and one of her lovers, and cross-checking what they told me with a statement she made to the police on 6 January 1979, the first time she was arrested. This was in connection with a robbery in the house of her cousin with whom her father had had a dispute over land. Some stolen goods were recovered from her. She spent a fortnight in police custody. Her statement is prefaced by a noting made by the officer. He describes her as ‘about twenty years old; wheatish complexion, oval face; short but sturdily built.’ Phoolan Devi stated: ‘I am the second daughter of a family of six consisting of five girls. The youngest is a boy, Shiv Narain Singh. We belong to the Mallah caste and live in the village Gurh-Ka-Purwa. At the age of twelve I was given away in marriage to a forty-five-year-old widower, Putti Lal.’ Then she talks of her second ‘marriage’ to Kailash in Kanpur. The rest of her life story was narrated to me by her mother, Muli. ‘Phoolan Devi was too young to consummate her marriage and came back to us after a few days. A year or two later, we sent her back to her husband. This time she stayed with him for a few months but was unhappy. She came away without her husband’s permission, determined not to go back to him.’ It would appear that she had been deflowered. Her mother describes her as being ‘filled up’—an Indian expression for a girl whose bosom and behind indicate that she has had sex. It would appear that she had developed an appetite for sex which her ageing husband could not fulfil. Her parents were distraught: a girl leaving her husband brought disgrace to the family. ‘I told her to drop dead,’ said her mother. ‘I told her to jump in a well or drown herself in the Jamuna; we would not have a married daughter living with us. Putti Lal came and took away the silver ornaments he had given her and married another woman. What were we to do? We started looking for another husband for her, but it is not easy to find a husband for a discarded girl, is it?’ she asked me. Phoolan Devi kept out of her parents’ way as much as she could by taking the family’s buffaloes out for grazing. She began to liaise with the son of the village headman. (In rural India such affairs are consummated in lentil or sugarcane fields.) The headman’s son invited his friends to partake of the feast. Phoolan Devi had no choice but to give in. The village gossip mill ground out stories of Phoolan Devi being available to anyone who wanted to lay her. Her mother admitted, ‘The family’s pojeeshun (position) was compromised; our noses were cut. We decided to send her away to her sister, Ramkali, who lives in Teonga village across the river.’

  It did not take long for Phoolan Devi to find another lover in Teonga. This was a distant cousin, Kailash, married and with four children. Kailash had contacts with a dacoit gang. He gives a vivid account of how he was seduced by Phoolan Devi. ‘One day I was washing my clothes on the banks of the Jamuna. This girl brought her sister’s buffaloes to wallow in the shallows of the river. We got talking. She asked me to lend her my cake of soap so that she could bathe herself. I gave her what remained of the soap. She stripped herself before my eyes. While she splashed water on herself and soaped her bosom and buttocks, she kept talking to me. I got very excited watching her. After she was dressed, I followed her into the lentil fields. I threw her on the ground and mounted her. I was too worked up and was finished in no time. I begged her to meet me again. She agreed to come the next day at the same time and at the same place.

  ‘We made love many times. But it was never enough. She started playing hard to get. ‘If you want me, you must marry me. Then I’ll give you all you want,’ she said. I told her I had a wife and children and could only have her as my mistress. She would not let me touch her unless I agreed to marr
y her. I became desperate. I took her with me to Kanpur. A lawyer took fifty rupees from me, wrote something on a piece of paper and told us that we were man and wife. We spent two days in Kanpur. During the day we went to the movies; at night we made love and slept in each other’s arms. When we returned to Teonga, my parents refused to take us in. We spent a night out in the fields. The next day I told Phoolan Devi to go back to her parents as I had decided to return to my wife and children. She swore she would kill me. I have not seen her since. But I am afraid one of these days she will get me.’

  ‘What does your Phoolania look like?’ I asked Kailash. ‘I am told her sister Ramkali resembles her.’

  ‘Phoolan is slightly shorter, lighter-skinned and has a nicer figure. She is much better-looking than Ramkali.’

  ‘I am told she uses very bad language.’

  ‘She never spoke harshly to me; to me she spoke only the language of love.’

  Phoolan Devi had more coming to her. A few days after she had been turned out by Kailash, she ran into Kailash’s wife Shanti, at a village fair. Shanti pounced on Phoolan, tore her hair, clawed her face and in front of the crowd that had collected, abused her: ‘Whore! Bitch! Homebreaker!’ What was known only to a few hamlets now became common knowledge: Phoolan was a slut. As if this were not enough, the village headman’s son who was under the impression that Phoolan was exclusively at his beck and call, heard of her escapade with Kailash. He summoned her to his house and thrashed her with his shoes. Thus, at the age of eighteen, Phoolan found herself discarded by everyone. Her parents did not want her, her old husband had divorced her, her second ‘marriage’ had come to naught, she had been laid by men none of whom was willing to take her as a wife. It seemed to her that no one in the world wanted to have anything to do with her. She had only two choices before her: to go to some distant city and become a prostitute, or kill herself. There were times she considered throwing herself into the well.