The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

Author:Parini Shroff [Shroff, Parini]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2023-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

The night Ramesh broke her fingers, they’d shared a nice evening. He’d poured himself plenty of tharra, but not enough to curdle from sanguine to mean. She’d already filed it under one of their “good nights.” Dinner was, in Ramesh’s words, a huge improvement, especially considering her limited skills. He even sang along to the radio while she cleaned, clapping and rocking in an overly exaggerated dance. She giggled as she dried her hands. Part of the sound was genuine enjoyment, the other part was for his sake, contrived to show him she enjoyed him. Because she loved the moments—and strove to encourage them—when he was silly for her benefit, like her pleasure was a priority to him. Wasn’t that love? When a man was willing to be a fool for you?

His Hindi was clumsy, but who cared? He sang the wrong word. Geeta often wished she could remember which word, which error. As though context mattered.

She’d corrected him with a laugh.

“What, you think you’re smarter than me?” he snapped.

“What? No, I—”

“You finished twelfth standard, so what? It’s not like you did anything with it. You don’t work, you don’t do anything. Can’t even give me children.”

She’d thought they shared an understanding. That they’d tacitly agreed: since it just wasn’t happening, and they couldn’t afford to investigate whether it was one or both of them, that they’d turn their circumstance into a mutual choice, devoid of recriminations. Even in his deepest inebriation, when he slurred that she’d gained weight or was greying or didn’t care about him, on this point he didn’t slip and neither did she. But tonight, détente shattered, she blitzed, her diction barbed:

“Who’s to say the kharabi isn’t yours—”

And then her ring and pinky fingers were broken.

Yes, other things happened in the interim. Surely, there was the moment she’d realized what she’d said (flaw, failing, defect), the moment he grabbed her, the moment her nerves communicated pain, the moment she’d realized safety was a false assumption, the moment she twisted one way and he another. But none of that survived the sieve of memory. She remembered being cold. Her hand was so very cold, a chill pervaded the remainder of her body.

“God, Geeta, see what you made me do? See how you go too far?”

The pain delayed, then bloomed. It eventually ceased—returning cyclically with the monsoons—but her fingers never healed properly. How could they when there were chores? “It’s a painful lesson, for us both,” he repeated while observing her struggle with the cooking and cleaning, “but we’ve learned.”

He was correct.

Because wounds from one battle prepare you for another.

In Darshan’s bedroom, his hand against her throat, Geeta’s arm flailed behind her and encountered a thin bit of salvation. More specifically, a thin bit of the cold brass statue, perhaps Krishna’s flute. She told herself to stretch, but obedience required oxygen, which Darshan was currently stealing. That left pinky finger, broken by Ramesh years ago, could reach farther than its counterpart. She strained. The statue toppled on the ledge sideways, toward her.

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