When the other women are being funny and bantering or complaining, Geeta becomes a foil. “Geeta’s character seemed more solid to me when I put her in a room with these other women. Saloni buries the hatchet, and Khushi, a minor character at first, once comes to feel like Geeta’s only hope. Farah makes her an accomplice in her husband’s murder. These women survive oppression by using it for their benefit.”Īs Geeta’s path begins to intersect with those of these women, she is forced to get out of her crab-like shell. Saloni uses her beauty, and the assumptions people make about it, to her advantage by trying to manipulate people, especially men. She charges some people more than she would others. “Khushi uses her work as a corpse burner for economic benefit. “I think each of these characters uses their circumstance, and the assumptions made about the said circumstances, to their advantage,” says Shroff. Saloni, Geeta’s friend-turned-foe, has the kind of heart that guides the flow of the novel like a lighthouse, while Khushi, a Dalit corpse burner, is funny and practical. There is Farah, the talented tailor, who wants to kill her abusive husband to save herself and her children. Shroff has populated her book with a cast of women who are as spunky and sassy as they are spirited and indomitable. The Bandit Queens is not the kind of novel where the protagonist alone is made to lift the weight of her author’s intent. A mangalsutra means different things to different women.” But Shroff, for her part, adds, “I did not want to make any sweeping claims about the entire institution of marriage. Fiercely independent in her life and views, it seems strange that Geeta would sell necklaces “no prettier than the rope tying a goat to a tree, depriving it of freedom”. Speaking over a Zoom call from her home in Mountain View, California, Shroff says she always meant Geeta’s craft and profession to be a “little ironic”. In the five years since Ramesh left, she has made ends meet by sustaining a small mangalsutra business that she finances with a microloan. Ostracised by her village after her alcoholic husband suddenly abandons her, Geeta is thought of as a murderer and churel. Surly when we first meet her, Geeta “no longer had friends, but she did have her freedom”. Geeta, her protagonist, is the kind of hero that one feels India and Indian fiction both sorely need. PARINI SHROFF’S ASSURED and entertaining debut novel, The Bandit Queens (HarperCollins 352 pages ₹499) can, perhaps, best be described as ‘rollicking’.

Parini shroff the bandit queens