All the French words in the world, however, didn’t cure the fact that she was only as successful as the men around her allowed her to be. As Samir was proving, a man didn’t even need to be your man to oppress you. The microfinancers were keen on converting abla naris into Nari Shakti. It was an admirable goal but also kind of futile, because the microfinancers came and went, and the women were left to do what they’d always done: abide. Whether you dubbed a nari “helpless” or “powerful,” she was still a woman.
Geeta returned to the tharra packets. Not one drop of alcohol had ever passed her lips. But she did wonder what all the fuss was about. Ramesh had chosen this over her. For the joys in this bag, Samir was willing to harm her.
In threatening her purse and pride, Samir had reminded her of her vulnerability. So when a fist thumped on her door, Geeta jumped and let the tharra fall onto the counter with a benign plop.
It was not Farah or Samir, but Karem who stood on the dirt before her front steps. He had returned to the ground after knocking, rather than remaining on the stairs. It was a nod to her space that Geeta appreciated. Not that she showed it:
“What?”
“I—I have to go to Kohra tomorrow morning for, ah, inventory purposes.”
“Meaning booze.”
He sighed. “Yes. Do you want to come?”
“Why would I?”
“？’Cause you mentioned you were going, and it’s a free trip—I’m getting a ride on a truck.”
Geeta clamped down her instinct to rebuff him and considered the offer on its face. It was clear he was attempting amends, which didn’t interest her, but a trip would save her time, perhaps enough to survey some refrigerators.
She still hadn’t answered and his smile turned nervous and crooked. “It’ll be fun.”
“Fun?”
“Okay, Geetaben, it won’t be fun. It’ll be strictly business. Just come, na? Save yourself a day of walking in the sun. Even an adarsh nari needs rest.”
“I’m hardly an ideal woman.”
Karem looked at her door, which she’d opened only enough to accommodate her body. “Are you alone?” He must have immediately realized those words—irrespective of intent and tone—when spoken by a man to a woman were inherently threatening. He fumbled and took a step back. “Not— I didn’t mean…I just asked in case you had company, you know, because that’d explain the moonshine.”
“I told you it’s for me.”
He squinted at her and for a moment she thought he was going to press. Then his face relaxed and he said, “Have you tried it yet?”
“No.”
“Well, let me know what you think. It’s better cold, of course.” He pocketed his hands into his brown slacks. “We leave at eight-thirty, so don’t go too crazy.”
“I won’t.”
“Good night, Geetaben.”
“Whatever.”
She met Karem by his shop because it was closer to the highway than her home. As they walked toward the paved road, she was surprised to find that it was her, not Karem, who could not tolerate the silence between them. She asked, “Will your kids be okay with you gone?”
“School,” he said. “God knows they don’t learn anything, but at least it’s free babysitting.”
“How old are they now?”
“Eleven, nine, six and five. Nope, wait—seven and five.”
Geeta was too stunned to make a crack about his clearly being an attentive father. “Wow.”
“I know, I know, ‘family planning’ and all. ‘Us two, our two.’ But Sarita and I wanted a girl so we kept at it. Finally got her.”
Geeta did some math. “I remember your wife passed away in…”
“Five years ago. Around the time Ramesh…”
“Disappeared.”
“Right.”
“That must be hard. Doing it alone.”
Karem shrugged. “It’s hard with someone, too. That’s marriage.”
A flamboyant Tata truck with mud flaps reading honk ok please slowed toward them. Its flat nose was mainly red, with smatterings of yellow and blue and every color in between crowding onto the vehicle. While it was loud, it was also beautiful. After greeting his friend, Karem hopped in the back bed, which was lined with bales of hay. He offered a hand to Geeta, who ignored it and, gathering her sari skirts in a fist, scrabbled onto the hay, righting herself with a great deal of satisfaction but only half her dignity.
A tethered buffalo groaned at their arrival before burying his head in a steel bucket filled with grass clippings. They sat with their backs against opposite sides of the truck, facing each other. Karem’s wrists rested on his bent knees and Geeta arranged herself cross-legged, her right knee cracking, jute bag in her lap.
Karem gestured toward his head. “You have…”
“What?”
“Straw.”
“Oh.” She patted her crown until she found the offender.
They headed south, past the outskirts of the village, where the local Dalits lived in closer quarters. The thatched roofs of the huts were too squat to be seen past the trees surrounding the area, but some taller homes, mud and cement, were visible. Geeta recognized the hanging tree. While not actually called that, she’d heard the story as a child and since then, she always thought of it as such—though never aloud.
One early morning, long before Geeta was born, two lower-caste girls—thirteen and twelve—were found lynched by their dupattas, their pants pooled around their ankles, dew dripping from their fingertips. The cops came and the girls’ illiterate parents signed a report authorizing the police to investigate the rape and murder. But what they actually signed—what the cops had been instructed to draft in advance—was a false confession stating the parents had discovered that their daughters were promiscuous, so they’d hung them to preserve their family’s honor. Off they went to jail, the entire family ruined by dawn.
Geeta looked away from the hanging tree. Whether it was a true story or a myth, she knew the village panchayat had recently been hearing complaints of an unknown man in a balaclava assaulting Dalit girls at dawn, when they left their beds to relieve themselves in the fields; he first choked, then groped them. The five members of the panchayat were elected by the villagers in a direct democracy meant to allow the village to self-govern. Here, however, the panchayat could only extend its sympathies to the families; justice was elusive because there was no way to identify or catch the culprit.
Fields, some green, some brown, some gold, blurred on either side of the road. Once, their truck braked hard to let a seemingly endless mass of buffalos cross. Karem held fast, swaying sideways before righting. Geeta did not manage to steady herself in time and flopped onto the straw. Karem had the decency to pretend not to notice. They were paused near an active construction site with a large pile of bricks. A queue of girls walked, each carrying a brick or two on her head to add to the cairn. Around them, herds of goats and cows grazed, their red-turbaned shepherds wielding long sticks. At times, Geeta forgot how verdant this land was.
After what felt like forty minutes but was more likely twenty, they stopped at a neighboring village and Karem’s friend came to the back to dump stacks of sugarcane around them and the unflappable buffalo. The engine rumbled and they were off again. Karem extracted a long cane from a stack and offered it to her. When she shook her head in refusal, he gnawed on one end, extracting the juice and spitting the desiccated fibers onto the road.