Saloni tried to park near a passport photo shop, under a faded red Airtel sign. A guard in a blue uniform waved her away. She dismissed him with a comparable hand motion. He pulled a face but returned to his chair in the shade. Saloni peeled her arms and head bare, then locked the cloths in the storage space beneath the pillion.
Geeta said, “Like how husbands will hit us and we should keep quiet, understand and accept it? Is that also ‘tradition’？”
“Geeta…” They walked up the chipped steps toward the salon. Saloni gave her name and indicated Geeta should also sit with her behind a curtain.
“Wait, let me finish. I’ve been thinking about this since this whole mess began. If Ramesh hit you, that would be unacceptable. But he hit me, so it’s marriage. Darshan tried to rape me, so I was justified in attacking him. But if he’d tried to rape Preity, that would’ve also just been marriage. Khushi is Dalit, so she can’t sit with us or eat with us, and she can only do one job; her sons can get a degree, but they, too, can only do one job. And—”
Geeta quieted when a girl in a kurta top ducked into their side of the drawn curtain. She wore those skinny jeans Geeta often saw on the youths, but they were a misnomer here, baggy and voluminous around the girl’s twig thighs. White buds plugged her ears, twin wires draping down her front and disappearing to her pocket, which housed her mobile phone. Thin strains of a recent rap song filled their cordoned world. Geeta heard on repeat: “Lungi dance, lungi dance, lungi dance.” Without so much as a hello, the girl took Saloni’s arm and began smearing wax with the apathetic practice of a medical professional.
Saloni peered around the girl down to Geeta, who perched on a stool so low that she might as well have sat on the tile. “Where is this andolan coming from, yaar?”
“I don’t know,” Geeta confessed. She supposed she was agitated. Karem’s words floated to her, about kids not questioning injustices. But what about when adults didn’t either? If the women were able to help each other commit murder because they felt it was morally right, then why couldn’t they help others being wronged, too?
When Geeta was young, well before the panchayat voted to build a separate but equal water tank on the south part of the village, the Dalits would come to the well to fill their steel and clay pots. They weren’t allowed to draw, of course, but Geeta watched as her mother, or another woman, pulled water for them—the “Harijans,” as that generation condescendingly called them—pouring from a prophylactic height, careful not to bump the pail against their pots. Their village spotted caste on sight like it was gender and behaved accordingly. Her mother hadn’t shown malice, hadn’t abused anyone, but by following the rules, she’d accepted them, taught Geeta the same. But now, all the shibboleths that Geeta had been conditioned to regard as level were revealing themselves to be crooked.
Geeta was no rebel; she’d never be one to bring the world to its knees. Phoolan Devi hadn’t either, but she’d brought some men to theirs, and her story had resonated with countless other women, including Geeta. She’d always regarded Phoolan’s life as delineated by gender: one woman against scores of men who constantly used her womanhood to dehumanize her, to grind her, literally, into the dirt. But Geeta now saw that caste had marked Phoolan’s story as much as, if not more than, gender had.
She’d been born Phoolan Mallah, a Dalit and a woman, therefore twice-trodden. Even in a gang with no regard for civilization or law, caste reigned. Her husband, Vikram, was slaughtered over caste, she was gang-raped because of her caste. She killed twenty-two upper-caste men in revenge. And only then did she cease being a woman and become a legend; the country dropped her caste-marked surname “Mallah,” and made her a Devi instead.
But Geeta had few words to express this to Saloni, whose face was patient but expectant, peering at Geeta behind the teenager. So Geeta tried again.
“I’ve been fine keeping to myself for years, you know that. But…the best I can describe it is like this. Sometimes when I’m with Bandit in the house for too long, I get used to his smell. Then I leave for water or a loan meeting or whatever, and I come back and I smell him and realize he’s dirty, he stinks, he needs washing.”
Saloni didn’t wince when the girl ripped off the cloth, repressed and once again ripped.
“I think I’ve been nose-blind all my life and now I can smell. It’s dirty, Saloni. It stinks and it needs washing.”
“Legs?” the girl said so loudly that Geeta jumped.
Saloni shook her head no.
The girl left them. Saloni examined her arms, which bore tacky bits of residual wax.
“But, Geeta, think about it: if we invited Khushi over for dinner or had her draw from our pump instead of theirs, you’d feel good about yourself, but they’d go after her, not you. They’d burn her house down, beat her up.
“A few years back, a local girl married some doctor from Ahmedabad, right? The wedding was a few villages away, and they invited a Dalit family since the bride was the girl’s best friend from childhood. Right after, some upper castes beat their spines into their ribs for eating with everyone. They tied gasoline rags around the man’s hands and burned them right off. They raped the woman and their daughter.” Saloni swallowed with difficulty. “It’s not right; I know it, you know it. It shouldn’t be this way. But regardless of your intentions, there are consequences to your ideas that don’t land on your head.”
As Saloni paid, it took longer than Geeta would’ve liked to scrabble up from the stool. Her knees cricked in a way that was more embarrassing than painful. Once they were back on the road toward home, Geeta said, “But why can’t we try for new rules? I mean, you’re on the panchayat!”
Saloni rolled her eyes. “They had to have a woman; it was compulsory. My father-in-law made sure I won so he’d have another vote in his corner. Half the time, they don’t even tell me about council meetings.”
“You have more pull than you realize. I remember two years ago, you weren’t even on the council yet, but when they were all voting on that girl’s honor killing, you convinced the panchayat to just settle for a fine.”
Saloni’s snort was derisive. “Yeah, and the family went bankrupt trying to pay it. I hardly helped anyone. Plus, they had the marriage dissolved, so really, what was it all for?”
“That girl’s alive because of you! And remember what you said about Preity? How if people stop her from trying to do things just because she’s a widow, they’ll have to answer to you? That’s power, too, Saloni. And we should use it.”
After they exited the highway, the ground grew bumpier and their teeth jarred. “How?”
Saloni parked in front of her home. Geeta dismounted first, and as Saloni balanced the kickstand, inspiration struck. Geeta snapped her fingers.
“We could marry your daughter to Khushi’s son!”
As Saloni once again freed her face from her scarf, Geeta saw she was glaring. “Aparna’s five, Geeta. You’re not gonna fix untouchability with child brides. And shouldn’t we first resolve our more immediate problems? Like you-know-what? Then we can ‘be the change we want to see in the world,’ Gandhi.”