EVE of Surrender
THE NIGHT BEFORE she surrendered, Phoolan Devi contracted a sudden high fever. It was February 1983. Recalling that night, she said,

“I was very angry and disturbed and had not eaten for three days. I cursed anyone who came before me and I would throw any object within my reach. My extreme anger coloured my vision and I could not see reason. Worried about my attitude, the Superintendent of Police postponed the date of the surrender ceremony from 10 February to 12 February. He also got Man Singh’s help to take my rifle away from me, saying I was dangerous in this state of mind. By now I was in pretty poor shape and in a confused, uncertain sate of mind. Everyone else seemed to be preparing for Bhind.”

Bhind, a small dusty market town in Madhya Pradesh, had been chosen as the venue for the ceremony at Phoolan Devi’s insistence. The Superintendent of Police there, Rajendra Chaturvedi, was the only policeman or for that matter the only “official” she trusted. It was through him that she had negotiated various terms and conditions with Indira Ghandi’s government, before agreeing to lay down her arms. Her last demand had been that the ceremony take place in Bhind and that pictures o the goddess Durga and Mahatma Gandhi be placed on the stage so that, in spirit, she would be surrendering to them and not to the police or the state. The Prime Minister, when consulted on this matter in her office in Delhi, had responded, “What does it matter where she surrenders?” So, Bhind it was, 40 kilometres away from the village of Inguie, where the police had requisitioned a Rest House that belonged to the irrigation Department in order to accommodate the members of two dacoit gangs, members of their families and the press, who were eager to file stories before the official event took place.

At the Rest House, after many hours of walking, Phoolan Devi fluctuated between extremes of emotion. Tears of despair and rage had followed streams of abuse. Chaturvedi admitted, when I interviewed him later, that he had been extremely nervous and worried at the time. The arrangements he had made for the next day could not be altered. The Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Arjun Singh, was to arrive at 9 a.m. from Delhi by helicopter, as Bhind was not connected to any city by either train or plane. Only jeeps, trucks and bullock carts travelled these bumpy, dusty roads. That meant, he had calculated, they would have to leave the Rest House by 6 a.m. If anything went wrong, if the Chief Minister were embarrassed in any way, thee would be serious political repercussions and his entire career would be affected.

He had been well aware of that, he said, as he looked at Phoolan Devi lying face down on the bed, sobbing uncontrollably like a child, hands clenched in fists of rage. Only a few minutes earlier she had been screaming at him, clutching her rifle in defiance, “You think I’m going to surrender tomorrow? Well, that’s one idea you can stuff up your arse.” Then she had paced the floor, flung the weapon on the bed and asked him boldly, “How much money are you making out of this?

Chaturvedi told me he had become accustomed to such scenes but he also knew that Phoolan Devi’s reactions, following each such confrontation, could not be anticipated. “She is the most unpredictable woman I have ever met in my entire life!” he added, with a laugh that was almost affectionate.

At the time, he had remained as patient and tolerant as he knew how, not rising from the chair in which he sat. “I’m not doing this for money,” he had responded. “You know that surely you must know that by now. What were the options? Think about it. A dog’s death in the ravines? To be arrested by the UP police or shot dead in an encounter? To be tried by a court and hanged?”

At first Phoolan Devi had listened to him in silence, then she had shouted back, “What do people like you care? What’s is to you anyway whether you have me dead or alive? You have me! Trapped like a rat! Don’t you? You’re all the same. Bastards! All of you. The paperwallahs outside, the photowallahs all of you.”

Chaturvedi had reminded her that he had persuaded the government to rehabilitate her family in Madhya Pradesh and provide them with land near Gwalior. That hadn’t been easy. “Now at least they’ll be safe,” he had assured her. “They’ll be able to visit you as often as you like. Every day if you want,” he said in an attempt to calm her down.

“Visits! Oh, yes, there are many people out there who have come to visit, but let me tell you one thing, I’m not in a cage yet!” Then, picking up objects close at hand, she had hurled them across the room: a stainless-steel tumbler, a brass ashtray that clattered across the floor, startling the sentry outside, who rushed into the room rifle in hand. Chaturvedi had dismissed him with a wave of his hand, telling him to shut the door. At this point Phoolan Devi had flung herself on top of her rifle, burying her face in the pillow, and wept with an intensity that had alarmed the officer.

In February 1988, five years after the event, Rajendra Chaturvedi had been promoted to Commandant of the Special Armed Force (SAF) and was posted in Rewa, the headquarters of this paramilitary squad in north-eastern Madhya Pradesh, where I met him on the lawns of the Police Mess. We sat in the shade of an elegant garden umbrella, drinking beer, as he recalled the events of that night in the Irrigation Rest House of Inguie.

Continuing his story, he said, “I got up from that chair and touched the back of her head I was trying to reassure her, you see I told her not to worry so much. I said, ‘Trust me.’ Then I left the room and tried to reassure the bewildered sentry, who had never witnessed anything like this in his life! I said something like: ‘God spare me from women,’ which seemed to make him relax. I told him that the same rules as before applied. Al members of Phoolan’s gang and members of her family were to be allowed access to her but not the press. Ghanshyam, too the other gang leader who had also agreed to surrender the next day. Baba Ghansham he called himself and always liked to give the impression that he was in communiation with God!”

Chaturvedi had gone outside in search of Man Singh, Phoolan Devi’s lover and co-leader of her gang. The atmosphere in the grounds surrounding the Rest House was as if a carnival were about to begin. Camp fires had been lit for heat and light, people sat in groups, baghis (rebels) and their relatives, journalists and interpreters from far-flung corners of the country and the globe. Stories were being told, of bravery, oppression, honour, sorrow and comedy. There was much laughter in the air the kind of high-pitched, unrealistic emotion that is evoked in moments of heightened tension, in situations charged with a mixture of conflicting feelings uncertainty and pride, fear and relief all thrown up in the confusion o a single night. Photographers wandered around, their flashlights like fireworks, sporadic interruptions to the intensity of talk. “It was quite a tamasha!” said Chaturvedi, smiling at the memory.

Ghanshyam had been there, dressed in a crisp, starched, khaki police uniform garlanded with flowers and prayer beads, a red tilak streaked across his forehead, eyes closed, legs crossed in the yogic posture of meditation. Next to him, his younger brother, Karan Singh, fondled an automatic sten gun as they posed for photographers. “Enjoying their moment of glory!” Chaturvedi said. He was looking for Man Singh. Ghanshyam’s gang was just another he had persuaded, with Phoolan Devi’s help, to surrender. The Chambal Valley would now be free of dacoits for a while at any rate. Phoolan Devi’s gang was the prize. She would be the last important gang leader to surrender and was the one who had caused the most political chaos. If all went well the next day the government would not have been in vain. Still, he was worried. He had to find Man Singh and win him over to his side. He had to persuade him to calm Phoolan Devi, so that they could leave for Bhind the next morning as planned.

Phoolan Devi also remembers that night. She heard the door shut as Chaturvedi left the room. Now alone, with time for her own thoughts, she began to pull herself together. She switched off the light and lay flat on her back, pushing the rifle aside for comfort. She heard the clatter of a typewriter in another room. The police were drawing up a list of weapons being surrendered. She had already counted her own bullets: 25 in the gunbelt plus one in the rifle 6 in all. Man Singh was dealing with the rest.

The flickering light from the camp fires gave warmth to the atmosphere of the room, but the blue flashes from the cameras outside hurt her eyes. From that moment on, she says, she began to hate all photographers. Though the half-open window she began to recognize voices. That of her mother, Moola, replying to question of all sorts. The voices of journalists, some speaking in foreign languages through interpreters. She lay still to listen.

“Was she vicious as a child?”

“Does she really worship Kali?”

“How many lovers has she had?”

“Why does she hate Thakurs?”

“Was she really gang-raped by the Thakurs of Behmai?’

Her mother’s voice was steady, though slow and deliberate as if each word were measured, as she replied to some questions and ignored others. “She’s had a hard life,” she responded. “Poverty and desperation lead to many things. Who can judge her except Durga Mata? Don’t blame her for what she’s done, or is supposed to have done it is not her fault, it was her fate. The One Above knows…”

Phoolan could hear her youngest sister, Munni, then nine years old, saying with the same calm of her mother: “No, she doesn’t want to see anyone or have her picture taken. You see, she still has her rifle and is wondering whether to kill herself. She doesn’t trust the police.”

Phoolan Devi remembers feeling grateful to them both and covering her eyes with her shawl as the flashguns continued to light up the wall opposite.

Her mind began to drift. She thought of Vikram Mallah, the first man who had encouraged her to laugh, swear and speak her mind without inhibition… Now, on the eve of her surrender, she felt she was calling on his spirit for strength. She tried to remember his physical presence, particularly his mocking, youthful eyes, which always seemed full of humour; his jet-black hair, soft to the touch; his hands, amazingly steady when he held a rifle, whatever the circumstance.

“I worked!” she told me: recalling his presence, and memories of their time together, had made her breathe steadily as she began to relax. It was a brief and fleeting respite. Soon, other memories and images took over. Suddenly, she thought of the only photograph she possessed of Vikram Mallah: a police shot of his dead body riddled with bullets. She remembered how she had felt that night. She remembered the bullet wounds. How many times had they shot him? She wasn’t sure. She had tried to embrace him one last time but her captors had dragged her away. His body, slumped in the tangle of bedding they had shared, had look so vulnerable in death. She had left the numbness of terror and despair spreading through her veins, in the same way as she was beginning to feel once again. Her mind took another twist and she began to picture bullet wounds, trying to count how many there were. By now Phoolan Devi was in a cold sweat, aware of all the surrounded her, mixing memory with reality as she drifted into an exhausted sleep.

In the chill of dawn she had struggled to remember the events of the night before. Man Singh lay asleep in the bed next to her, fully dressed his new khaki uniform, his hand on his rifle out of habit. The uniform reminded her of the police tailor who had come to measure her. She’d attacked him for reasons she could not fully understand herself, shouting, “If I surrender at all it will be in my own clothes.”

Chaturvedi had been there, trying to bring some calm to the situation. “But it’s what you wanted what you asked for. A new police uniform and new shoes. I’ve given you the shoes.’

She couldn’t remember her response as she looked at the running-shoes hat lay in different corners of the room, flung there in fits of rage the night before.

Man Singh, as if in support of her hostility to the tailor, had also made a fuss. She had heard him raising his voice from the next room: “What’s this? I said I wanted long sleeves.”

Chaurvedi had instructed the tailor to change the sleeves.

“Change the whole sleeve,” Man Singh had shouted back, “I don’t want a join.”