Villagers were always helpful, lending us their buckets tied to what seemed like an endless length of rope, so that we could pull at the dregs. What emerged was a sot of muddy brown swill that looked dangerous to drink. The driver informed me that it wasn’t even fir for the radiator of the jeep, which had begun to drink gallons. We began stopping at rivers and streams, wading into the middle where the current was at its strongest and drinking those waters in the hope that the pollution gathered at the banks.

The rivers were our saviour and there were five that crisscrossed the terrain. In addition to the problem of finding drinking water and water for the jeep, there was the blistering heat of the sun to contend with. At the driver’s suggestion, I bought two towels at a market town and a plastic bucket which we filled with water and kept on the floor of the jeep. Everyhalf-hour or so, we would wet the towels and wrap them around ourselves as we drove. They provided great relief a kind of basic air-conditioning! Another technical problem arose. The metal floor of the jeep was so hot that the edges of the plastic bucket began to melt, so we had to get a metal one instead. After that we had to be content with hot water for the towels, which cooled as they dried in the wind as we moved on.

For the first time in my life I understood the frantic feeling of thirst and the importance of water. Food began to seem irrelevant. I was beginning to understand the life that Phoolan Devi had led. She had spent many such summers in the ravines with little shelter.

We were headed towards the city of Kanpur when I realized we were about to pass through Kalpi, the town closest to the village where Phoolan Devi had been born. Her mother Moola’s village, I had been told, was not far off and Moola was in Nagina, her ancestral home. I asked the driver to stop at Kalpi to ask for directions. He looked somewhat despondent when he heard I wanted to go to another ravine village, rather than the city, which promised some comfort and a break from the relentless heat. I assured him we would get sleeping spaces, water and food, and that, besides, the village was on the banks of the Jamuna River so he couldbathe and swim to his heart’s content while I interviewed Phoolan’s mother and members of her family. He laughed and replied, “It’s not like that I will take you wherever you want to go. If you can take it, so can I. After all, I’m a man!”

We reached the village of Nagina late that evening, just as it was growing dark. Lakshman Rao, havin takencommand of the situation, instructed me to stay in the jeep while he found out where the house or hut was. I accepted gratefully, knowing he would create less of a stir in the village than I would have done, wandering around in the dark trying to find Phoolan Devi’s mother. I lit a cigarette and gathered all the scattered belongings in the jeep into a neat pile, kiknowing that we would have to carry it all.

I was proved wrong. After some time, I saw a troupe approaching the jeep shadows in the dark, as the village had no electricity. It was Lakshman Rao, together with Moola, her eldest brother and a horde of children. I cannot describe their welcome. They made me feel honoured, impressed by the fact that I had made the journey to meet them. The children wanted a ride in the jeep and Moola’s brother told me the jeep should be parked near the house for safety. The road would take the jeep to his cowshed. The children piledin and the adults, apart from the driver, walked in front of the headlights, leading the way.

We talked in the light of kerosene lamps late into the night in the shelter of their roofless courtyard. The hospitality was unimaginable. Food was cooked hurriedly dal, potatoes and hot rotis. Water, brought in a huge earthenware pot, seemed abundant. I was told it was “safe”, coming from a tubewell that had been dug deep, below the natural water level of the village well. Moola told me I could share her charpai a string bed and sleep with her in the open courtyard, which was the coolest part of the house. Lakshman Rao said he was happy to sleep in the jeep but the family wouldn’t hear of it. Thejeep, they said, was perfectly safe near the cowshed and he too would be provided with bedding and could sleep on the roof, the other cool spot in the house. I could see that he was comfortable and relaxed and had got completely absorbed in the spirit of the project.

Certain things impressed me. As soon as we had finished eating, Moola said, “Smoke your cigarette don’t worry, you are among friends.” She knew I had held back, not wanting to create a bad impression on her family. She informed me that people should not be in habited by the opinions of others if their “hearts and intentions” were true. I laughed and passed my pack of cigarettes around to the men in the group. No one smoked cigarettes. They all preferred bidis and offered me one instead. Lakshman Rao then whispered in my ear, asking if he should bring the bottle of rum he had bought for me in Kalpi. I told him to ask the rest. They all agreed that we should celebrate so we sat there drinking rum and exchanging stories until Moola said it was time to sleep.

The next morning we awoke at dawn. Moola informed me hat the time for women to bathe in the river was then, free of observers. Apparently women were the first to wake in the village and organize themselves for the day ahead. As we walked to the river, along the quiet village pathways, she took a detour into a field, handing me a tin mug full of water and saying, “It’s good for the soil. The trick is to squat over the cracks in the earth but it doesn’t really matter. I’ll meet you at the river.”

At the river, while we bathed and washed our clothes of the day before, I asked her if I could interview her.

“You can interview me at any time,” she said. “In fact I may even return to Gwalior with you. Meet Mannu.”

“Who’s Mannu?” I asked.

“A distant relative. He knows a lot about Phoolan and has helped her a great deal in the past. He knows even more than me.” She told me he was a shy sort of person who disliked being the focus of attention, and therefore didn’t involve himself much with what went on with the rest of the family. She said she would introduce him to me after we had dried our clothes and had something to eat.

Mannu was everything Moola said he would be: shy, reticent, cautious and a man of few words. She introduced us, telling him almost conspiratorialy that Phoolan had decided to trust me. That, in itself, was a revelation for which I was grateful. Having said that, she said she was leaving to cook and would see me later.

Mannu’s hut on the edge of the ravines was very simple but quite beautiful, its mud walls half-covered with overhanging branches that encroached from the jungle beyond. He also had an open, roofless courtyard in which we sat. I decided to get straight to the point, to alleviate his suspicion, and showed him what I had of Phoolan Devi’s “diaries”. He read the notebook with intense interest while I sat in silence. I told him that although my spoken Hindi was all right, I found reading difficult. He merely nodded. I said I had reached the point of Phoolan’s marriage, after Rukhmini’s, and asked if he could tell me anything about those days. He said he had not been present at the actual ceremony but had witnessed the negotiations that preceded it. I asked him to tell me whatever he could remember about the occasion, and what follows is his account.

He had gone to his aunt’s home on a visit and found the family deeply distressed over many matters, afraid of Maiyadin’s power and influence in the village, afraid of what the future had in store for them. Devidin needed a helping hand to tend to his fields so he had offered to stay on for a while. His own ambition at the time had been to find a job in the city of Kanpur, where he had a few contacts but was waiting on “answers.”

It was late afternoon when he first saw Puttilal, the man chosen for his cousin Phoolan Devi by her maternal uncle. Puttilal had relatives who lived in Gorha Ka Purwa, Devidin’s village, and there had been some talk between the two families. Unknown to Phoolan, her mother had at first resisted the idea, saying that Puttilal was too old almost twenty years older than her daughter and was annoyed with her brother for having put the idea into her husband’s mind. Devidin had been adamant, saying the family was more prosperous than their own and that Phoolan needed a firm hand. He invited Puttilal to discuss the arrangement despite his wife’s protests but when the day came, Moola had shown no sign of her inner resentment.

Two charpais, covered with brightly coloured quilts, provided the only seating in their tiny mud-walled courtyard. The concept of privacy was non-existent in the village. Everyone’s life was constantly observed, unless the onlookers got bored or indifferent, so from the time Puttilal arrived with an older man either his father or a relative a crowd gathered steadily in the doorway leading to the street. Phoolan was indoors dressing for the occasion, in a sullen and gloomy mood, surrounded by her younger sisters and other girls of her own age from the village. Her hair had been washed and oiled, her clothes freshly scrubbled. The only new thing she was given to wear was a pink dupatta a thin veil with which she had been instructed to cover her head before facing the man she was to marry.

Devidin sat with his young son on his lap, facing Puttilal and his unknown relative. Shiv Narain was proof of his manhood. His daughters were proof of his burden. Mannu sat beside him, while Moola was busy handing out tea and sweets to the guests. The atmosphere was tense, the conversation stilted as the village audience watched with growing curiosity. The children where the most bold, darting in and out of the courtyard. Moola, used to their ways, gave the odd one a shove, telling them to keep out of the way.

Mannu had felt a deep sense of sadness that day, as he studied the man his favourite cousin was to marry. Puttilal was austere and humourless, a man who looked older than his years, whereas Phoolan Devi was still a high-spirited child, full of fun and laughter, mischief and rebellion. She had barely spoken to Mannu that day, treating him like a collaborator but, as he explained, he had been a helpless observe like the rest. Years later she was to turn to him for help, but on that midsummer afternoon neither of them could have predicted what was to follow.

Eventually, having run out of small talk, Puttilal’s relative impatiently came to the point, “Can we at least see the girl? Time is getting on and we wish to come to some definite arrangement today before leaving.”

Moola, by then busy frying puris, shouted into the house. “Bitia! What’s taking you so long? Come out here.” Phoolan emerged from the house, her head covered as instructed, eyes glued to the floor, and sat down beside her cousin without saying a word.

In her presence they talked, negotiated her worth, as Puttilal and the older man scrutinized her without inhibition. They seemed unimpressed, but that, as Mannu explained, was probably because they wanted to strike a good bargain and not seen over-eager. His uncle, Devidin, sensing their lack of enthusiasm said, “Vo sai hai.” (She’s chaste.) “Kisi ne uspe haath nahin dala.” (No one has laid a hand on her.)

“That’s not the point,” Puttilal was quick to riposte. “If we didn’t know that already, we would not have come. Our family is well respected in the village. What I want to know is, how much do you want?”

“I’m a poor man,” Devidin responded. “As you can, she is young. She’s a hard worker too. She can work like a man.”

“We have not had any easy time either,” Puttilal replied. “My first wife died. I’m a poor man too. Now about a milch cow and a bicycle for your son?”

Devidin emphasized the fact that he needed money, cash.

Suddenly there was a distraction. The village “mad woman”, to whom Phoolan had been good from time to time, who had bathed with her and Rukhmini in the river, pushed her way through the crowd, shouting at Devidin, her hand on her ship. “Have you no shame? A cow and a bicicle? You call me mad but you are the ones who are mad trapped in your greed!” She flounced off, forcing a passage back through the onlookers, abusing all in sight, her skinny frame just barely covered by a torn shabby sari. Her intervention was in vain.