Moola spoke for the first time, directly to Puttilal, insisting on a gauna, the local term for an agreement that ensures a period of time before the child bride moves in with her husband. Three years is what she demanded and eventually the deal was struck. Puttilal added 100 rupees to his original offer roughly £5 at the time.

“After that,” said Mannu, “I don’t know much more. She was married after I left and I did not see her again until a few years later.”

I knew I had met another storyteller with a remarkable ability to remember detail and asked if I could visit him again. He said he would travel with us to Gwalior and visit Phoolan in jail. He said he knew a lot more about Phoolan Devi but could only talk of what he had in mind after speaking to her. I agreed and said I intended to travel to Phoolan’s village one day. He advised me to speak to the “mad woman” who had been rejected by society but was “not so mad after all”. I said I would; and, many months later, I did.

Talking to Moola later that night, I asked what happened to the gauna agreement. I had read that Phoolan had gone to her husband less then three months after her marriage.

She shook her head and in a tearful voice said, “Bitia, poverty is a terrible thing. We are forced to do many things because of it. How else can I explain?”

I decided not to push the question. I knew I could get the answer from Phoolan; I had merely been testing the facts, trying to work out the correct sequence of events.

Phoolan Devi told me, much later in a letter, responding to the same question:

“He came for me within the next few months, saying he needed his wife. He told my father that unless he agreed, the marriage would be cancelled and he would find another wife who was more suitable. My father agreed to let me go, saying it would add to my ‘dishonour’ if I didn’t.”

As Phoolan left thehouse, clutching a small bundle of clothes, her mother wept and her father took the cow out to pasture as her brother fell off the bicycle that was too big for him to ride. She walked in silence, a few paces behind her husband, knowing that one part of her life had ended. The man who led the way to the village of Maheshpur Ki Mariya was a stranger to her and someone she had already grown to fear.

Through her diaries she said: “I did not understand the meaning of ‘husband’ and whenhe made passes at me I would scream and shout, not knowing the meaning of these gestures. My fear angered him and he would hit me. He treated me like an animal. He would touch my breasts and say that I was like a baby teetar a partridge and asked when I would mature. He was a pervert, in my eyes, and I soon learned that his first wife had died in childbirth at the age of fourteen. The child had also died. When he took me to his home I was eleven.

“Fear made me fall ill. My mother heard of this and sent my father to fetch me. At first he resisted, saying that the last time he had visited e he had been insulted and humiliated. They had demanded money to ‘put up’ with me. Still, my mother pleaded and he came. She said if God granted the blessing of children he should not mete out poverty with the same hand. When my father arrived to take me home, late one night, he was abused and insulted again. My husband said he had been ‘misled’ about the kind of woman I was and would only have me back if my father paid him 10,000 rupees.

“I remember it was night and pouring with rain but they insisted that if he could not pay the money he should take me and leave. I had high fever so my father carried me three kos [six miles], onhis back, wrapped in a blanket, to Sikandra thana [district]. There he found a doctor who diagnosed my illness as measles. My father bought some medicines for ten rupees and carried me to the bus station. I lay there a whole night waiting for the early morning bus to our village.

“My mother, seeing my condition when I arrived home, sobbed and said it would have been better if I had died. When could they find 10,000 rupees and how could they afford to keep me for the rest of their lives? In addition, Puttilal had more or less thrown me out and word would spread in the village that I had brought ‘disgrace’ to my own family and to his. No one else would be prepared to marry me since I was still his ‘wife’ and everyone would hear that he had rejected me. My mother’s response shocked and hurt me but I knew what she was saying was correct. I had no future in the village. At the time, I felt too ill to care or think about it much. I was very glad to be home, whatever the consequences might be.

“When Maiyadin found out that I had been turned out of my husband’s house he arrived once more with the sarpanch and said I my father signed a stamped paper they would see that I was accepted back by Puttilal. In desperation my father was easily convinced and ready to sign, but someone drew my mother aside and explained that the paper, which none of us could read, carried a declaration that my father was not Biharilal’s real brother and therefore had no further claim over my grandfather’s land or property. When my mother heard this she caught hold o my father’s hand and said she would not let him sign anything, irrespective of whether I went back to my husband or not. Maiyadin was furious. I was thirteen or fourteen by then.”

During this time, Moola decided to send Phoolan away temporarily to the neighbouring village of Teoga to stay with a distant aunt whose daughter-in-law had just given birth. The visit, Moola thought, would serve two purpose. Phoolan could assist her aunt with household chores; and by the time she returned, they all hoped, the talk of how she had been dumped on the riverbank by Puttilal would have died down.

When Phoolan arrived at her aunt’s home, she was introduced to her son Kailash, recently married but bored with his existence, despite his wife and baby. Phoolan’s arrival in their household brought a new interest into his life. His cousin had seen much of life and had not lived in the shelter of domesticity like his wife. Phoolan had wit and humour and a sense of fun. Her sharp tongue, her confident spirit, despite everything she had suffered, impressed him and one day he invited her to accompany him to Kanpur so that he could show her the city. It was an exciting offer for Phoolan Devi, who had never visited any place larger than Kalpi. She had been to Allahbad with her father to attend court hearings, but that was different; all she knew of Allahabad was the journey from the bus-stop to the court and the rooms and corridors of the court house.

She travelled with Kailash to Kanpur in a bus. She found the city intimidating, baffling, and felt like a pauper in her village sari and cheap plastic sandals. Mesmerized by his attentions he bought her an array of glass bangles in different colours and walked her through market streets, pointing out various places she noticed little except him that day. Kailash seemed to know the city well and this too impressedher. He took her to visit a famous temple, where he said he wanted to marry her. She laughed, telling him no to be stupid, he was already married, with a child to prove it! To demonstrate his feelings, he placed a garland over her head in the inner shrine of the temple, telling her that “in spirit” she was his wife and the only one he wanted. Phoolan Devi had never known any man except Puttilal and the experience of a romance was new to her.

Kailash took her to a teashop, crowded with men. She felt conspicuous, being the only woman, but safe with her distant cousin. Here, too, he was considerate of her feelings and introduced her to the old woman whose son owned the shop. Phoolan talked to the old woman and watched the black and white television sex fixed high on one of the walls, fascinated by the moving picture. She recalled clips featuring Hindi songs, from films she had never seen. She observed Kailash talking to a group of young men playing cards. Later, on the way home, Kailash made some remark about “all of them” being baghis, dacoits. She did not believe him, thinking he was showing off, trying to impress her by hinting at secret connections with an underworld that most people in the area held in awe.

As the weeks went by, their affair continued, until one night Kailash’s wife confronted him. She had heard gossip in the village. Some children had apparently seen them bathing upstream, naked. Phoolan Devi expected her lover to stick to the vow he had made in the temple, but although he made some effort he eventually gave in to family pressure and agreed that she should be sent back to her parent’s home. Hurt and humiliated, once more the target of exaggerated rumours, Phoolan Devi took the boat jouney back across the river to Gorha Ka Purwa. It did not take long for the story to travel and for Maiyadin to convert it into public scandal.

I had occasion to visit Kailash’s village to meet Phoolan’s younger sister, Ramkali, who lived there with her husband and had recently borne their first child. By then Kailash was dead, though his widow and two children still lived in the same house with their in-laws. I was advised by Moola not to “get mixed up” with them, but I didn’t escape the gossip and fantasy. One old woman told me, “Phoolan Devi used to dance naked in the moonlight for that man!” Many suspected that Phoolan had been responsible for his death. However, the truth of the matter seems to be that he worked as a”casual member” for various dacoit gangs in the area, running errands, organizing food supplies and passing messages, for which he was evidently well paid. (His family lived in one of the few brick houses in the village.) It is possible that he overstepped the mark or betrayed a confidence, ending up shot dead by one of the smaller gangs in Uttar Pradesh. His brief affair with Phoolan Devi led to further conflict as she began to gain the reputation of being loose.

In her diary she wrote: “I continued to live with my parents and we all worked hard and lived peacefully for some time. Three of my sisters were still unmarried and my brother was still young. He was the first one in our family to attend school. My father had begun to farm a few fruits, like melon and watermelon, on land near the river which he had encroached on in desperation, and for a year or so we were comfortable, with an abundant crop.

“Then Suresh Chand, the second son o the sarpanch, began following me around. I was suspicious, because I knew his brother Ashok Chand was Maiyadin’s friend. I tried to ignore him but he started visiting my mother, always polite and respectful, saying he was on our side. She was taken in by him and always gave him a warm welcome, making him tea and so on.

“When she was not around, he would make obscene gestures, winking at me and showing me money. When I went to the well, he would whistle and flirt with me in public, throwing pebbles at my pitcher in fun. I told my mother but she said it was just part of his nature because he was young, and I should not take too much notice. On the whole she considered him to be quite harmless. He had succeeded in flattering her. I kept my distance, knowing deep down within myself that I could not trust him, but he became a regular visitor to our home. My father also welcomed his visits, thinking that at least one of the sarpanch’s sons was on our side.”