Phoolan Devi in Mount Pleasant
BY Clint Burnham
Contrary to news reports, India’s infamous Bandit Queen ended up in a suburban neighbourhood in North America. Her sons ran a limousine company so, often when business wasn’t too up, there’d be two or three parked on the block along with a tow truck they had for weekend cash.
She went jogging every day in a turquoise track suit, Japanese geisha T-shirt that looked like a Duran Duran album cover, and a $15,000 24-carat nose stud—a bright yellow flat lotus on her broad left nostril. Then when she got home she’d go return bottles to the grocery store a couple blocks away, retracing her route.
Once, at the video store, she was looking at Mr. Majestyk when she saw someone renting the movie about her.
That is some story you have there, eh?
The renter was this tall guy, grey blond hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Oh, do you know her story?
Sure, sure. But that it is not her story. Mister, that is his story.
Oh? The guy who made it?
Yes, it is the director. He managed to offend every religion and caste and village in India with that film.
Oh certainly, it takes place in the country.
It is not about that. There is no country like that. We are not savages, you know. I had a cellular and the internet, you know, when we were living there.
So she told him off. Got her Charles Bronson video. On the way home she did a little jogging. It felt good.
That night the tall guy with blond grey hair watched her movie. A day or two later he ran into her in the grocery store lineup. She was getting Swanson’s TV dinners for her sons.
He looked at this squat woman in a turquoise tracksuit. Her hair was brushed back into a bun, her face was wide, she was a wide girl, she reminded him of Rigoberta Menchú.
He remembered what she had done in the film, what had been done to her, lining up her gang rapists to massacre, the pure catharsis of revenge.
He said to her, I know someone who’d like to paint your picture. Would you like to have a cup of tea together.
