is murder even a big deal?

Desperate housewives of Gujarat get their revenge

Fiction, 2023

For the sake of the point I’m about to make, I went to Spotify, chose a random Daily Mix, and clicked Shuffle. I got “These Days” by Nico, and the early draft of this newsletter was written with her moody voice. This is all to say, I love sad media, as Nico and a tailored algorithm so gracefully proved. It was then a welcome shock to read a novel that didn’t just move me with a great story but one that left me feeling actively happier than I had been before.

The Bandit Queens is a novel that almost reads like a Bollywood screenplay; it’s heavy on the dialogue, quick with jokes, covers a broad spectrum of emotions, and is camp to the extreme. Centred around Geeta, the story covers the women who are part of a microloan group in a Gujarat village. Geeta is the local witch, partly because she doesn’t adhere to the social norms that make up social civility and partly because her husband mysteriously disappeared years ago—and everyone thinks she killed him. With the freedom that a widow status lends, Geeta is happily, albeit lonelily, working on her small jewellery-making business. But then Farah, one of the women in her loan group, hounds Geeta for help, showing up at her door with a busted lip and bruised eyes. The desire is simple. Farah wants to murder her abusive husband, and she assumes Geeta knows how.

And so, the bubble of serenity is burst. While the line of women looking to “remove their nose ring” increases, Geeta finds herself at the centre of a mass murder plot. Friendships, romance, guns, and a fairly useless dog ensue. The Bandit Queens isn’t a groundbreaking story, but it’s got such firecracker characters that each page emanates genuine mirth. Upon finishing it, I was dazed with joy, and I don’t know anyone else who wouldn’t feel the same.

Song - get him back!

Film - Queen