The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff --- Quotes
Mohan Gulrajani
The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff --- Quotes
1.
“Women were built to endure the rules men make.”
2.
“Well, I don't have the joys of motherhood,"
Geeta said after the women were emptied of excuses. Her voice was patient, but
her smile was feral. "But I do have the joys of sleep and money.”
3.
“The amount of bullshit that fell from that
fucker’s mouth could fertilize half of India.”
4. “She wasn't respected here, but she was feared, and fear had been very kind to Geeta.”
5.
“The unfortunate status quo is that it is tough for
women everywhere, and female friendships are what will carry us through the
darkness and absurdity of life. Such connections, however, are not always
easily forged in a world keen to divide, mark, and label as “other.”
6.
“Forgiveness doesn’t mean I’m right back where I
started.”
7.
“Wounds from one battle prepare you for the other”
8.
“For me, fiction is when research meets compassion;
I believe this is often why facts don't change people's minds, but stories do.”
9.
“She resented being put in a position where those
were her choices: violence or violation. She didn’t want to be built to endure;
a long-suffering saint tossed by the whims of men. She wanted, for once, not to
be handed the short end of the stick by a system that expected gratitude in
return.”
10.
“But from the get-go, they trained boys not to
apologize and women to not expect it of them, to instead mutate pain into an
art form.”
11.
“Why was I so busy protecting the copper I had with
you, that I destroyed the gold I had with her?”
12.
“Exactly, we’re a bunch of housewives. We make your
food, we watch your children, we hear your business. We know your lives well
enough to ruin them. So, I’d be careful.”
13.
“If the natural world afforded them no protection,
then a supernatural story might. A way of terrifying men into considering a
woman's well-being from time to time.”
14.
“But I think that she was capable of anything
because everything had already happened to her. She was fearless because she'd
already suffered what the rest of us live in fear of.”
15. “She loved him no longer, it was true, but often the memory of love was more powerful than the love itself.
16.
“He broke the contract first. When someone
threatens your body, you have every right to protect yourself.”
17.
“Anyone could sympathize with that scenario—a woman
who couldn’t be, in their view, a woman. It was easier to throw pity than to
wrap their minds around a woman who preferred it that way. But to Geeta, the
actual saddest thing, the real waste, was a woman with children she didn’t
want.”
18.
“Geeta suddenly wanted to tell her to retain some
pride. To withhold parts of herself because there were plenty of people like
her husband waiting to pilfer what they could. It was unlike Geeta, not only to
intrude in others’ affairs, but also to offer advice. Advice was a cousin of
caring; apathy was Geeta’s mantra.”
19.
“In a world where her vagina was a liability, was
there even room for petty things like love?”
20.
“You don’t have to love the assholes oppressing
you, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
21.
“You’re wrong, I’m right, and I’m definitely not
sorry.”
22.
“But forgiveness doesn’t mean I’m right back where
I started.”
23.
“If Phoolan Devi didn’t feel regret for her crimes,
perhaps it was because, to her, they weren’t crimes at all, simply justice.”
24.
“For me, fiction is when research meets compassion;
I believe this is often why facts don’t change people’s minds, but stories do.”
25.
“She’d always regarded Phoolan’s life as delineated
by gender: one woman against scores of men who constantly used her womanhood to
dehumanize her, to grind her, literally, into the dirt.”
26.
“I guess intentions are what matter. Sometimes to
do the right thing, you have to do the wrong thing first.”
27.
“But little was monochromatic in marriage and even
in abuse, because there were other parts, too, parts she’d loved, parts that,
when she wasn’t vigilant, still drew drops of unwilling tenderness from her.”
28.
“That girl’s achievement mattered little; she—as
Geeta herself would feel later in life—was only as successful as those around
her allowed her to be.”
29.
“The unfortunate status quo is that it is tough for
women everywhere, and female friendships are what will carry us through the
darkness and absurdity of life.”
30.
“Biscuits and tomato Lay’s were a perfectly
acceptable dinner some nights. And (this might’ve been the magic of converting
an impossibility into the illusion of choice) she wouldn’t have done well with
babies, primarily because she just didn’t like them very much.”
31. “Though Diwali celebrated light banishing darkness, Ravana was not a flat villain. And Ram was not an infallible hero.”
32.
“She identified with the Bandit Queen’s
disappointing revelation about marriage: the necklace men tied to them, it was
no prettier than the rope tying a goat to a tree, depriving it of freedom.”
33.
“The provenance of a churel is a woman wronged. A
pregnant woman’s demise. Death at the hands of vicious in-laws or a violent
husband. Dying during childbirth or within the twelve-day period of impurity
afterward. Whenever a woman died grossly unfulfilled, she’d return as a churel.
Those surviving her could attempt to stymie her transformation: bury rather
than burn her, weigh her down with stones, dress her grave with thorns, set her
in the ground facedown so as to disorient her. Were that she’d been given such
healthy regard in life, rendering such measures moot. Nevertheless, if her
revenge-lust was potent enough, she’d find her way home and so it would begin.
Only a man would imagine retribution wrapped in lust rather than just painful
death. Only a man would morph a wounded woman into a hideous monster. Only a
man would then, for the sake of phallic pride, attribute her with
shape-shifting powers, so that the creature he’d lain down with over and over
again was deceptively gorgeous.
The churel was a cautionary tale created by women for women? If the natural
world afforded them no protection, then a supernatural story might. A way of
terrifying men into considering a woman’s well-being from time to time.”
Professor (Dr.) M. L. Gulrajani F.S.D.C. (UK)
Former Professor and Dean (I.R&D), IIT Delhi
601 - B, Hamilton Court, DLF City Phase - IV,
Gurugram, 122009, Haryana
Mo. +919818253979