The first part of my recent trip to India took me all accross Uttar Pradesh (UP), but it wasn't until I reached Pushkar in Rajasthan that I discovered this book. It's an account of the first half of the life of Phoolan Devi, the daughter of a poor UP farmer.
UP is presented in the book as a kind of wild west, with tiny rural towns under the control of various desperado gangs called dacoits. Phoolan's family has no direct connection with the dacoits, however. Her troubles start when relations on her father's side of the family decide to steal their portion of the family land. Without land, a family of subsistance farmers is lost, and the evil uncle manages to make life miserable for Phoolan and her family. Without going into the details of their suffering, the final straw against Phoolan is a staged abduction by dacoits to discredit her in the eyes of the police. With nowhere left to go, she eventually makes a place for herself in the gang, even falling in love with its leader. From there it is sort of a Butch Cassedy and the Sundance Kid story, only Butch and Sundance never did it.
The comparisons between Phoolan and Robin Hood or other famous outlaws are easy, but this is also a story about the roles of caste and gender in rural India. The abuses she suffers at the hands of upper-caste Thakurs (e.g. repeated assault and gang rape) leads Phoolan to take revenge on entire Thakur villiages—a kind of randomized tit-for-tat. Various gangs often suffered all kinds of internal conflict because of caste differences. One gang famous for its peaceful (and rare) mixture of Hindus and Muslims still refused to accept women. The only time Phoolan was able to transcend her position as a women is when she was holding a rifle, and even then only the person she pointed it at was affected.
This book's only flaw is that there is no question about the author's allegiance; this is not hard-nosed objective reporting. She sympathizes greatly with Phoolan, which is probably the only reason she enjoyed such open access to Phoolan and her family. In some ways, her narration of her own travels around UP chasing Phoolan's story are a small demonstratoin of the forces that women, the poor, and the low-caste still face. She is at the mercy of the police, petty bureaucrats, and anyone else reaping some benefit from the status quo who would rather not have it ungergo any kind of scrutiny.
The book ends with Phoolan in jail for nearly 10 years. She, along with sevral other famous dacoits, negotiated a surrender with the police. One of her conditions was to stay in prison for no more than eight years. Instead of being freed with her gang members, she is alone and fighting extradition back to UP where she would almost certainly receive the death sentence from a very expeidant and vengeful trial. But the story continues. After her eventual release, Phoolan mounted a successful campaign for a seat in India's parliment, but was assassinated before she could take office. Considering her intimate knowledge of police brutality and corruption, I am not surprised.
Someday I would like to see a movie about a genius who is not crazy. After all, there are plenty of movies about other things that have never existed.
For those who have not seen the movie or heard anything about it, I am not going to reveal anything about John Nash's insanity. It's manifestations are woven into the movie as cleverly as they probably were into his own life, and if you go in with a sufficient degree of ignorance, you will have a nice eureka moment about it.
To be perfectly clear, I liked the movie, and I recommend watching it. It was engaging, the characters were good, Russel Crowe was great. I'm glad he got another non-toughguy roll, since not nearly enough people saw The Insider.
But I have one complaint: the movie does not ask any questions. Nash's wife Alicia (Jennifer Connelly) wonders if she should leave him, but her turmoil is her own and the viewer is not asked to take it up—vis. The Mexican: "How do you know when enough is enough?" Nash wonders if he is going to survive, but we all know he will—especially me, who walked into the theater about 25 minutes early and saw the end of the snowing before mine. (Besides, it would be a bit luche to kill him off in the movie when he is still alive in the real world.) There are no ambiguities about the nature of mental illness—vis. Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. There is no hint of the old debate over whether the world essentially reduces to numbers or poetry. The movie does not even question the value of the recognition Nash so desperately craves.
I guess I enjoyed the movie the way I enjoy vanilla ice cream. It's good, but it's better with chocolate sauce and strawberries. Actaully, Jennifer Connelly might be good that way too.
