When he was nine years old, Prabaker was sent to Bombay, where he was apprenticed to an uncle who drove a taxi, and lived in a large inner-city slum. Rukhmabai began to expand her morning prayers, with the hopes and plans she made for the future of her family. Then she suffered a miscarriage. In less than a year, she miscarried twice more. Doctors concluded that her uterus had been scarred after the birth of her third child. They recommended, and carried out, a total hysterectomy. She was twenty-six years old.
Rukhmabai's heart wandered through the empty rooms of her life: the rooms reserved for the three babies lost in miscarriages, and all the other lives that might've been. For two years she was inconsolable. Even Kishan's wonderful smile, summoned through his own tears, failed to rouse her. Forlorn and broken-hearted, she languished in misery and the minimal routine of caring for her daughters. The laughter went out of her, and sadness settled on the neglected fields.
Rukhmabai's soul was dying, and she might've fallen into that sorrow forever, but a cataclysmic event that threatened the whole village roused her from her grieving. A band of dacoits, or armed bandits, settled in the area and began to demand tributes. A man in a neighbouring village was hacked with a machete. A woman in the same village was raped by the dacoits. Then they shot and killed a resister in Kishan's village.
Rukhmabai had known the dead man very well. He'd been one of Kishan's cousins, and had married a girl from Rukhmabai's own village. Every man, woman, and child in Sunder attended the funeral. At its end, Rukhmabai addressed the assembled villagers.
Her hair was awry, and her amber eyes blazed with rage and determination. She harangued those who wanted to appease the dacoits, exhorting them to resist and fight and kill, if necessary, in defence of their lives and their land. Astonished as much by her sudden animation, after two years of grief's torpor, as by her martial speech, the villagers were inspirited. There and then, they devised a plan of action and resistance.
Word reached the dacoits that the people of Sunder village were determined to fight. Threats, skirmishes, and exploratory raids finally led the boiling conflict to the point where a battle was inevitable. The dacoits delivered a menacing warning that on a given day the villagers must surrender a considerable tribute, or suffer terrible consequences.
The people armed themselves with sickles, axes, staves, and knives. The women and children were evacuated to a neighbouring village. Fear and regret swept through the ranks of the men who remained. Several men argued that their struggle was foolhardy, and that tribute was less painful than death. The brothers of the murdered man stalked among them, giving encouragement and consolation while they castigated the backsliders for their cowardice.
The alarm went up that men were approaching on the city road. The villagers concealed themselves behind hastily erected barricades between their mud houses. Exhilarated and afraid, they were at the point of striking when they realised that the men were allies. Hearing of the war with the dacoits a week before, Prabaker had gathered a group of six friends and cousins from the city slum, where he lived, and he'd set out to join his family.
He was just fifteen at the time, and the eldest of his friends was only eighteen, but they were street fighters from one of Bombay's toughest quarters. One of them, Raju, a tall boy with the handsome face and bouffant hairstyle of a Bombay movie star, had a gun. He showed the pistol to the villagers, and gave heart to them all.
The dacoits, arrogant and over-confident, swaggered into the village half an hour before sunset. The first blood-curdling threat was still on their leader's lips when Raju stepped from his concealment and walked toward the bandits, firing once for every third step. Axes, sickles, knives, staves, and rocks poured from the barricade walls, hurled to deadly effect by the desperate farmers. Raju never broke his stride, and with his last bullet he struck the leader of the dacoits in the chest at close range. The man was dead, the villagers said, before he hit the ground.
The rest of the wounded dacoits scattered, and were never seen again. The body of the fallen leader was carried to Jamner District police post. All the villagers told the same story: they'd resisted the dacoits, and in the confusion of battle the bandits had shot one of their own men. Raju's name was never mentioned.
After feasting for two days, the young men returned with Prabaker to the city. Wild, brave Raju died in a bar room fight a year later. Two of the other boys died in similarly violent circumstances. Another was serving a long sentence in prison for a crime of passion, involving the love of an actress and the enmity of a rival.
