I am Phoolan. Flower. And even a flower, when stepped on enough times, grows thorns the size of daggers.
Do not weep for me. Weep for the world that made a queen out of a ghost.
Now they write my name in the same breath as “bandit.” But ask the parched earth: when the rain comes, is it criminal? Ask the fire: when it cleanses the rotten field, is it evil?
And when they caught me, when they stripped me and made me walk through the prison yard on my knees, I did not die. That is the part they always forget. You can break a woman’s bones. You cannot break her witness.
They say I rode into Behmai like a goddess of ruin. No. I rode in like a wound that learned to bite back. I did not kill for politics. I killed for the girl they drowned in the well. I did not take revenge. I took account.
So I became the flood.
