Phoolan often talked about violent death

The two women, Mala Sen, author of Bandit Queen, and Seema Biswas, actress in the role of Phoolan Devi in the film Bandit Queen, who have brought justice, fairness and perhaps a touch of glamour to the identity of Phoolan Devi are now shocked and saddened by the brutal killing of a parliamentarian who once roamed the Chambal Valley as a dreaded dacoit.

"Phoolan would often say to me and her lawyer, "I was born into violence and I would die into violence," says Mala Sen, the well-known author who wrote about Phoolan's life. "And I would tell her, 'don't talk rubbish'. But it seems her words came true."

Talking to Gulf News, Sen remembered how Phoolan had often told her of the threats she received constantly and yet ignored them. She was a woman who symbolised the oppression that backward communities undergo in this country and sincerely tried to do good work for the people of her constituency in Mirzapur, she says.

"She had a gift of communication and the people loved her." The last time she met her was in 1997 but the two maintained contact right from the time they met more than 11 years back when Phoolan was still in jail.

Though Sen knows the family of Phoolan well, she did not go for the funeral and plans to write to them later. "At this moment of grief, when I myself am hounded by the media, imagine what their plight must be," she says and adds that Phoolan was very close to her family who adored her.

Sen says Phoolan never carried the burden of her past and "rather tried to make light of her problems. She had a great sense of humour and laughter. We were friends despite our contradictions."One of them was their views on child labour which Phoolan justified since the children were the only support for jobless and poverty stricken parents.

"She told me, 'You do not know the level of poverty as I know. If I start making it an issue, the children will be arrested and I don't trust the police. You don't know what politics is all about'," says Sen.

And as for Seema Biswas, the stage and film actress who played the role of Phoolan Devi in Shekhar Kapoor's film Bandit Queen, she recalls her as an exceptional woman with a strong will power.

"It was a unique experience for me to play that lifetime role of bandit queen who was so wronged in her youth," Biswas told Gulf News in an interview. It was a role not meant to glorify Phoolan Devi who had killed 22 upper caste men from Behmai village in Uttar Pradesh but to portray the utter humiliation of being repeatedly raped and made to walk naked in the village by the upper castes."

The film, she says, tried to focus on the terror and injustices that a woman from a backward community underwent from a tender age of 11 onwards when she was married off to a man three times older than her.

Biswas's brilliant portrayal of the dacoit of the Chambal from where Phoolan operated with her gang of men has left an impact on filmgoers here and abroad. For a woman who stood as a symbol of the struggle against the injustices of caste discrimination and oppression, Phoolan Devi's killing on Wednesday afternoon has certainly shocked all those who knew her.

Biswas says that she was being interviewed at the All India Radio office when she was asked about her role as Phoolan Devi. "An office boy later told us that Phoolan Devi was murdered. At first I thought it was a rumour but when I got into my car, I heard talks on FM radio about her. Yet, I could not confirm from anywhere. And when I finally reached home, I found a big group of mediapersons waiting for me who told me that she was gunned down in Delhi in the afternoon. I was saddened and thought about the irony of it all. Here was a woman who had survived the cruelty of society and the wilderness of the Chambal Valley once swarming with dacoits only to be killed in the high security zone of Delhi."

To Biswas, Phoolan truly deserved all the fame and the good life that she had found as a parliamentarian. Though Biswas says she met her only once, her encounter with Phoolan only left a sense of amazement as to how a lone woman without any kind of support from the world around her could lead a band of dacoits through one of the rugged terrains in the country.

All through the making of the film Bandit Queen, the jail authorities did not allow her to meet the imprisoned Phoolan. "I managed to learn about her from photographs and through informative material from various sources. I was excited that I was going to depict the life of a living character and I became desperate to meet her."

But that was to happen only in January 1995 after the film was made. "I was staying at Ashoka Hotel in Delhi to attend a film festival when Shekhar Kapur (director of the film) called me to his room saying he had a surprise for me. Thinking that some prominent film personalities had come, I went and saw a lady who said 'namaste' to me. I realised that this was Phoolan Devi. She came up to me and hugged me. I told her I was sorry I could not meet her earlier and was, in fact, a little frightened to meet her. Reacting to this she laughed loudly."