Tracking India's Bandit Queen

As far as Phoolan is concerned, her entire life has left very distinguishable psychological scars. How much of this is owing to the ghastly experiences of the first twenty years of her life, and how much is owing to her experiences as a dacoit, I don't know—and I don't think that even Phoolan is able to separate the two. She has obviously suppressed a great deal of her life experiences; much of her inconsistency as a person stems from this. In some cases, of course, her reinvention of herself is contrived and highly studied; but in others it appears to be a natural byproduct of having suppressed the memory of so many of the atrocities she has endured and is alleged to have inflicted on others.

Throughout "India's Bandit Queen" there's repeated emphasis on image, drama, and film. You refer to Phoolan as a thespian who "always knows precisely which image to project." You say she's "inordinately fond" of film music, which she apparently would often sing in front of her captives. Former dacoit Mohar Singh has recently starred in a Hindi film—as himself. And now there's the controversial film about Phoolan. How much has India's huge film industry informed the behavior of people such as Mohar Singh and Phoolan—and, for that matter, how dramatically has it affected the national consciousness?

The film industry has had a profound impact on the national consciousness. It's almost a symbiotic relationship. Cinema is really the informing element in India, especially among the half a billion people who live in the villages. Film is the only entertainment they have; it is the influencer of behavior and attitudes. It determines what people wear, what they eat, who their role models are.

In Jora, the market town mentioned in my piece that has traditionally been a way-station for the dacoits, there are six or seven cinemas, in a market town of only twenty-thousand people. The dacoits would come out of the ravines and into Jora in order to shop, to pray, to relax—and to go to the movies. In fact, Phoolan told me that in the two years that she was on the run from the law she would take absolutely impossible risks just to go to the movies. What's interesting is that while Phoolan and other dacoits have been influenced by film, they have also had a huge influence on the industry itself. The Indian Gone with the Wind is a film called Sholay, which has broken all box-office records. It's a film about dacoit life. No matter where you are in India, even though this film came out perhaps twenty years ago, you'll find movie houses and video shops still featuring it. All Indian films pit the good guys against the bad guys, the white hats against the black. Dacoits in films always wear white hats, so to speak.

Phoolan is illiterate, but will she have your story read to her? How do you think she'll react?

I presume she'll have it read to her—I've sent her a copy, along with copies to two of her lawyers and a couple of her friends. And knowing Phoolan, even if she doesn't get my copy of the piece, she'll make a point of finding it, because she is very conscious of what is being written about her. It's awfully hard to say how she'll react. I think it's a fair treatment of her, but . . . Phoolan loves to sue people. It's a new weapon for her.

For both of the pieces you've done for The Atlantic this year you've traveled far and hard—and have come back with stories that must have been extraordinarily difficult to get. In the process you've managed to be in touch with heads of state, religious leaders, undercover intelligence officers, "terrorists," rebels, police chiefs, and diplomatic personnel. How in the world did you get so connected (or tenacious)?

Well, it's partially owing to the fact that my husband and I have lived and worked as foreign correspondents in the Middle East and Asia for nearly eighteen years. Governments and situations simply don't change that much in this part of the world. So both my husband and I just have a lot of experience. That plus the fact that we've been based in places where we simply came into contact with extremely unusual people and found ourselves in extremely unusual situations.

What's next?

I'm at work on my first book, to be titled Portrait of Egypt: A Journey through the World of Militant Islam. To a large extent it will be an expansion of my Atlantic and New Yorker writings about Egypt and Islam. I'm very excited about it.