The Good Girls. Sonia Faleiro

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      Adrenaline in the Fields, Tears at Home

      It was a quarter past eleven when Lalli’s father arrived in Katra. Every man that Sohan Lal had approached for help that night had turned him down, refusing to drive around in the darkness. His relative Harbans had finally persuaded a friend to bring out his motorcycle.

      The villagers were regrouping around Sohan Lal when they saw a light on the path adjoining the fields. They looked at it with interest, until they realised it was just another motorcycle. There were plenty around here. Most paid it no more heed. They still didn’t know that Pappu had the girls. But the two Shakya brothers, who did know the truth, grew agitated. The motorcycle was leaving Jati, where the Yadavs lived, for a road that led out of the district. If there was even the slightest chance that the girls were on it, now was the time to act. ‘Let’s go!’ they cried.

      Some of the men took off on foot, grunting through the crops. The brothers tried to get a car, but where to start? They quickly settled on a more easily available two-wheeler. But by the time they were back in the fields, fifteen minutes had passed, and the motorcycle was gone. Ram Babu who had led this effort looked helplessly around.

      At 11.30 p.m., Sohan Lal had a run-in with Rajiv Kumar, the man who had seen Padma and Lalli talking on the phone and had complained about it.

      ‘What’s the matter,’ Rajiv Kumar said, glancing curiously over at the gathered men. The men fell silent.

      ‘It’s nothing,’ Sohan Lal replied. He didn’t want any more people getting involved. Understanding that he had been dismissed, Rajiv Kumar went home.

      The men continued searching, and it seemed to some like they were doing a thorough job. But while the plots were tiny, the fields were vast, deep and full of hiding places: groves of trees, ditches, piles of dung cakes. Haystacks, shacks and taro plants two feet high. A search party twice the size, with the benefit of daylight, would still have their task cut out for them. At night, only chance could reveal someone who wished to stay hidden.

      Two small girls, they could be anywhere.

      Later, a farmer said that the search party didn’t venture into some partly constructed houses located in the fields. ‘There could have been any number of men hiding inside, and we wouldn’t have known,’ he said. They missed several plots of land just because they were full of dunghills. They didn’t even make it all the way into the orchard.

      At 12.30 a.m. on 28 May, members of the search party started to make their excuses and peel away. A friend said that he really must keep watch over his harvest. Another pressed his hands against his temple and complained of a headache. The relative, Harbans, fell asleep on a charpoy outside the Shakya house.

      Inside the house, the Shakya women were clustered in heaving groups. They didn’t know for sure, but they knew, nonetheless. With the men gone they relied on friends to call relatives and forewarn them.

      The caller who phoned Lalli’s older brother to pass on the news was so distraught that she couldn’t make herself understood. Virender was hours away in Noida and unable to be of immediate help. He dialled his older sister who lived with her husband in a village closer to home. ‘Something has happened,’ he said. ‘Call and find out what.’

      Phoolan Devi wasn’t in a position to help either. Her husband had a motorbike but there was no question of plunging into the night. ‘It would be good if they are found soon,’ she thought. ‘Our honour will be saved.’