The Good Girls. Sonia Faleiro

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      An Accusation Is Made

      Rajiv Kumar had a side job as a government teacher, but his real job was farming. While working his land he had observed Padma and Lalli. They were as alike as two grains of rice, and they spent all day in the fields. Now one girl, he couldn’t tell which, had a phone to her ear. He didn’t like it.

Some villages in Uttar Pradesh forbade unmarried women from using phones.2 A phone was a key to a door that led outside the village via calls and messaging apps. The villagers were afraid of what would happen if women stepped through this door. They might get ideas such as whom to marry.

Records showed that 95 per cent of Indians still married within their caste,3 and anyone who didn’t attracted attention. In 2013 a young woman from Katra village took off with a man from a different caste. Her father was so ashamed he couldn’t show his face, people said. The woman had chosen to marry against his will, to have what was known as a love marriage rather than leaving it to her father to arrange a partner for her. She had violated the honour code and would never see her parents again – for their safety, and certainly hers. A few months after that, it was the turn of a girl from the next-door hamlet of Jati.

      The news of the elopements moved like a swarm of whirring insects, landing first here and then there until all the nearby villages were warned: change is coming, be vigilant, be ready to act.

In 2014, for the first time, the National Crime Records Bureau, which publishes the number of cases registered for crimes, published data on honour killings. Twenty-eight cases were reported in the country,4 but everyone knew the true number was hundreds, if not thousands, more. Girls were killed for marrying outside their caste or outside their religion and sometimes having premarital sex was reason enough.

With the killing the family’s honour was reclaimed or, at least, the other villagers were given notice that the family had taken the errant behaviour seriously and done their best to right a wrong. The Constitution had existed for only decades while Hindu religious beliefs dated back thousands of years, said one father who was accused of killing his daughter.5

      In Katra, the rule was that boys could own phones, but girls had to get permission to use them.

      Even so, Padma and Lalli knew what to do with a phone better than their mothers who could identify neither letters nor numbers. Padma often called her maternal uncles, reciprocating the effort they had put into keeping in touch after their only sister, Padma’s biological mother, had died. Lalli texted her elder brother who worked for a car parts manufacturer far away. The girls used the torch feature to light their way into the pit of the night.

      Rajiv Kumar didn’t know this, because he didn’t know them. He didn’t even know their parents beyond the usual ‘sab theek?’ – all well? – but a girl’s life was everyone’s business. He was determined to do his duty. His plot was near some land owned by a close relative of the girls named Babu ‘Nazru’ Ram. With his bowl cut, paan-stained teeth and sloppy smile Nazru was approachable. At twenty-six, he wasn’t that much older than the girls.

      ‘They shouldn’t be out in public with a mobile phone,’ Rajiv Kumar said, speaking in Braj Bhasha, the language of these parts. ‘Who knows who they’re talking to?’ Although the fields adjoined the village, the walking distance from the Shakya house to the orchard was ten minutes or more. The orchard wasn’t even visible from the house, which was located in a spiderweb of lanes. Rajiv Kumar’s implication was clear. The girls chose that particular time because they were alone, they chose that place because it was secluded. To remove any doubt, he used the word ‘chakkar’ to indicate there was something crooked about all this, something off balance. ‘The girls in your family are romancing someone,’ he said.

      Nazru agreed that it didn’t look good.

      ‘You should let their parents know,’ Rajiv Kumar said.

      A few days passed, and Rajiv Kumar again saw the girls talking on the phone. He again sought out Nazru who explained that a complaint could backfire. The girls’ parents might accuse him of slander. Rumours were butterflies, they might say. If word got around, who would marry Padma? Who would have Lalli?

      Nazru understood that it was one thing for Rajiv Kumar to talk. It was another for a relative, a first cousin no less, to level an accusation of such grave seriousness. And there was the other matter to consider, which was that he depended on the family. Everyone in the village struggled, but he had an asthmatic father to care for and a brother people called crazy. The Shakyas sometimes hired him to work their land. If things got truly difficult, they could be counted on to come through with cash.

      So Nazru said nothing – but mindful of his duty, he started to watch the girls.

      His behaviour didn’t go unnoticed.

      ‘He ogles us,’ Padma said to a friend with disgust.

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