For more than a year now, I have not read a book of my choosing for myself.
Reading remains, in its many facets and prisms of accessibility, a privilege – and the freedom to read what one wishes continues to be a luxury.
During this time I have read poems, snatches of news articles, and fleeting glimpses of bus ads – but mostly I have spent the better part of the year reading things to my children. Board books with my now 14-month-old daughter, and larger, more substantial books with my soon to be six-year-old son.
(In this phase, I have learned more about the species of sharks than I need to know, and have memorized several classic children’s board books by heart.)
So now as I begin to recover a sense of self again, I have returned to a book I have read before: I, Phoolan Devi: The Autobiography of India's Bandit Queen. Now known as the ‘modern-day female Robin Hood’, Phoolan Devi’s story spans more than just her legacy of stealing from the rich to give to the poor.
The first time I read her story, I was struck by how vivid and detailed her memories were (and that she was illiterate and the book was entirely orally dictated and then translated into English). The desire to read it the first time was a simple act of wanting to know – a base-level curiosity.
Now, many years later I re-read the story of this legendary woman to parse more. Why exactly?
Journalist Rebecca Mead wrote in her book My Life in Middlemarch how the original meaning of the book Middlemarch evolved with her over time as she got older. How during each re-reading, she gained something more profound from it and a different interpretation, and gained empathy for yet another character.
And so with this book, too, I continue to find so much more from Phoolan Devi’s life to be an inspiration in my own. And had she not been assassinated in 2001, I can only wonder what more she would have accomplished for the people of India and the world.
— Puneet Dutt’s The Better Monsters was a Finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was Shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. Her chapbook PTSD south beach was a Finalist for the Breitling Chapbook Prize. Dutt is an editorial board director at Canthius. She is an immigrant/settler based in Markham.
You can find Puneet Dutt’s poem "Lucky" in Issue 298 Winter 2024. Order the issue now:
Order Issue 298 - Winter 2024 (Canadian Addresses)
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