DEATH BY FIRE: SATI, DOWRY DEATH AND FEMALE INFANTICIDE IN MODERN INDIA By Mala Sen, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Rs 915 'What do women want?' The question may have stumped Sigmund Freud, but Mala Sen's Death by Fire sets out to show that in India, within the parameters of a rigid patriarchal setup, what women want is evident. Neither judgmental nor opinionated, Death by Fire merely serves as a pointer. Sen points out that the custom of sati, dowry deaths and female infanticide - issues that have been explored in this book but in a limited, rural context - have resulted in an unequal ratio of women to men: 917: 1000. This, multiplied by a billion, increases the gap enormously. As a consequence, she reasons, a trifle simplistically, 'sexual crimes against women - rape, gangrape and child molestation - too are on the increase.' Coming from the author of the much acclaimed India's Bandit Queen, (which provided the script for Shekhar Kapur's controversial film, Bandit Queen), the book understandably maintains the same objective: to highlight the plight of hapless women in India. A reality-check conducted by Sen and substantiated by newspaper clippings and statistical data indicates that the lot of the 'less privileged' Indian women remains unchanged. The spotlight is on the 18-year-old Roop Kanwar who was burned alive as a sati on her husband's funeral pyre at Deorala in Rajasthan in 1987, Maria Selvi, a resident of Kodaikanal, whose inebriated husband had set her on fire, subjecting her to severe burns and the young tribal Karrupayee, the first woman sentenced to life imprisonment in Madurai Central Jail for killing her fifth female baby. The women belong to different rungs of the social ladder, but an underlying thread of atrocity and gender bias interconnects their morbid tales. Sen attempts to reconstruct Roop Kanwar's life through a discussion with her father-in-law, brother, lawyers and the police, Selvi's life through an informal tête-à-tête with her and Karrupayee's through interviews with her husband, jail officials and NGO activists. However, despite the Indian backdrop, the author deems it fit to mention that her book is 'not an exclusively Indian tale.' Drawing a sketchy parallel between her own experiences in Britain and those faced by women in India, she writes, 'I too was an 'Indian Woman' and beneath the skin-surface, the class-surface, lay the reality of powerlessness against the will of men.' A large section of the book focuses on Roop Kanwar's story of injustice where the accused were acquitted and even gained financially. Karrupayee remains a shadowy presence. The energetic Selvi is the only one who appears in person to relate her harrowing experience. In the process, she makes out a case for the triumph of the human spirit and resilience even when pitted against heavy odds. As Sen flits back and forth in time and place, she refers cursorily to a few other cases including the Bhanwari Devi gangrape case of 1992 and the tandoor murder case of 1995, apart from touching upon the miserable plight of the widows of Vrindavan. It is not as though these women-centric issues have been under wraps for too long or that such phenomena have not been examined or analysed from socio-economic, religious and political perspectives by writers, academics and women's rights activists. What perhaps casts this work in a different mould is the readership factor that the author has in mind. The lucid narrative and easily comprehensible style, Sen's direct and candid manner of voicing her thoughts enable her to establish an instant rapport with the readers. There is no mistaking the compassionate note and acute distress at the appalling state of affairs in India. But the book would have gained had the author provided a holistic perspective by actually speaking to some victims of dowry-related torture in the metropolises and highlighted instances of female infanticide in the urban areas. That would certainly have added more weight to this act, as Sen puts it, of merely 'recording events as they happen and affect the lives of individuals in contemporary society.'