The afternoon sun hung like a heavy, brass plate over the village square, baking the dust into a fine, choking powder. Under the ancient, gnarled banyan tree—the silent witness to a century of Rana decrees—the air was thick with a restless, masculine energy. Over a thousand men from the eighty-five villages had gathered, their turbans a sea of faded saffron and white, their staves planted firmly in the earth.

They had come for a war cry. For weeks, the rumor had been that Mahesh Singh Rana was gathering his strength. They expected a call to arms. They expected to be told to hitch their Jeeps and sharpen their swords to march on Shobha’s in-laws. To these men, a Rana daughter’s death by poison was a stain that could only be washed away with the blood of the men who drove her to it.