Sometimes when we hear a contemporary story from an exotic and faraway land, we feel we are moving out of reality and into dream or myth. Such was the case with the saga of Phoolan Devi, a woman of such charisma that she rose from obscurity to astound first her nation and then the world with tales of her banditry, imprisonment, and finally of her election to public office and subsequent assassination. She was regarded by some as the reincarnation of Durga, a Hindu goddess renowned for both her beauty and violence. Others thought the low-caste woman was scum. When she died in a hail of bullets beneath a neem tree, it was the end of a story as remarkable as that of any woman of modern India.