Opinion When women are deadly

There are some crime cases so hauntingly disturbing they become part of national folklore. References still pop up about the Ranga-Billa case, Aarushi Talwar’s murder, the Burari deaths and indeed, the mysterious disappearance of 25-year-old Sheena Bora in 2012.

Since the main accused is the foxy looking mother, a model of female success and ambition, it arouses a certain morbid curiosity. We’re hooked, not by the senseless tragedy of a dead young woman, but because of the fathomless tangle of horrifying family secrets that came tumbling out of the Mukerjea household. From the outside, it seemed the power couple inhabited a rarefied, parallel universe, a pipe dream for the ordinary public. But on the inside, domestic ugliness posited them in the throes of looming disaster. And therein lies the roots of all true crime fascination — the steady unraveling of the shattering gap between projection and reality.

Murderers, they’re just like us, observed Agatha Christie, philosophically, in one of her many novels. The formula — someone is murdered, the detective is introduced, they rule out suspects and reveal the perpetrator in a dramatic gathering at the end — endures, because killers are rarely strangers to their victims.

There was no diabolical plot construction required because Christie very naturally depicted the fact that monsters lie dormant among us, everywhere. Pushed enough, anybody is capable of gross heinousness. It is worth noting though, that in crime fiction, as in real life, men outnumber women murderers completely. In our heads, crime is hyper masculine, so when a woman is at the centre of an unnatural death, we’re revolted because, well, murder is most unladylike.

Few recall the word ‘filicide’, which is out of popular usage because a parent killing their child goes against the order of nature. Yet, it’s not all that rare. Recently, there was the case of a Bangalore CEO who attempted to leave a Goa hotel with the remains of her 4-year-old son in a bag.

That men kill is not news, so the why is seldom explored. But when women turn villainous, we want to understand the psychological background that brings on such a disastrous step. True crime stories bring to the fore the difficult truth — that a successful career trajectory is no protection against momentary madness. There’s also an (unsavoury) thrill to watching someone else’s life fall apart that stems from the selfish fear, could this be me? For the introspective, someone else’s lunacy is a way to understand ourselves.

Long before Netflix immortalised femme fatales in the tens of binge-able documentaries available, between the 15th and 18th century in Europe, crowds gathered to watch women hanged publicly for witchcraft.

In the 1980s and 1990s, we grew up on pulp-fiction novels by James Hadley Chase, where it was usually a seductive enchantress who led a man to certain ruin (One of his wry titles was You Never Know With Women). Stories on the murdering female appeals to a base instinct but beyond the blood and gore, they highlight the complicated path that ruined so many lives.

The writer is director, Hutkay Films