Day three: He asked her to lip-sync a soft Punjabi song. Instead, she grabbed a dhol and sang a Haryanvi jaago —raw, powerful, earth-shaking. The entire village gathered.

The next ten seconds were a blur of lathi strikes, a perfectly executed Haryanvi dhaak , and three men on the ground. Bhawna didn’t even breathe hard.

She was fixing a tractor tire with her bare hands, a streak of grease on her cheek, wearing a kurti and salwar that had seen better days. Her eyes, however, could cut glass.

Gippy’s jaw was somewhere near his chest.