Hangwoman

by K R Meera

  ‘No father will ever want his daughter’s hands to pull the lever of the gallows, Madam. But if my daughter decides to do so, I cannot stop her. Look, in a father’s eyes, his daughter’s hands will always be tender . . . but she has to decide herself, as a person. She told me, Baba, my hands are strong, I can do this work. Yes, my daughter, as you wish, I told her, in this land women have the democratic right to equal opportunity.’

  ‘We are willing to arrange a lawyer for Chetna. Our leader in Delhi is taking a keen interest in this.’

  ‘No, no case, Madam. If you have money to help us fight this case, give it to us directly. I’ll use it for her wedding.’

  ‘Grddhaji, a girl’s life does not end with marriage!’

  ‘Madam, it begins only then. I am not going to make her sign on any piece of paper . . .’

  They went on talking. I suddenly noticed that I had made yet another noose with my dupatta. Small but perfect.

  ‘They want to see you.’

  Father came in. He wiped his naked chest and back once more with the checked gamchha he had on his shoulder. It was another very hot day. He came near me and put his hand on my shoulder with rare tenderness. ‘Chetu, putting a noose on someone up on the gallows isn’t like putting one around Maruti Prasad’s neck.’

  Father looked deep into my eyes. I knew what that meant. It was easy to put a noose around Maruti Prasad’s neck. Because the moment he gasped and struggled and his tongue stuck out, I could ease my grip. That wouldn’t be possible in Alipore Jail. If a noose was made there, the lever would have to be pulled. And if it was pulled, the man would have to die.

  I got up, opened the door and went out. People had gathered outside our tea shop. In front of them, three well-dressed, well-groomed, sweet-smelling pretty women sat, as if on a podium.

  ‘Chetna Mullick, do you wish to work as a hangwoman?’ Sumati Singh with her long nose, high forehead and red lips asked me.

  ‘I have neither a wish nor a non-wish . . . ’

  ‘Is your father putting pressure on you?’

  ‘It is no use putting any pressure on me if it is something I can’t do. Isn’t that so?’

  They looked at each other, surprised. It was clear that they did not expect such answers from the daughter of an uneducated hangman.

  ‘Do you know that according to the Constitution you cannot be denied a job?’

  ‘Yes . . . ’

  I was not driven by the right and the wrong in my words, but by the fact that I had a chance to speak like Father. It made me giddy with excitement. The women whispered something among themselves. Sumati Singh got up and came to me.

  ‘Chetna, we are the biggest women’s organization in India. Do you know which one I’m referring to?’

  ‘I do watch TV. ’

  ‘All right. We have decided to intervene on your behalf. If the government takes a favourable decision, you will be the first and only woman to work as an executioner.’

  ‘There was a woman before me in our family who worked as a hangwoman.’

  The women looked at each other, greatly surprised.

  ‘Anyway, in no country in the world do they have a woman executioner now. So your appointment would be a landmark. Our view is that you should not step back from this decision, because it is a matter of the pride of all women. It’s our chance to declare to the world that there is no work that women can’t do.’

  I did not respond. A crowd slowly encroached into the little space of the tea shop. The TV cameras and reporters surrounded Sumati Singh and her colleagues as they got up to leave.

  ‘Madam, are you supporting the death penalty?’

  ‘Never. We are only supporting equal opportunities for women.’

  ‘What is your view on abolishing the death penalty?’

  ‘That is not the topic of the present discussion.’

  Once Sumati Singh and her friends departed, the crowd turned towards me. Cameras, TV cameras and mikes stretched towards me. I faced them like a terrorist hemmed in by gun-toting commandos.

  ‘Will your hand not tremble when you hang Jatindranath at the gallows?’

  ‘My hand will not . . . but my heart surely will, thinking of that wasted life.’

  ‘Do you know he has a wife and four children?’

  ‘He should have remembered that.’

  ‘Are you supporting the death penalty?’

  ‘No, I am not. Two people were killed in last night’s demonstration, right? I do not approve of that. I don’t approve of those who attacked the demonstration either. Nor do I approve of the demonstration itself.’

  It was the victory procession to celebrate a lost election that was attacked; a demonstration held to celebrate a minor gain, that of 2377 votes by the Trinamool Congress candidate in the Nadanghat assembly constituency. Indeed, this candidate had lost in the parliamentary constituency by 1,43,349 votes. The attackers who had targeted the demonstration shot at and stabbed twenty-five-year-old Buttu Sheikh and his twenty-six-year-old brother Sahedul Sheikh, killing both. Both were illiterate poor men. So were their killers.

  ‘Why then should you apply for a hangman’s job?’

  ‘Because such a job exists.’

  ‘Great, so you think you can live by killing another?’

  ‘I am not killing anyone, the government is . . . I am only an instrument.’

  They all fell silent soon. It was then that Sanjeev Kumar Mitra shot a question from behind.

  ‘One can make a living from many other trades in this land.’

  I would recognize that voice anywhere. It rendered me silent for a moment. Within my heart a bird shook its wings, wild and desperate. And so I replied as calmly as I could, ‘Give me some land first . . . ’

  By then Father and Kaku had pulled me back and moved up front. The press fussed around them like crows cawing around a dead rat. One by one, all of them left. Only Sanjeev Kumar Mitra remained. I looked at him through the kitchen window. He was more handsome than I had thought. I yearned to see his eyes emerge from behind those dark glasses. I inscribed in my heart his smile, his speech, the way his wayward locks fell upon his forehead when he laughed. A noose of sheer happiness tightened around my neck. There was another noose at its tail. And another person too. A hangman’s rope with two nooses! I caressed my neck in pleasure.

  He went into Father’s room and shut the door, but I continued to hang around. Father came out of the room a few times asking for fish or groundnuts. No unpleasant smells wafted from the room, so I guessed the liquor was of the expensive sort. When it was really dark Sanjeev Kumar stepped out, closing the door softly. I was sure that Father was senseless, drunk. Sanjeev Kumar entered our room without asking, pulled up the old chair and began to speak with Thakuma. I withdrew into the kitchen, my heart beating wildly. She opened her betel box and began her storytelling. He held the tail of the noose which was around my neck; he kept tugging at it now and then. Unable to resist, I kept going to the door. He took no notice of me. Disappointed, I shook my head and withdrew, only to be pulled there again. But this time I could not withdraw. For the sight I saw left me shocked and frozen: Sanjeev Kumar Mitra had his camera out and was clicking pictures of Ramu da. Because he had no hands to cover his face with, Ramu da was trying to shield himself by pulling down his brows and tightly squeezing his eyes shut. An intense rage flared up in my blood. I dashed into the room, snatched the camera and flung it on the ground. It hit the floor hard, bounced, turned upside down and lay still on its side. The dirt from our broken floor covered it. Everyone was stunned.

  ‘How dare you!’ I lashed out.

  Sanjeev Kumar took off his glasses and stared grimly at me. I saw his eyes for the first time. He too was seeing me for the first time. A smile played on his lips; but his green-tinted eyes seemed to flash with hatred and resentment. He picked up the camera, brushed off the dus
t, put it back into his bag, and touched Thakuma’s feet reverentially. Thakuma’s betel box fell on the floor; the things it held scattered. He gathered them, put them back inside the betel box, closed it, handed it to Thakuma and went out, kissing her sweetly on the cheek. I came to my senses. And felt tied up in a sense of regret. I shrunk back into the darkness of the courtyard, towards the washing stone. Coming close to me, he paused. My heart beat so loudly, the whole world should have been able to hear it. I longed for a tender apology. But his eyes flashed vengefully; and this is what he whispered to me in a voice so low that only I could hear it: ‘I want to fuck you hard, even if only once!’

  Acid sourness sped through my body, piercing my bones. I fell from the sky to the earth. The last circular train passed by, making the earth tremble. The stench from some sinner’s pyre spread all around. Hearses that had been waiting for the railway gate to open now crossed the tracks, jingling. Sanjeev Kumar Mitra disappeared into the dark. In the middle of all this, Thakuma’s wail rose: ‘Eesh! Ma Kali! My gold

  coin . . . where is my gold coin?’

  The priceless gold coin, the only token we had of the memory of Grandfather Mosh Grddha Mullick, was nowhere to be seen. Sanjeev Kumar Mitra had stolen it even as we were all watching.

  It is easy to steal the wealth of the poor. No one except me believed that he had stolen it. But he had got away, leaving around my neck an improperly placed noose. The vertebrae weren’t the right ones. The neck didn’t break. But my breath stopped. For the first time in my life, I hated my body. That night, I imagined making him stand on the hangman’s plank, putting the death-hood on his face, placing the noose around his neck, and pulling hard—in seven hundred and twenty-seven different ways.

  4

  Thakuma, Bhuvaneswari Devi, would remind us time and again that the death penalty was not just the delivery of justice but also the imprint of power. The evidence of this was in the stories about Grandfather Bhishma Grddha Mullick. He lived during the reign of the eighth-century Pala kings. The first Pala king, Go Pala, was elected to kingship by his people. The land flourished and peace prevailed under these rulers who were Mahayana Buddhists. But the credit for this blissful state of affairs actually belonged to our forebearer’s genius. More deft and precise than a master butcher, he despatched hundreds of people every day through beheadings and hangings.

  Once, a Hindu sannyasi was condemned to death. His crime was that he spoke against the Buddhist faith. In those times the practice was to offer the hangman a bagful of money on the eve of the execution. That day, Grandfather Bhishma submitted that it was against the Buddhist faith to kill a sannyasi. But the ministers declared in one voice that Religion and State should remain separate. The sannyasi laughed and told the king, Maharaja, you cannot kill me. I am only forty now. According to the stars, I will die only after I turn a hundred.

  The king now grew quite determined. Send this fellow to the City of the God of Death at the soonest, he snarled. Grandfather Bhishma tried to tell him that the sannyasi showed no signs of impending death. The king paid no heed. In the end, at the very last minute, the precise moment when the sannyasi stood in the gallows ready for the noose, news arrived that one of the queens had given birth. The hanging was postponed on the advice of the astrologers. It would be carried out ninety days later. Exactly ninety days later, the queen died. Mourning was declared for forty-one days. The king now became doubly obstinate. The hanging would be held at sunrise on the day after the mourning period ended. But the king’s foster mother died the night before that dawn. In this way, for some reason or the other, the death by hanging was put off seven times. The eighth time, when our progenitor paid his ceremonial visit to the condemned man on the eve of the hanging, the headstrong king went along with him.

  ‘Bhishma, will it happen tomorrow?’ the king asked Grandfather Bhishma, a threat echoing in his voice.

  My ancestor looked carefully at the sannyasi’s face. ‘There are no signs of death, O King!’ he said regretfully.

  The sannyasi burst out laughing. Furious, the king glared at Grandfather and roared: ‘If this does not happen tomorrow, that will be the end of you, Bhishma!’

  ‘No, Your Majesty,’ Grandfather Bhishma answered him calmly, ‘I too bear no signs which say that I will die tomorrow.’

  That day when he came back home, our ancestor caught a fever and a chill. He was bedridden for months with smallpox. The king could not execute either of them. Lurching between pain and unconsciousness, Grandfather Bhishma thought impassively about life’s strange twists and turns. He composed a kavya about his forefather who had begun as a healer and ended up as an executioner. The day it was completed, the Utkalas attacked the Pala kingdom. They broke open the prisons and freed the prisoners. The sannyasi made his escape. King Dharma Pala admitted defeat. Before long, he set off for the City of the God of Death.

  Deva Pala ascended the throne after Dharma Pala. When he attacked Utkala and began to butcher its inhabitants, Grandfather Bhishma was ninety years old. King Deva Pala herded together large numbers of people and thrust them before him. With trembling hands, he placed the noose around the neck of each. As he moved forward, he came to a man as advanced in years as himself, and the latter asked: ‘So, Bhishma, the time has finally come, has it not?’

  My ancestor started violently. It was the sannyasi. Please, can’t he be spared? Grandfather Bhishma pleaded with the king and the crowd. But the crowd was adamant. This man, who had evaded death so many times, must be despatched swiftly, they yelled. My ancestor felt the sannyasi’s skin. His blood vessels were boiling. It is time, Grandfather Bhishma said. It is time, the sannyasi repeated. He pulled the rope. The sannyasi died without the slightest distress. My forefather returned home that night and had an oil bath. He prayed to Ma Kali, cutting his right thumb and letting the blood fall, then had a sumptuous meal and went to bed. He died peacefully in his sleep.

  Whenever Father spoke of the day he had gone to hang Jabbar Singh, Thakuma told this story. The execution did not take place on the appointed day; it was postponed. The stay order reached Alipore Central Jail only after Father—exhausted after a whole week of preparing the noose, doing a dummy test with a sandbag and performing Kali puja the whole night—got there. A pall of gloom fell on our family. Father had been struggling to put together money for my older sister Niharika’s wedding. He had asked for a reward of two thousand five hundred rupees, and a job in the municipality for Ramu da, who was fourteen then. In the end, the government agreed to a thousand rupees. Drawing darkness down upon the family which awaited Father’s return with the thousand-rupee reward, the President of India, Giani Zail Singh, granted Jabbar Singh’s mercy petition at the very last minute.

  ‘Did you not look for the signs of death?’ Thakuma scolded Father.

  Father vowed that he had. ‘He had begun to breathe through his mouth. The doctor told me that his pulse was pounding.’ Father paused and then said, ‘He ought to be dead in fifteen days.’

  I recalled this with great astonishment after I grew up—it had indeed come true. Father could never hang Jabbar Singh. But neither did Jabbar Singh live beyond fifteen days. One morning, he was found dead with his body against the cell wall, half standing, half sitting. Father part jested and part lamented that the man had upset his thousand-rupee reward. Niharika’s wedding had to be postponed. After many years, Niharika was married off with a loan raised on plunderer’s interest rates. Constant want and wrangle filled the house. Later, she came back home because her dowry was not enough. I was just five years old. One morning, she was found hanging in Father’s room, from the beam on which he hung his gamchha and vest to dry. Hers was the first death by hanging I ever witnessed.

  Father woke very late the day after Sanjeev Kumar Mitra made off with Thakuma’s gold coin. All of us waited for him with dour faces. As usual, Ma took him some tea and poured out harsh words. He called her father the choicest names. She then turned
her tongue on his secret affairs. Thakuma kept searching for her gold coin. When I poured Ramu da his tea, I could not chit-chat with him like every day. ‘I want to fuck you hard, even if only once!’ rang in my ears. The day Maruti Prasad had tried to grab me from behind came back to my mind. It was easy to ignore it as an act of violation; it was easy to overcome. But the insult from the words, with the body left untouched—that burned. But I was not clear what had wounded me more. Was it the words ‘only once’ or ‘fuck’? Was it the way he uttered them? What happened to you, Ramu da kept asking me. His face was pale and sallow from not having seen the sun or the wind in a long time. Whenever I looked at it, I remembered Amartya Ghosh.

  It was in the pages of the newspapers framed and displayed in Father’s room that I saw Amartya Ghosh. He had been convicted for the murder of four—the south Calcutta industrialist Chandrasen Ghosh and his three children, aged ten, six and three. The good-looking Amartya had been a servant in Chandrasen Ghosh’s house. He and Chandrasen’s wife, Devapriya, fell in love. When their relationship became intense, he demanded that she leave with him. She refused. He was furious. The mad frenzy of love possessed him. One night, when Chandrasen went into Devapriya’s room and shut the door, Amartya lost all control. He took a gun from Chandrasen’s room, went upstairs, opened the door to the children’s room and turned on the lights. Standing at the door, he shot all three children dead, one by one. Only the oldest child managed to scream; the youngest did not get a chance. Chandrasen, who rushed up on hearing the commotion, fell next. Devapriya fainted in shock. By the time the other servants and the security guards hurried in, Amartya had escaped. He stayed in hiding for many months. Finally, he was arrested, all skin and bones from starving. On the strength of all the evidence, the court sentenced him to death. The high court and the Supreme Court upheld the sentence. President R. Venkataraman rejected his mercy petition. On 4 July 1990, his death sentence was confirmed.