Hangwoman

by K R Meera

Up to this point in the story, none of us featured in it. But after this, Amartya’s story became our story. One day after the sentence was confirmed, an old man came to see Father. They sat talking for a long time behind closed doors. Father’s voice rose.

  ‘Ami ki korbo? How can I give up my work just because your wife didn’t give birth again? Dada, I didn’t start in this profession today or yesterday. Our family has been doing this even before Bharat itself— don’t forget that! Our history is the history of Bengal, of India itself, do you know? You should have raised your son well. This Phanibhushan Grddha Mullick is simply not willing to sign away the history of his family for your measly coins, Dada!’

  ‘Grddha, he is a simple fellow. She got the devil into his head . . . she’s done black magic on him!’

  Tears flowed down the old man’s wrinkled cheeks.

  ‘Not one, not two, but four . . . three tender little children . . . is he even human? Or is he a beast? Chi-chi! Even beasts would have compassion for little children!’ Father’s anger grew more shrill.

  ‘Grddha da, she drugged him with something. He won’t do anything wrong from now . . . isn’t he in prison? Please, let him stay there, at least he will be alive. We won’t live after we light his pyre, Grddha da!’ the old man begged.

  Father opened the door, fanned off the sweat with his gamchha and went out. It was very hot then. Ma was cleaning fish on the washing stone. Ramu da, who was an East Bengal fan, was reading the papers over and over again, sweltering in football fever. Those were the days of the fourteenth World Cup. I was trying to learn how to calculate the LCM. But my mind was not on my maths textbook. The misery etched on the old man’s face was deep enough to shake the heart of an eight-year-old girl. He stood weeping in the front yard of our house for a very, very long time. He left eventually, but returned, pleading, begging. Father refused to listen. When he came the third time, he had with him a woman so thin and frail that the wind could sweep her off the ground. She fell at Ma’s and Thakuma’s feet and begged for mercy. Father should feign illness on the eve of the execution—that was what she pleaded. He is our only son, Dada, please don’t kill him, the woman cried, her heart writhing in pain. Thakuma tried to offer counsel. Ma wiped her eyes and went inside. Father, however, did not budge. On the eve of the execution, the old man returned, drunk senseless. Instead of the familiar piteous expression, his face and words blazed with furious rage.

  ‘Mark my words! If anything happens to my son, you will regret it!’

  His threat rang so loud that it echoed in the Ganga, in the marble palace that stood beyond the Thakurbari. Though the policemen posted to guard Father took him away, his trembling, fatigued voice lingered in my ears. Finally, it was night. At two o’clock, the jeep arrived to pick up Father. Father and Kaku left. Father was very uneasy. Before he left, he patted me and Ramu da on our heads; Ramu da was busy trying to catch the commentary of the World Cup match between Italy and Argentina on the radio. Father climbed into the back seat of the vehicle. Till he disappeared from sight, Father kept looking at us, and we, who had stepped on to the road, kept looking at him. Those who have not known our sorrows can hardly fathom the pain of people who make a living from the deaths of others.

  This was the newspaper report that Father had framed and hung up:

  My Life is for the Nation: Grddha

  Calcutta: Hangman Phanibhushan Grddha Mullick declares that he is not afraid of death, and that if he loses his life while doing his duty, it would be self-sacrifice for the sake of the nation. He is merely the instrument of the government, he says. His duty is to carry out whatever the government asks him to do. Personal likes and dislikes and decisions have no place in it. Grddha Mullick was speaking to reporters hours before the execution of Amartya Ghosh. He was responding to reports about death threats to him by members of Ghosh’s family. Since time immemorial, members of his family have worked as hangmen in this country. This is our cultural and historical legacy; only the law and the judiciary can dissuade us from it, he claimed. He announced that the Mullicks would not flinch before the threats issued by the family of the condemned man. The word Grddha means vulture in Bengali. Because of their rounded, bulging eyes and thick eyelids, the Mullicks are generally known as Grddha Mullicks. Seventy-five-year-old Phanibhushan Grddha Mullick claims to have executed 445 people. He began performing such duties at the age of nineteen, assisting his father, Purushottam Mullick.

  In the meantime, there are unconfirmed reports from the jail that the impending execution has affected Amartya Ghosh’s mental state. The jailers had to struggle hard to return Amartya to his cell after he broke down completely during a meeting with his aged parents, embracing them and crying aloud piteously. His last wish, apparently, is to have a glimpse of Devapriya, the wife of his victim, Chandrasen Gupta. But Devapriya, who is now with her parents in Delhi, has ignored this request. She has made it clear that the person who murdered her loving husband and her innocent, beloved little children can be nothing but demonic and that even his memory is utterly distasteful to her.

  There was also a photograph with this report. The clever photographer had captured Ramu da leaning against a wall, face wan and deep in thought. His face filled the loop made by the noose that Father held up. A young man of twenty-two, in a white jubba and lungi. Six feet tall. Lean, fair body. A splendid head of hair, high nose, wide eyes. At first glance, it looked as though he had been hanged by his father. The caption of the photo was: ‘Hangman Phanibhushan Grddha Mullick displaying the noose that he has readied for Amartya Ghosh; in the background, his only son, second-year MA student of literature at New Providence College, Ramdev Grddha Mullick.’

  Amartya’s body was cremated at Nimtala Ghat. His parents carried his body past our house with tearless eyes. When his pyre was lit, his aged mother tried to end her life by throwing herself on it. Badly burned, she died in the hospital. Two days later, his father lay in wait for Ramu da and attacked him. Ramu da was returning from college after a game of football and chattering excitedly about the World Cup matches. The old man hacked off his limbs with an enormous chopper.

  All the money Father had earned from the execution was spent on hospital bills. It was after this that Father insisted that photographs of his family members not be published. He went to the office of the newspaper which had published Ramu da’s photo and created a big fuss. They gave him a bottle and a hundred rupees. Thereafter Father began to set fees for reports. By the time it was Jatindranath Banerjee’s turn, he was taking five hundred rupees from newspapers and a thousand from television channels. Bottles began to line the space under his cot, and behind the images of Ma Kali and Grandfather Purushottam Grddha Mullick on the stand.

  I had sat down to prepare the potatoes, thinking how strangers like Amartya and Jatindranath could change our lives. Ma was beginning to make dough for the luchis. Suddenly, Kakima rushed in, looking sick with worry: ‘They are looking for someone else!’ she announced, wiping her sweaty brow. For some time now, her youthful face wore a look of want and worry.

  Angered that Father had raised his demands, the government was trying to find a hangman from other states, she said. Ma stopped mixing the dough. The potato fell from my hand. Me, a one-day-hangwoman, I thought, amused. Ma Kali, Ma called, letting out a heavy sigh. She went back to kneading the dough. I, too, after a moment of silence, the sort you see on TV, went back to the potatoes. They weren’t that good—hard, and not sweet enough.

  ‘Dada was too mulish. Now even others can’t get what they could’ve,’ Kakima muttered.

  ‘Then go to your husband and tell him to hang the fellow!’ Father, who had come in unexpectedly, bellowed. ‘Would’ve been great if that sissy could even kill a hen . . . I deserve this—for lugging him along, thinking, here is a sibling, let him get a few coins!’

  He filled the water bowl with some water, went inside, and came out soon after, wiping his mouth. ‘Just watch, all o
f you . . . Jatindranath is going to die by this Phanibhushan Grddha Mullick’s hands. I am sure of that . . . his name is in my account book.’

  I washed the potatoes in silence. Mother rolled out the luchis wordlessly. Kakima collected the dirty dishes and went out her face an unpleasant grey. I put the washed potatoes in a bowl and went for a bath. When I came back from my bath, the air was filled with smoke and the stench of funeral pyres. More corpses were being cremated at Nimtala Ghat than usual. As I walked in drying my hair, my gaze fell on the framed photos hanging in Father’s room. Where is Devapriya now, I wondered. What does she look like? Right then, Sanjeev Kumar Mitra appeared on the TV that Father had switched on, giving me a shock.

  ‘It was the innocent young Ramdev Grddha Mullick who paid the price for Amartya’s life. Devapriya, who moved in with another industrialist after the death of Chandrasen Ghosh, left him three years later and married her present husband, a London-based industrialist. It was to possess her that Amartya murdered four, including three little children. He had to give his own life for this act. Amartya’s family took their revenge on the son of Phanibhushan Grddha Mullick, the man appointed to carry out his execution. In short, the person who paid the greatest price for Amartya’s desire for Devapriya was this young man, Ramdev, who had never seen her. And now the government is trying to get rid of the hapless Grddha Mullick who is asking for a government job for at least one of his children. The state government has already approached four well-known hangmen in the country to carry out Jatindranath’s execution. But all four of them demand flight tickets and five-star accommodation. Compared to such wasteful expenditure, the fairness of Grddha Mullick’s demand that his daughter be given a government job is only too clear. Also, if Chetna Grddha Mullick is appointed to the hangman’s post, the government will earn credit for having appointed a woman to this post for the very first time in the whole world. Sanjeev Kumar Mitra, along with cameraman Atul Kishore Chandra, CNC . . .’

  Ramu da squinted hard and turned his face to the wall. The only part of his body he could still move was his head. I turned off the TV, completely flustered. Without much delay, Father’s black telephone began to ring. The fear that I always felt when I heard it ring, that someone was dying somewhere, filled my heart. Finishing his call, Father came running with a big smile on his face. ‘Chetu, Ramu, we have won! IG babu just called to tell me to accept the court order!’

  I stood still, not knowing what to say. Ramu da gave Father a look of pity and shut his eyes. Under his eyelids, his eyeballs rolled like two tiny footballs. Father looked respectfully at the blank screen of the TV. He shook his head and grinned, all his teeth showing. ‘Looks like a crook, no doubt, but the fellow knows how to make news.’

  If he was called upon to accept the court order, it meant that the government had accepted Father’s demands. It meant that I would have to work as a hangwoman. Another hearse passed by our yard, bells tinkling. Even though the TV was switched off, Sanjeev Kumar Mitra’s green eyes constricted in rage on the black screen. Everybody is in need of the death of somebody or the other to leave behind the imprint of power.

  5

  The first step in carrying out a death sentence is fixing the date. The court fixes the date of the execution. A copy of the order is given to the condemned. At the same time, the hangman receives the announcement. He has to go to the jail three or four times after that. A contract is signed with the IG. The condemned man’s physical and mental condition is ascertained. Arrangements are reviewed. These are things even our neighbours know by heart.

  ‘Will Chetna have to go to the jail too?’ Ma asked, worried.

  ‘Must go if she has to. She’s not going alone, is she? Baba and Kaku will be with her, right?’ Kakima said that as if it were nothing. She seemed completely changed. These days, her eyes brimmed over with harsh, hateful looks. She often went off to her mother’s house in Budge Budge and stayed there for long spells. Before, she used to be very loving. All of us would sit on the floor near Ramu da’s cot and chat. Ma and Kakima and I would let Champa and Rari lie on our laps and sometimes Kaku and Thakuma would join us in sharing the local news and cinema stories. Kakima’s father had been a millworker. He got a cancer which corroded his cheeks, and eventually died at the SSKM Hospital. His last rites were at Nimtala Ghat. The Kakima who had wept aloud, hugging me hard, had been a completely different woman.

  From the kitchen, I went straight up to the TV and switched it on. The images took time to firm up. Give it one on the head, joked Ramu da. With a couple of firm knocks on the TV’s sides and back, CNC jolted into view. My heart struggled. Just after the report about the CPM’s rejection of the Congress’ invitation to join the central ministry, Sanjeev Kumar Mitra came into my home again with the story of the suicide of a seventeen-year-old housemaid in Bhavanipur. In the images on the TV, some five hundred people had gathered in front of an apartment and were creating a ruckus. The camera tilted up towards the window of Flat 4A and a circle appeared around it. The girl’s body had apparently been found there. Sanjeev Kumar Mitra also presented a special programme on young girls from Egra in east Midnapore who come to the city looking for jobs. Not long after he faded from the screen, his big vehicle stopped in front of our house just behind a funeral procession; my bones began to turn into steam. I writhed uneasily. Ramu da lay looking at the ceiling. When I went near him and sat down on the bare floor after pacing about restlessly, he threw me a questioning look. I pulled the sheet up and hid the empty space of his lost arms. ‘What happened?’ he asked with an effort. I noticed only then that his beard was beginning to turn grey. That it had begun so soon made me feel very sad.

  Father had taken Sanjeev Kumar Mitra into his room and shut the door. The scent of liquor and cigarette smoke seeped out unremittingly. Father, who had boasted that Sanjeev Kumar’s death would be at his hands, was swiftly and skilfully tamed by him. He was an exceptionally gifted pilferer—not only of Thakuma’s gold coin, but also of people’s hearts.

  Ma took him a glass of water. Unable to contain myself, I walked by the room and peeped inside. Father had already opened for him the wooden box which held our family’s ancient, invaluable historical records.

  ‘See this? This is the handle of the knife that was used to sacrifice a cock on the grave of the wife of Job Charnock, known to be the founder of Kolkata. By Shivraja Grddha Mullick, our seventeenth-century ancestor. The knife is gone, rusted away, now only this teakwood handle remains . . .’

  Father passed on to him a piece of carved wood, worn and chipped. In my memory, Job Charnock was the sahib who had saved the beautiful widow who had been pushed into her husband’s pyre to burn as a sati. The story is that he turned to Indian ways after he married her. The other sahibs were contemptuous of the Indian sahib who wore a kurta and pyjama, and smoked his hookah in the shade of a tree. He did not ask his wife to convert, but he did change her name to Maria. And gave her a Christian funeral when she died after nineteen years. But even then, sacrificed a cock on her grave.

  ‘There’s one thing, Mitra babu . . . to be born, the city of Kolkata did not need a sahib. This Chitpur existed one hundred and fifty years before Charnock was born. Today the gurudwara stands on the spot where Guru Nanak preached Sikhism when he came here to spread the faith. This Chitpur, Mitra babu, is like the Mahabharata . . . Things here you may see elsewhere, but that which is not here will not be anywhere!’ Father pulled eagerly at his cigarette, thinking.

  ‘Chetu, come here,’ Father called aloud.

  I stepped inside the room, feeling sheepish. Sanjeev Kumar Mitra was rummaging inside the wooden box; Father held a large liquor bottle in his hand and was examining it. I felt infinitely insulted. It troubled me that he was taking away the priceless traditions and history of our family from Father in return for a few bottles of liquor and a little cash.

  ‘Chetu, this babu wants an interview with you. He not only shoots for TV but also writes i
n the papers . . . boro manush!’

  Father cuddled the liquor bottle and tucked it under the cot.

  ‘Ask, Mitra babu, I’ll give you the answers . . . let her learn. Won’t she have to give many interviews from now? I won’t be around for all time to teach her, will I? I am eighty-eight now . . .’

  A smile bloomed on Sanjeev Kumar Mitra’s face and he lapped me up with his eyes, head to foot. When I pressed myself against the wall somewhat agitated, his greenish gaze shot out of his eyes and pierced my breasts. Irritated, I pulled down my faded and threadbare dupatta and fixed my eyes on the framed photograph of my father’s father, Purushottam Mullick. He looked like Chhabi Biswas. A very gentle face. The hangman’s job simply didn’t suit his form—it belonged to a filmstar or a primary school teacher.

  ‘All right, this is my first question. Chetna, you are heir to the great traditions of this family. What do you have to say of it?’ he asked me.

  Before I could respond, Father began to speak.

  ‘What is to be said of it? What a question, Babu. The story of my family is older than this country. Have you heard of William Marwood? It was he who discovered the long-drop hanging method that is now used all over the world to execute human beings. Do ask whom he learned it from. From Jnananatha Grddha Mullick, father of Kalicharan Grddha Mullick, who was the father of Purushottam Grddha Mullick, who was the father of my father, Phanibhushan Grddha Mullick. That patriarch was a great expert in mathematics, would you believe it? He turned away from our line of work and became a teacher of mathematics in his village. A sahib he met in the village took him to London, and he met Marwood there. Once, during Christmas time, the sahib struggled to kill a pig for the feast. Grandfather Jnananatha was very amused. He made a small noose and hung the pig. It died instantly, the bones behind its neck snapping in a second. Marwood was amazed. Ah! An Indian, and so skilful? My ancestor then revealed to the sahib that we Grddha Mullicks have been executioners for many centuries and that we had a special science of noose making. Marwood was deeply interested. Grandfather Jnananatha taught him the fundamentals of execution by hanging. To hang someone, the length of the rope has to be ascertained keeping his weight in mind. That was discovered by the very first hangman in our family, Radharaman Mullick. If the length is correct, only the bones of the neck will break and the person will be dead in a couple of seconds. If the length is wrong, the condemned person will struggle, bite his tongue. Even the gallows will shake as the person struggles in desperation . . . sometimes, the head might come off . . .’