Hangwoman

by K R Meera

  15

  Thakuma had many interesting stories about Kala Grddha Mullick whose career as a hangman lasted just a year. He was the son of Manohar Dev Grddha Mullick and the brother of Jnananatha Grddha Mullick. Kala was the first in our family to give death by hanging a makeover: he turned it into a public spectacle. He lived in a time when people were hung in public places. He was Grandfather Manohar’s eldest son, thought by everyone to be a naughty, lazy child. Grandfather Manohar worked under his father, Dharmaraja Mullick, a famous hangman whose career lasted eighty years. Kala saw the gallows for the first time when he went along to assist his father after Dharmaraja Mullick’s death. Six convicts were on death row that day. The first—a robber who looted lonely travellers near the Sunderbans and assaulted women as well—was to be executed at the crack of dawn, at four o’clock. It was the month of June. When he climbed on to the platform, Grandfather Manohar slipped on a puddle from the previous day’s rain and broke a leg.

  ‘Please go home and rest, Baba. I will take care of this,’ said Kala excitedly.

  Under his father’s watchful eyes, he sprang up eagerly to place the noose around the condemned man’s neck and pulled the lever. The planks moved apart. The man fell and died—all in the blink of an eye. Seeing how skilled his son was, Grandfather Manohar felt relieved. He went home. Kala put all the others to death all by himself. By the time he dispatched his third victim, Kala began to feel somewhat self-important. So when the fourth man was brought to the gallows, he asked him with all the innocence of a sixteen-year-old youth: ‘Do you regret your actions?’

  ‘No,’ the man said. He was on death row for murdering his wife and children. His arrogant tone provoked my ancestor. Okay, I will show you, he said in a low whisper. He shortened the length of the rope of the man’s noose. Quite naturally, the neck vertebrae did not break. Instead, his breath was cut off. He struggled in terrible distress and an awful scream broke out from behind the mask. It resounded in the distant Lal Digi and the altar of the old cathedral.

  ‘This is the way to finish off such scoundrels . . .’ Kala exclaimed to the then police inspector of Kolkata, Dinesh Deb Choudhury.

  He then asked if the inspector had any paan on him and, taking one, began to chew it. Other than the police, there were just four or five witnesses to the hanging. As they watched open-mouthed, the condemned man writhed in the throes of death. A huge lantern lit up the place. The contortions of the body with its hands tied behind and feet bound together, lit up by the yellow glow, were as engaging as rope gymnastics. The small crowd was struck dumb. Before them on the platform of the gallows sat Kala, a smile playing on his face, dangling his legs coolly, swinging them, chewing his paan in peace, waiting for the hanged man to die. It took a full ten minutes for him to go.

  ‘He does not regret, indeed!’ he shouted to the small crowd, and it responded with lusty cheers.

  Some even flung coins at him. By the time the sixth man was brought to the gallows, it was broad daylight and the small crowd of fourteen or fifteen spectators had grown to some two hundred people. Men lapped up hungrily the last struggles, cries and the death of a fellow man. Look at him flail and toss, he deserves it, they shouted. After the sixth man was executed, the crowd dispersed. People went away lighthearted and happy, as if departing after a grand festival. When Kala stepped off the platform after the final hanging, soaked in sweat, the crowd swept him up. Many pressed coins into his palms. For Kala, this was the happiest day in his life; like a singer who had excelled in his first concert, he returned home a victor and conqueror.

  That was the beginning. The next hanging was five days later. A large crowd had gathered at three in the morning to witness it. Two men were to die that day—a robber and a murderer. The second man screamed for mercy, begging to be spared. That made Kala giddy with power. He made the rope shorter and challenged him to cry with his body. A piteous cry rose from the throat of the man whose limbs were bound. Kala was pleased; he bobbed his head in delight. He then grabbed the man’s legs and tried to swing on them. Cries of delight and loud laughter broke out from the crowd. Kala’s antics became bolder as the man contorted in agony. The crowd and the policemen were in splits. That day, by the time the two men were dispatched, the crowd stretched right up to Lal Bazar. Many had found perches in trees. McKey sahib and Laren sahib, white members of the Calcutta Council, came on their horses to witness the hanging of the second convict. Their wives arrived in their palanquins and watched the execution, lifting up the delicate side curtains. McKey sahib summoned Kala and handed him a large bag of money. From then on, hanging became a sight to be seen and enjoyed. Kala brought home the hanging rope and even started selling it. By the time the news of these innovations reached Grandfather Manohar who was recovering from his injury, Kala Grddha Mullick had dispatched fifty convicts. When he was able to walk with a stick, Grandfather Manohar went to see his son’s performance, quietly staying in the crowd. He found Kala’s antics utterly horrifying. Seeing his son pull the hanged man’s legs and swing on them to please the crowd, he flew into a rage. He went right up to the platform, caught hold of him and slapped him hard on both cheeks. The crowd did not recognize him; they were enraged that he had interrupted their fun. In the end, the police and the mounted cavalry had to intervene to remove the hangman and the convicts. The hangings scheduled for the day were postponed to a later date. Grandfather Manohar met the governor sahib and complained. The latter was reluctant to intervene, but he stopped the practice of hanging people in public places. It then became something staged inside the prison, to be witnessed only by specially designated representatives of the people.

  I had been absent for four days when a senior manager from CNC came to meet Father along with Sanjeev Kumar Mitra. Thakuma’s words rang in my mind: ‘People are fascinated by the sight of death; they love to hear about it too.’

  ‘They have brought the cash. You must go today at least,’ Father said with a broad smile as he came into the house.

  ‘Better that you go, Baba.’

  The fact that I had indeed talked back to him seemed to rattle him somewhat.

  ‘I am old. They want young people. And besides, you are the symbol of women’s strength and self-respect, for India and the whole world.’ He was flushed with emotion.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll give you one tight slap, mind you! Talking back to me, eh? Just see what happens when we hear women talk back around here—’ He raised his hand to hit me. Scared, I jumped out of the way.

  ‘Hey girl, they’ve brought five thousand now. And they’ll give another five thousand. We’ll go to the studio on the night before the hanging only if they pay up fully. That young fellow’s been smart . . . all this, thanks to him . . . really fortunate that he got attached to you . . .’

  I looked at Father.

  ‘Your caste mattered most in the old days. If you were born an aristocrat, you had nothing to fear. But not today—no matter to whom you’re born, it’s money that counts. If you don’t have hard cash, you’re a nobody. Look, God has given you a chance. I’m not going to let you throw it away.’

  So I had to go. But I insisted that Father or Kaku accompany me. I was thus forced to continue as the symbol of women’s strength and self-respect for India and the whole world.

  In the studio, they changed my hairstyle and gave me prettier clothes. Sanjeev Kumar Mitra was bursting with confidence when he faced me. His behaviour and gestures did not betray the fear or shame or sense of inferiority one might expect in a thief. I felt that I might go mad at the sight of his face.

  He asked me that day: ‘The day draws nearer, Chetna. What are the thoughts that cross your mind these days?’

  ‘I am very tense.’

  That was true. Except that it was not caused by fears about the hanging.

  ‘What kind of tension do you feel?’

  ‘Many kinds. For example, sa
dness when I think of that wasted life. The tension one feels when you can’t hit back at a man who has harmed you even as you become party to the death of someone who hasn’t. You have to go through it to know what it feels like.’

  I stared hard at him. A cold smile appeared on his lips as if he had caught the drift of my words.

  ‘Have you ever thought of Jatindranath Banerjee’s family?’

  ‘I am thinking of them this very moment.’

  ‘Have you seen Jatindranath Banerjee yet?’

  I sighed deeply. Fixing Father’s image in my mind, I fed Sanjeev Kumar’s jatra with my energy.

  ‘I will have to talk of the day when I went to see the gallows for the very first time. What I saw there was completely different from all that I had heard about it. It is in an open space within an enclosed area inside the jail premises. Inside the enclosure, all the rooms are single cells occupied by condemned convicts and dangerous prisoners. As I walked past, I noticed someone inside cell no. 3. Later I read in the papers that that was Jatindranath Banerjee’s cell.’

  ‘Chetna, as you prepare to make a noose for him, do you wonder what he might be thinking at this moment?’

  Despite myself, I looked at him. These questions were his way of assaulting me by other means. I closed my eyes for a second, let out a heavy, melodramatic sigh so that the jatra would be all the more meaty, and turned towards him.

  ‘Sanjeev babu, I thought of him even as I lay in bed last night. When I think that way, I feel sorry for the man. He committed this crime when I was ten years old. He’s been waiting for punishment all this while. If he was to be hanged anyway, why was he kept alive so long? That is my question. My second question is this: if he was ignored for so long, why not allow him to continue in jail? I don’t have answers to either of these.’

  The show wore me out. It was harder to speak like this than act in a jatra. A terrible labour it was indeed—of mind, body and soul. He created unexpected turns in the script, changed the scenes without warning. I had to write the dialogues on my own, all the while warding off unexpected blows. This continued each day that followed. Once, they caught me tying a noose with the wire of the lapel mike I had been wearing and made a big fuss of it on the show.

  ‘Chetna, teach me to tie a noose like that . . .’

  He held out the wire of the mike to me. I fixed him with a serious stare and shook my head. ‘This is no laughing matter, Sanjeev babu. It is about dispensing justice in the world’s largest democracy.’

  Sanjeev Kumar blushed. ‘Yes, yes, Chetna, you are very right,’ he said humbly, and ended that day’s episode. But Father demonstrated the technique of tying the noose on AVA the next day and their TRP ratings shot up.

  The next day Harish Nath summoned me before the show. ‘If only you had cooperated a bit more we would have cut them down . . .’

  I looked at Sanjeev Kumar and Harish Nath.

  ‘Do you have children, Babu?’

  ‘Yes, a five year old.’

  ‘I was just five when Ripper Ghosh was given the death penalty. I saw Father showing journalists who had come to talk to him how to make a noose, and then tried to imitate him.’

  A mild pallor spread on Harish babu’s face. I wanted to laugh at that moment.

  ‘I tested the noose on my three-year-old neighbour . . .’

  ‘And then?’ They both looked at me anxiously.

  ‘That’s another story.’

  ‘All that is fine. But we are mainly bothered about TRP ratings!’ Harish Nath tried to make a joke of it.

  ‘If you start being so stubborn about such small things, Chetna, we will be forced to try something extreme,’ Sanjeev Kumar threatened.

  I learned what he really meant only when I reached the studio the next day. After I got dressed and had my make-up done, and was about to pin the mike on my lapel, I noticed that there was a third chair next to mine on the studio floor. Sanjeev Kumar brought in a rural-looking woman wearing a nose stud and clad in a white sari with a black border, and asked her to take the chair. She too had been made to wear make-up. On her forehead was a big sticker bindi; an unnecessarily heavy streak of red sindoor ran through the parting in her hair. In that face with dark circles deeply etched under the eyes, all the signs of grinding poverty were evident. As I sat staring in sheer surprise, Sanjeev Kumar Mitra took his throne-like revolving chair and began the show.

  ‘Namaskar, welcome to CNC’s Hangwoman’s Diary. The whole country is agog after the release of Girlfriend—a movie which depicts a relationship between two women. Today on the show we bring together two women. Along with the country’s first hangwoman who is making final preparations with just ten days to go for Jatindranath Banerjee’s execution, we have another guest in our studio—the wife of the condemned man, Kokila.’

  That felled me completely. I was shivering in the uncomfortable cold of the air-conditioned studio. Kokila Banerjee readjusted her sticker bindi and sat up straight. It was really difficult for me to look at her. The prospect of having to talk of the hanging while sitting in front of her made my tongue go dry. Her face was hard as stone. Were waves of hatred reaching out to me from her eyes—those eyes which were utterly impassive and unemotional, bereft of hope and horror? I was afraid.

  Sanjeev Kumar cleared his throat, lifted his eyebrows to bring sorrow into his features, and looked at Kokila. ‘Kokila di, just ten more days . . . for the sindoor mark . . . the sign of marriage . . . do you think about it?’

  The response was a rasping sob, like bamboo splitting apart. I did not know what to do. I thought I saw a flash of delight in Sanjeev Kumar’s eyes. He covered his face with his hand as if he were in deep anguish. Kokila wept copiously. I was thunderstruck. Twenty minutes of the half-hour programme that day were washed away in her tears.

  Sanjeev Kumar asked me only one question, a continuation of what he had asked Kokila: ‘When you see the woman whom the government has deputed to kill your husband, what do you feel, Kokila di?’ Kokila folded her palms together and looked at me. She did not utter a word. He then turned towards me: ‘When you see this woman called Kokila up close, what do you feel, Chetna?’

  ‘Pain . . .’ I replied. It required quite an effort.

  ‘Do you feel like quitting the job?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Here are two women before us. One of them symbolizes all feminine power and has embarked on an important task. But how amazing that the worst wound to be inflicted by the performance of this task must be borne by another woman! When Kokila and Chetna come face to face, the question we must ask is: Should Jatindranath Banerjee be killed or spared? Viewers can participate in the poll. Do SMS us on . . .’

  After the programme I went off quickly to remove my make-up and change. When I came out I saw Sanjeev Kumar counting out four or five hundred-rupee notes and handing them to Kokila. She left without even bothering to wipe off her make-up. Harish Nath, who came out of his cabin, grabbed Sanjeev Kumar’s hand and shook it. ‘Well done, Sanju. All that weeping! We climbed at least five points in the TRP ratings.’

  Sanjeev Kumar laughed gleefully. ‘I told her well in advance—better to just weep than blather!’

  A cry welled up inside me when I heard his words, but as usual, the tears did not flow. Even if men’s tears weigh more inside the home, on TV, a woman’s tears are worth much more. When I stepped out of the studio, I saw Kokila Banerjee say something to the man who accompanied her and count the cash. I saw distinctly the mended tear in the sari which draped her shoulder. The man, too, had sunken cheeks. His incredibly worn slippers looked as though hundreds of cobblers had left the marks of their handiwork on them. It was only later that I learned the man was Jatindranath Banerjee’s brother. I stood there looking at them. It was he who saw me first. Fear and hate glinted in turn on his face. Then Kokila Banerjee turned and saw me. Her face filled with anger but seeing the expression i
n my eyes it softened. I went up to her and took in my hands her bony, thin palm. Please don’t hate me, I wanted to say. But the words would not come out. Trying to hide her tears, Kokila di withdrew her hand, handed the money to her brother-in-law and smiled at me.

  ‘Have to send a petition to the President tomorrow . . . this isn’t enough . . . but still . . .’ she said. ‘Have to go now . . . if we are late we may miss the last bus . . .’

  Not pausing to say anything more, she wiped her face with the edge of her sari, and hobbling on her callused feet with difficulty, hailed an auto rickshaw. A large poster of Isha Koppikar in Girlfriend loomed on the wall in front. I felt the tears again. But what value do the tears of women have, especially when shed alone, in the dark?

  16

  Ratnamalika, who was born in our family in the thirteenth century, had a long birthmark that ran down her face from forehead to chin. She was the cousin of Ranbir Mullick who was the first in our family to take the title of Grddha. Ratnamalika was the daughter of his father’s sister. When her father died, her mother, not yet seventeen, was forced to commit sati. Ratnamalika was just a toddler then; she had a severe fit seeing her mother being dragged to the funeral pyre. When she turned seven, the family tried to get her married. She splattered cow dung water on the groom’s family, snarling furiously that she was Chamundi, not Sati. And very soon the dark scar made a thick layer on the right side of her face, covering it entirely. It made her face ugly and terrifying to look at. Young children who were frightened by her face—which was strikingly fair on one side and scarily dark and bear-like on the other—shouted, ‘Demon, demon,’ as they threw stones to drive her away. Ratnamalika spat unspeakable execrations at the crowd that gathered to watch as she convulsed and frothed from the mouth. You will bring forth a dead infant, she cursed the pregnant mother of one of the children who had stoned her. Before dawn broke the next day, the woman’s womb convulsed and its fruit was spoiled. Ratnamalika’s family subjected her to beatings; she was made to drink the ashes of the hangman’s rope; she was treated by exorcists. Finally, they tied her to a pillar. The fits worsened as she became older. Foaming at the mouth, eyes bulging out of their sockets, tongue sticking out, she would roll her head side to side and make frenzied predictions. After seven days, she predicted, eighteen mounted soldiers led by a foreigner with long arms that reached his knees will reach the land of Vanga. Our home will be shattered beneath the hoof beats of a black Arabian horse with a golden mane. On the seventh day after this, Muhammed Bin Bakhtyar Khilji attacked Bengal with a cavalry of just eighteen horsemen, defeated King Lakshman Sen and captured Gaur and Nabadwip. One of the eighteen horses was black. As it descended the hill at amazing speed and drew close, its mane shimmered like waves of gold.