Hangwoman

by K R Meera

  Sanjeev Kumar Mitra came closer, remote in hand. I did not know what to do; his face was lit up with joy.

  ‘Fantastic! I was afraid that it would get put off at the last minute! Especially with your baba making things so difficult!’

  I could only stare at him. As if I was seeing the radiance of that smile on his face for the first time. In truth, I had never seen him smile so heartily and openly before. I felt as if my body was rocking in the air.

  ‘Let’s go . . . must fix up things for tomorrow with your baba . . . I’ll come too.’

  He began to hurry, buttoning his shirt and combing his hair. I kept staring at him like a fool. My feet were still in chains. That moment I wanted to return to his arms and body. But he was busy getting ready and really didn’t notice me. Opening his safe, he pulled out rupee notes and stuffed them in his wallet.

  ‘Who knows what your Vulture Mullick is going to demand? This will fall out of my own pocket. The channel won’t pay a paisa more. But I have no way out. It’s a matter of my prestige, isn’t it?’

  I covered my face with both hands, and the line about fire on love’s face sprang up in my mind. Not only pleasure women, even hangwomen should not fall in love. Come, come—Sanjeev Kumar was in a real hurry now. I shivered as I turned back and looked again and again at the picture on the wall. In the bustle of the street, the slurred voices of the poorer clients drunk on bungla could be heard. Sanjeev Kumar pushed me ahead through a marketplace where everyone declared their desires aloud. The scents of the gutter, of fish frying in sunflower oil and mutton curry simmering in large vessels whirled and eddied as Sanjeev Kumar walked ahead briskly, stepping upon crushed flower garlands and used condoms. Still trapped in that strange state of the soul flying high in the sky and the body hanging distraught and helpless like its broken string, seeking the earth below, I walked past women with stony faces whom no one had yet bought. They waited with paint and sweat running down their face and neck, legs tiring, spirits flagging, and perhaps feeling the pangs of hunger. The woman in the picture in Sanjeev Kumar Mitra’s bedroom—what was her name? Durga? Or was it Chamundi?

  29

  When married women die and their bodies ascend the funeral pyre, their feet have to be a bright red, as if they had been walking in a pool of blood. No one, not even Thakuma, knew when this practice began. But it is great good luck to ascend the pyre with the red of the sindoor on your forehead and the red of the alta on your feet, she insisted. It was when Niharika died that I first witnessed a woman’s funeral. The locals filled our house and the yard hearing the news. Even those who had come to conduct funerals from distant villages left the corpses they were accompanying to catch a glimpse of her. The traffic stopped on Strand Road.The police arrived. Children were shooed away by older people. Slipping away from Amalendu and Champa, I peeped into Father’s room through the window near the mirror in the room which Ramu da, Thakuma and I use now. I saw them cut down Niharika’s body, pale and stiff like a wax doll. Ma fell on it and wailed, like in a jatra, and Father held her back with his left arm. The immersion of Durga idols decked and worshipped with glowing yellow garlands for nine whole days of puja, the sinking of those glorious deities seated regally upon lions into the muddy waters of the Ganga—has always troubled me. They remind me of Niharika’s body, stiff and rigid as wood in death. When she was brought back after the post-mortem, Narayan da gave her his best bamboo litter, Gangadhar da his driest twigs for the pyre, and Hari da the freshest flowers. The women brought water from the Ganga. They bathed her under Thakuma’s supervision and draped her in her wedding sari. Thakuma then marked her forehead with the blood-red sindoor that Hemant da had brought from his temple. As I watched, with my finger inside my nostril, she made a red paste of it with water and applied it carefully to Niharika’s feet. They looked as though they had stepped in thick red blood.

  When I reached Strand Road with Sanjeev Kumar Mitra, a silver hearse was blocking the traffic. My mind was empty. Death, like Sanjeev Kumar, hooked its fingers around mine sometimes. If I hanged Jatindranath, his body would dangle forever from my fingers, I feared. As I walked towards home, I peered at the woman who lay in the hearse, glowing like a golden statue. Among the dahlias, her face was like another beautiful flower. There was a bright red spot of sindoor on her forehead; her feet shone red with alta. The middle-aged man in funereal white clothes with a preoccupied look on his face must be her husband, I guessed. I imagined the way he would stand in the queue at the registration counter, away from the bustle of the vehicles, haggle with the priest, go down the black steps covered with ash from the pyres, and offer the oblations sitting on his haunches on the Ganga’s wet mud, blackened with decaying hay and flowers.

  ‘Look at the crowd, buzzing like flies!’

  Sanjeev Kumar could see the young men with cameras in front of our tea shop even in the dark. He snapped angrily: ‘Tell your baba there are some things more valuable in the world than money.’

  I was impassive. ‘I am nobody to teach him.’

  When we neared the house a couple of reporters came towards us as if to greet him but really aiming for me.

  ‘Go inside, Chetna, don’t forget the contract . . .’

  The words barely slipped through his lips, just loud enough for me to hear. He shook hands with the reporter who was closest to us.

  ‘Hi, Jitin da, what news?’

  ‘Sanjeev babu, long time since we met! What news?’

  ‘Oh, I manage. When did you come? What’s up? Did Grddha da say anything?’

  ‘The old duffer! He’s bargaining . . .’

  ‘Who’ll he bargain with after today?’

  ‘He tried to wheedle some more cash out of the government . . . didn’t succeed . . . the oldster was at Writers’ Buildings and the police headquarters all day trying to make them cough up some more. The DGP finally agreed to another five hundred.’

  ‘Uh! Stupid ass! We’d warned him . . . Get rid of the dad, make the girl do it.’ Sanjeev Kumar gnashed his teeth.

  I was petrified. My old aches were reborn at the pitiless rasp of his voice. He does not really love me, I was convinced. His concern and tenderness, the glimmer of love in his green eyes—they are all mere put-ons, I grieved. I went towards the house, feeling downcast, cutting through the line of poor folk waiting for the free food distributed after a funeral. But as I was about to enter by the side close to the salon, suddenly, I jumped in pain—it was as if my feet had been pierced with innumerable sharp needles. In the weak light of the bulb, I saw a large fish head covered with ants on the ground. Ferocious corpse-eater ants were crowding around it. I shook my feet hard and rushed in. Ramu da, who was watching the Euro Cup on TV, looked at me, slightly offended. I changed, had a sip of water in the kitchen and was just stepping out when Sanjeev Kumar whirled in like a tornado: ‘Chetna, this is cheating! Tomorrow some documentary guys are going to film your old man!’

  I couldn’t even look at his face. My heart was so heavy, so full of pain. He followed me around, making sure I didn’t have a moment’s peace. ‘He’s sold the entire slot tomorrow—from six o’clock in the morning till the hanging! Wasn’t I the first to ask him for that time? And now . . .He shouldn’t have done this to me now!

  Without asking anyone for permission, he sat down on Thakuma’s coir cot and shouted.

  ‘No . . . I won’t allow this! This was my plan. Your baba has betrayed me. He didn’t even consider the fact that I am going to marry you. My career, reputation . . . everything’s gone! Tomorrow morning I too will be here with a camera. And if your old man gets too smart then—’

  He jumped up when I threw a questioning look at him.

  ‘I’ll teach him the rules of the game!’

  There was a threat in his voice. I tilted my head to look at Ramu da. He had been looking at each of us in turn. Sanjeev Kumar went out of the room and called me.

  ‘I will g
o to that jewellery shop again. They must have discovered by now that a pair of diamond studs are missing.’

  I stared, not comprehending.

  ‘We were their last customers.’

  His use of ‘we’ was worrying.

  ‘In their view, between the two of us, I don’t have any motive to steal.’

  My blood boiled. Tears of fury welled inside my eyes.

  ‘I knew that you played that role to trap me.’ My voice broke with anger.

  ‘Why did you come with me then?’

  Having no answer to that, I stared hard at him. When he left, I wanted to throw and break everything around me. All the physical pain he had inflicted on me felt trivial. It was easier to bear such pain then. But now, the noose had tightened much more.

  ‘So, are you scared of him?’ asked Ramu da, with deep distaste.

  ‘Didn’t Baba break the contract?’

  ‘If Baba broke the contract, then it is between them. Why should he bark at you? Who are you? His slave? And contract indeed, what contract? Couldn’t you have opened your mouth and told him, “Get out, you corpse!”?

  My face fell.

  ‘Chetu, he is an out-and-out cheat. I don’t trust him at all. He’s never going to marry you. I’m sure of that.’

  His rage was shattered by an enormous cough. As I sat down next to him, rubbing his chest, he tried to stifle the cough and said, his eyes tearing up: ‘You will end up in tears, Chetu.’

  The pain in his voice shook me. It was a very unhappy night. I wandered about like a stringless kite. There was an air of celebration in the house around Father. Ramu da lay silent and still, eyes fixed on the ceiling, not even wanting to watch TV. Thakuma came back after roaming around the Ghat, complaining that her feet ached. Ma made tea non-stop, muttering under her breath that the curse of the condemned would destroy the family. Kaku hung around Father, making sure his face appeared in every photograph that was being taken. The truck drivers who brought goods to the transport company opposite our tea shop hung around to watch the big show at our house instead of setting off to Sonagachi. Father finally came in late at night, tottering, after the reporters went away.

  ‘The movie people will be here at six. They will shoot from the morning, from our puja till we are ready to leave. There will be cameras—look—over there in my room and in the tea shop. No shooting inside the house, I’ve told them. So if anyone comes inside, drive them out.’

  Ramu da, who was half-asleep, woke up with a start and gave me a piercing look. I was rubbing Thakuma’s feet. Father didn’t pay attention and continued: ‘They will follow us in their van till we enter the jail. Make sure we all wear our best clothes . . . it will be embarrassing otherwise.’

  ‘Will they also give us costumes?’ Ramu da tried to convey his displeasure.

  ‘This isn’t a film of that sort.’

  ‘Will I get to act too, Phani?’ Thakuma asked, laughing.

  ‘No. Just me, Chetna and Sudev. None of you must step out till they leave . . . Tell your old hag of a mother and Kakima.’

  ‘No, I won’t be there . . .’ I got up suddenly and faced Father. ‘I’ve had enough of this play-acting.’

  My voice was sharper than I intended. Father’s eyes turned red.

  ‘You’ve become swollen-headed enough to challenge your father now! I’ve never questioned my father. “Father” means the father of the world—Bhagawan Mahadev. God does not forgive those who don’t respect their father.’

  ‘Baba, you yourself told us that God does not forgive those who do not keep their word.’ I raised my voice again.

  ‘Chetu, to denigrate your father is to denigrate your own self.’

  ‘When my value increases, it is your honour that goes up, Baba.’

  Father flinched. He stroked his moustache, fished out a cigarette from the fold pocket of his dhoti, lit it and he went inside. After some time, he came back.

  ‘Uh-uh . . . you do have a point.’ His eyes were more red than usual. ‘Why should we piss off others? The movie fellows came in search of me. I’ll give myself to them. That chap’s channel wants you. I’ll give you to them. It’s better for us to make money as two than one.’

  I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Thakuma dozed off but I stayed there wide awake. My blood pressure shot up. Life had been swinging above the earth all these days. But in a flash of a second, the rope had broken. In a month and six days, Chetna Grddha Mullick had been recast in a different mould. Like a statue built by daubing clay on delicate bamboo screens, then painted and decked with jewels, I too was put on display. I had acted as if I was omnipotent, full of dignity, seated with my ankle resting on the other knee, on a lion, with eight arms stretched out like wings. Now they will cast me out, in the same pose, into the Ganga, seeking atonement for their sins. Into waters stinking with the unbearable stench of the blood of sacrificed animals and floating funeral oblations, into the black mud in its depths, I will sink pitifully, all eight arms raised. The waves will slowly lick off my outer shell. The hay inside will rot and I will be consigned, once again, to the very dirt from which I came.

  I woke up in the morning hearing the excitement about the policemen who had come to stand guard. Thakuma kept thanking Bhagawan Mahadev and Ma Kali for giving Father and Kaku a chance to practise their family profession again. Earlier, I too used to feel proud when the policemen came. It made me feel that we were more important than others. Only much later did the complexity of the practice strike me: the policemen stood guard, protecting one whom the government had hired to extinguish the life of another human being. Once I learned that the procedures of democracy included many such absurdities, I lost both the pride and the unease.

  The film unit began work by shooting the remnants of Father’s hunger for fame, framed and mounted on the wall. I sat quietly near Ramu da in our room. Father shone in his solo performance. He was about halfway through his dramatic rendering of the procedures of the hanging when Sanjeev Kumar arrived with his team.

  ‘This is not right! We have the rights to shoot—granted much before!’ he exploded.

  The cinema group protested. A furious altercation broke out. Father tried to mediate. It almost came to fisticuffs; a couple of journalists also joined the fray. The policemen deputed to guard Father intervened. Father sided with the cinema people. Finally, an agreement was reached. We sat in the next room watching the cameras vie to capture Father sit, pace, scratch his head, sweat and wipe the sweat with his gamchha. The questions from the journalists crowding in the room buzzed in the air.

  ‘How does the condemned react when he is hanged?’

  ‘Ha, Babu, what a question! Can ordinary people watch it unblinkingly? What a struggle it is! That really is the struggle.As someone who’s seen four hundred and fifty-one deaths, I can tell you that this thing called death . . . it never gets old or boring . . .’

  ‘Among those you have executed, who has been the most unforgettable?’

  ‘All are unforgettable, Babu . . . Death is a great leveller . . . We may have to do things we don’t like. But karma must be fulfilled. The fruits of it, Bhagawan will give.’

  Dadu had clung to Father’s shoulders, unable to hold back tears—I completed the scene in my mind, sitting in the next room. They could not recognize Surya Sen. When he was about to place the noose around his neck, Dadu burst into tears. That was 1934. Father was just a teenager then, his mind full of dreams about the jatra and acting and music.

  ‘That happens in all trades, Babu. We may have to do things we don’t like. But karma has to be fulfilled. The fruits of it, Bhagawan will give.’

  Father raised his right hand, which held a cigarette between the middle and index fingers, to the skies. His eyes rose dramatically to the ceiling. They lingered on the beam from which Niharika had dangled. In the midst of all this fuss, it began raining. Those who stood outside the
house rushed in to escape the downpour. I bolted Ramu da’s room securely from the inside. When Sanjeev Kumar knocked, I did not open the door. At four in the evening he came again, all sweaty and make-up undone from the heat in Father’s chamber. He got me to come out of the room with Ma’s help. My eyes fell first on the remnants of the previous night’s fish head. Two holes instead of its eyes and a gaping mouth were all that remained of it. It was soaked in the rain; still a couple of ants rummaged in its mouth. Even the fragile skull of a fish, stripped of flesh and blood, was terrifying to see, I realized.

  ‘What time do you start from here?’ he asked, wiping his face and neck.

  ‘Ten, Baba said.’ My voice was cold.

  ‘Okay. When you leave, I’ll give you a mobile phone. Film the whole hanging as it happens.’

  I looked at him, aghast. ‘Film the hanging?’ I asked him, not believing my ears.

  He took off his glasses once more to wipe his eyes and face. When his eyes met mine, again I thought that he looked like a corpse-eater ant. ‘Chetna, listen to me carefully. Take precise note in your mind of everything that happens there. And make sure you come to our studio soon after it is over. Not through the front gate of the jail complex. I have found another exit . . .’

  He thrust his hand into his pocket, pulled out some cash, and pressed the notes into my palm. That moment, his lips turned an uncanny red, as if he wore lipstick. My vision blurred as I looked at the notes. Then his cell phone rang.

  ‘Eh? When?’

  It was as though the sky had fallen.

  ‘My God!’He slammed his hand on his head and shrieked.

  ‘Atul, Jaggu, Pranoy . . . all is lost! All is lost!’