Hangwoman

by K R Meera

  Father looked around again at the crowd that had gathered and raised his arm. ‘Bhagawan! You’ve taken him back, now keep his soul safe!’

  I held Ma close. Everything—laughter, tears, rage, sorrow—had left me. Inside my brain, the hand of a clock moved backwards. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Two helpers brought out the body swathed in a stained sheet and left it on the veranda. Ma hugged his body again and wept. I stood there motionless, without a clue as to what to do. After some time, two other helpers carried someone in on a stretcher—I recognized Jatindranath when I saw the policemen accompanying him. His gaze mocked the world around him. Our eyes met; his grew warm.

  At home, Ramu da was laid in the same place as Niharika. Thakuma entered with water from the Ganga. While they bathed him and rubbed sandalwood paste on his forehead, I sat there motionless and tearless. He of course had no toes to be tied together. We offered water and puffed rice to his closed mouth. At Nimtala Ghat, Father circumambulated the pyre carrying a pot of water with a hole in it, following the clock that ran backwards. For a time Ramu da’s head escaped the flames leaping on the wood. Gradually, the fire spread to his cropped hair. The smell of burning hair made me queasy. The flames burned higher. I waited on the banks of the Ganga until the blaze had consumed all of the body. The Ganga stank like a rotting corpse, choked with rotten flowers, silk cloth, bamboo litters. My head reeled. Wherever I looked, it was as though everything was moving backwards. The ripples on the Ganga, the flames on the pyre, the smoke that reached the sky, everything, moved backwards with the tikc-tock, tick-tock sound. Back, and further back, to the soil, the air, the water, the past.

  33

  ‘There’s a story Jyoti babu used to tell us. Once, an Englishwoman fell in love with an unlettered Indian man and married him. After a while, she decided to divorce him. This man knows no English and can’t find even a small job, so he is totally useless to the children and me, she said. But how did you fall in love with someone who can’t speak your language, asked the court. Know what her reply was? Milord, if two people fall in love, they don’t need another language in common!’

  Pushing back the unruly strands of silver hair which fell on his thick glasses, Manavendra Bose smiled at me. ‘Did you understand? Love—love is a language in which we speak with ourselves.’

  I could smile with ease looking at that face, so full of radiance even though it was well past eighty. I read once again with great care those lines written in a beautiful hand on the sheets of paper on the desk. The two hours I had spent waiting for Manavendra Bose, after the man with the slight build and betel-stained teeth who sat doing accounts in front of the Bhavishyath’s curved doorway told me he had gone to borrow some money, were not tiresome. Because sitting there was like sitting on history’s doorstep watching the flow of the present. Three days had passed since Ramu da’s death. I simply could not stay home. There, someone played football with my heart. Kicked and thrown around roughly, it became very, very worn. Standing on the veranda of the Bhavishyath, I could see the entire length of Chitpur Tram Road, full of hawkers, tourists, students, beggars, devotees, passers-by, rickshaws, autos, buses and trams; and I could see the red walls and white windows of Jorasanko Thakurbari from really close. As I stood there gazing at these sights and taking in the scent of one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old paper, I returned to the past without having to disperse into the five elements. Just when I was considering another visit to the inner spaces of the Thakurbari, Mano da returned, soaked in sweat. He wore a kurta with a frayed collar; his dhoti was pulled up on the right.

  ‘Eesh! Aren’t you Grddha da’s daughter? Why are you here?’ he asked, pulling his right leg up the steps like a heavy weight and throwing it into the door.

  His large form filled the small doorway. His eyes evoked the interiors of the wild; his voice sounded like a distant roar.

  ‘I want a job,’ I put it to him straight.

  Mano da had just fished out a piece of paper from his pocket and was putting it on top of the heap of books and papers on the table; he turned, startled. Silver strands fell on his forehead, over his glasses. He shook them off and guffawed. ‘A job? For you? Here?’

  ‘I can proofread . . . ’

  I wiped my face and neck with my dupatta. Greed filled my eyes as I peered inside. A sea deep enough and wide enough for me to swim about in at ease rippled inside that ancient building which hadn’t had a fresh coat of paint in many years.

  ‘Didn’t your brother recently . . . ?’ he asked, after a moment.

  ‘It’s been three days,’ I said.

  ‘I saw the news,’ he said. ‘The condemned man and the hangman’s son in the same hospital. Your baba must have haggled with the channel fellows over that?’

  An insipid smile creased my face.

  ‘Anyway, good that it got postponed. What if you felt guilt about it later? That your hands had wiped out someone who might have become a good man had he been spared?’

  His smile became brighter.

  ‘I fear guilt,’ I said.

  When I stood before him, I felt courageous as never before. With his fair skin and ample cheeks, Mano da must have been a wonderfully handsome man in his youth.

  ‘I have seen you only on TV.’

  ‘But I have seen you since childhood. I used to peep in on my way to school. I was delighted whenever I saw you inside the building or by the road.’

  ‘But why?’ he asked, astonished.

  ‘Because Ramu da used to say that you are a tiger!’

  ‘Hey, Nischol, did you hear?’ He laughed heartily and called to the accountant.

  The accountant raised his head from his book and looked at us. ‘This time Piplu da paid the electricity bill. He wants it back . . . four hundred and fifty rupees.’

  ‘Ha, don’t change the subject, Nishcol! Whenever someone praises me, you always spoil the mood by mentioning unpaid bills and pending debts! Chetu! Tell me! Does this old man look like a tiger? Did you think so when you saw me?’

  I rested my eyes on him and smiled. ‘A tiger is a tiger for life.’

  ‘Even if its leg is broken?’

  ‘Even if it decides to keep a fast!’

  Slapping me affectionately on the shoulder, he laughed again. I joined in too. A trace of a smile glimmered even in the eyes of the Tranquil One—Nischol da. Ramu da had used the prefix ‘great’ for Mano da. The first time I had heard that description was in Father’s references to the male infant born to Dr Nishikant Basu in the now decrepit house that stood in the junction of Amherst Road and Harrison Street. I had never had a chance to see a great man, and so when Ramu da said, why, there is a great man living very near us, I stored it in my head and peeped into the Bhavishyath office every day on my way back from school. The story of Mano da’s leg, broken by the police, gave me shivers of excitement. Even Ma, who never talked politics, became articulate whenever the Emergency was discussed. Father described it as the time when S.S. Ray replaced us, the hangmen.

  ‘You are hired!’ Mano da called out, sitting in the chair behind the table.

  I sat on the doorstep beside Nischol da’s low desk. Piles of paper covered all the furniture in the room. It was the best laboratory to study the effects of ageing on the colour of paper. The change wrought by time on all things is a topic I love to study. It may turn human beings into animals. Or animals into trees. How will it change Father, I wondered. It turned Ramu da into the five elements. A lamp had been lit at the head of the cot he used to lie upon. In the belief that until the soul leaves the earth, it returns to the place where its body used to be, Thakuma kept refilling the lamp with oil. It was precisely at the moment when Ramu da had merged into the cosmic dust that swirled between the planets and the stars, and thus become a part of time without beginning or end, that the thought of working at the Bhavishyath entered my mind. Like the bird that has experienced at least once the pleasure of singing on a
tree, I simply could not return to roost within the four walls of our home, killing time teaching Champa and Rari their English and Bangla and maths. As long as Ramu da lay on the cot in our tiny room, my life had revolved around him. Helping him eat, sometimes helping to bathe him, powdering his back, turning him around, reading the newspaper and books to him, switching the TV on for him . . .

  ‘You didn’t ask about your salary?’

  ‘Whatever you can give . . . ’

  ‘Oh, did you vow to work here without pay?’

  ‘Lots of big shops are opening in Kolkata,’ Nishcol da observed, without lifting his head from his work. ‘They’re looking for young women with some education and good looks to work there. There’s no shop which doesn’t have the board “Sales girls wanted”. You’ll get at least a five hundred . . .’

  ‘I am happy with a job here.’

  ‘Why, I ask?’

  I smiled at Mano da, playing with my dupatta, twisting it like it were a rope with which to make a noose. ‘I have wished for it since childhood.’

  ‘So you wish to work with a tiger? Why not go to the Sunderbans? Plenty of tigers there.’ His voice rang deep.

  ‘Are there any tigers there whose legs were broken by the police?’ I asked.

  He stared at me fixedly.

  ‘Tigers who canvassed for Humayun Kabir in the 1946 elections?’

  His eyes welled up. But he rubbed them dry, taking off his glasses. Then dragged his bad leg and went inside. After a while, he returned. ‘I was looking for a place where you can sit. Come in, I’ve found a chair.’

  The doors inside the building were painted green. The white walls were covered with dust and dirt and cobwebs. We reached a room by the side of what looked like a central courtyard. A black-and-white photograph of a man with carved lips caught my eye. With an inner shiver, I recognized Jatindranath Mukherjee’s picture. Next to it was another image of Bagha Jatin stepping on a tiger. I had heard Thakuma tell the story of how Jatin had killed the tiger. He had gone to Koya village hearing that a leopard was troubling the villagers, but what he found was a gigantic Bengal tiger. It leaped on him but he faced it barehanded. Heavily wounded, Jatin finally pulled out a dagger and stabbed the beast in its neck. It died, struggling. Jatin had to be hospitalized for a long time because the wounds from the tiger’s claws became infected. The Bengal government of those days, impressed by his bravery, honoured him and presented him with a shield inscribed with the image of a man fighting a tiger.

  ‘Bhavishyath was begun by Jatindranath Mukherjee.’ Mano da looked at me. ‘I am a tiger by tradition!’

  The helplessness and pain in his voice left me silent.

  Dadu was summoned by the British when Thakuma was in the labour room, crying out in pain as she brought forth my father Phanibhushan Grddha Mullick. But Dadu was not at home when the summons arrived and so Thakuma’s father, Triloknath Grddha Mullick, had to go. He was a disciple of Swami Vivekananda, a sannyasi in ochre robes with a long white beard that hung to his navel.

  ‘I cannot even think of another person like Bagha Jatin. When an Englishman asked him how many men he could fell with his bare hands, do you know what he said in response? That he could not knock down a single innocent person, but if they were wrongdoers, he didn’t mind any number!’ Mano da smiled proudly.

  Grandfather Triloknath was taken to Balasore. Bagha Jatin had been amassing resources for an armed revolt by plundering taxis and boats. While he was preparing to subvert British power in India with German help during the First World War, he was moved to Balasore by his friends after he came under police surveillance. The police surrounded them. Refusing to escape and leave his friends in the lurch, he fought hard and fell, wounded. He was admitted to the hospital; Grandfather Triloknath was brought there to hang him. But when he heard who the prisoner was, he burst out in anger: ‘My noose is meant for criminals, not for tigers!’

  The enraged British officer shot the unconscious Bagha in the chest and killed him. He then hanged Grandfather with the same noose meant for Bagha. Thus Triloknath, revolutionary and sannyasi, attained fame as the first hangman to be hanged for defying the government. He had snapped at the Englishman who was trying to hang him: ‘Step aside; I’ll put the noose around my neck.’ He fixed the noose between the third and fourth vertebrae of his own neck, and told the officer, ‘It is time!’ There was no lever, no gallows tree. Behind the Balasore hospital stood a radhajhoola tree in full bloom with all its leaves fallen; the rope was tied on its branch. They had made him stand on a small stool. Grandfather looked at the sky with the noose around his neck, seeing it in hues of yellow. He repeated Swami Vivekananda’s words: Amra jabo, jagat jabe . . . An Indian sepoy removed the stool. Grandfather let out a sound and then dangled in the air. The tree swayed with his weight and rained flowers on his dead body. Just when your Father was entering this world, his grandfather left it by his own noose, said Thakuma proudly. She described the shower of yellow flowers as if she had seen it with her own eyes.

  Mano da opened a big window in a dark corner. There was a black table there and a chair with one of its armrests missing.

  ‘There’s no power now. Come on, you can sit here,’ he said. ‘You can do any work you like.’

  ‘I can correct the proofs.’

  He went in and returned with a bundle of paper. ‘These are my memoirs.’

  ‘Are they mostly about Jyoti babu?’

  ‘If he is cut out of the story, what would remain of the autobiography of someone who’s lived in Kolkata all his life? He had been a part of my life since I turned ten or so . . . though I was not present in his life later.’

  I ran my eyes over the first sheet:

  Dr B.C. Roy accused the communists of rewriting many scripts to fool the people. This led to a heated exchange between Roy and Basu in the legislative assembly.

  Basu: Which drama script did the communists alter?

  Dr Roy: I refuse to reveal it.

  Basu: Why?

  Dr Roy: Because their names should not be uttered.

  Basu: No one should be like this in an open legislative assembly. You are behaving like Hitler, Dr Roy.

  Dr Roy: Yes, Hitler is replying to Stalin’s questions.

  I laughed and so did Mano da.

  ‘This should come after the story of the white woman. Pay attention to the page numbers . . . ’

  Suddenly, the room was filled with light and the ancient fan began to turn, grunting. The fourteen-inch TV in a corner of the room also came to life. Sanjeev Kumar Mitra’s face appeared. Can’t I live in this land without seeing him, I fumed silently.

  ‘At the same time, the prime minister repeated after the cabinet meeting that Jatindranath Banerjee does not deserve to be pardoned. Jatindranath Banerjee has, however, been admitted to the hospital with an upset stomach.’

  Sibdev babu appeared on TV next.

  ‘Till three days ago, Jatindrananth was very confident. The hanging won’t happen, I will escape, he kept repeating. But today he is very dejected. I won’t escape, they will hang me, he keeps saying now. His illness is not fully cured but he does not care to eat any more . . . ’

  I folded the papers and got up.

  ‘What happened, my daughter?’

  ‘I feel like talking, Mano da,’ I whispered involuntarily. He gazed at me for some time as though he were reading my heart.

  ‘To whom?’

  I was about to weep. Mano da was taken aback. Sensing some sorrow he did not know of, he placed his hand gently on my shoulder.

  ‘Mano da, do you think the hanging will happen?’

  He sighed heavily. ‘Isn’t it death? It is the most uncertain of things . . . ’

  He sighed again. My heart shuddered as I left, promising to return early the next day. My right hand shook uncontrollably. Suddenly, I felt the right edge of my dupatta. A noose
I’d made hung there, ugly. It was a very bright day. I walked through the tram tracks, sad. Go some distance on this road and you’ll reach Sonagachi, my heart reminded me. His home appeared in my memory. The memory of those lips painted red bothered me. After wandering about in front of the Jatrapara offices, I caught an auto rickshaw to Strand Road. As I walked home, I saw his channel’s van parked in front of Nimeshwar Baba’s small temple. My heart choked as joy and sorrow, anger and enthusiasm jostled there. Four or five buffaloes came down the road as a hearse arrived. There was a block in the traffic now. Feeling too impatient to wait it out, I found a small opening and entered the house through the saloon. Loud voices could be heard from Father’s room.

  ‘No, no, Sanju babu, no more compromises on this. The marriage first, and only after that your coming and going . . . ’

  ‘Grddha da, why are you talking like Hitler?’

  I lingered at the door of my room for a moment. The lamp at the head of Ramu da’s cot was burning bright. The whole room smells of the graveyard, I thought. I went in and sat down beside Thakuma’s cot, feeling worn out.

  ‘Look, the marriage isn’t what’s important to both of us now. If you dawdle, things won’t move! There must be pressure from your side to make sure that the President’s decision is not adverse. As far as I am concerned, it doesn’t matter either way. Your well-being, however, is important to me.’

  ‘What are you proposing, Sanju babu?’

  ‘The chief minister’s wife and women’s organizations are planning a major agitation. Chetna must take part in it. It is a great chance for her and your family.’

  Father had become silent. Hitler was considering Stalin’s advice. Nobody asked me a thing. All the things I wanted to talk about were largely to myself. But I had no language for this inner conversation. Maybe I didn’t need one.