Hangwoman

by K R Meera

  Father, clearly, was excited. I sat on Thakuma’s cot doing my hair.

  Hastings, who had come to India on a salary of five pounds, returned with savings worth thirty thousand pounds. He lived a life of ostentation in England and soon became penniless. Eager to make another fortune, he came back to Kolkata. He got off the ship as the governor of Bengal in a city ravaged by the terrible famine of the eighteenth century, in which one-third of the population had died and turned to dust, where houses made of bamboo leaves huddled together in misery. When he got on the ship, he was a widower. He fell in love again on the ship, with the German-born Marian Imhof. A married woman, she left her husband during the journey and joined Hastings. But she had to be released from her marriage in Germany. That took a long time—they waited for eight whole years to get married. He built for her the bungalow, Alipore Gardens. Later, he faced impeachment proceedings on charges of corruption. Though absolved of the charges, he left India and returned to England.

  Hastings lived for a full twenty-four years more with his beloved in his residence at Daylesford, riding on Arabian stallions, trying to foster Indian plants in his garden, and acquiring Indian animals as pets. His death was due to unknown reasons. The day after he died—23 August 1817, or perhaps 7 September 1817; my ancestor Vidyasagar could never pin down the date accurately—at two o’clock at night, horse hooves sounded on the road in front of Alipore Gardens. The horse carriage Hastings had used drove up, its bells ringing, and stopped in the front garden of the bungalow. Taking off his hat, Hastings stepped down briskly and went inside. He climbed the spiral staircase of Kashi marble with quick steps and, until daybreak, kept searching for something in the rooms on the upper floor. When dawn broke and sunlight entered the city, the carriage became as transparent as crystal and, melting like hot wax, turned into vapour.

  This, however, is not the relevant part of the story. After he had left for London, Lord Hastings had written to his friend Thomson that it pained him to remind Thomson of his writing desk again and again. He complained that neither Thomson nor Larkins had given him any news about the matter. You have not been able to understand my anxiety about it, he accused.

  Two years later, an advertisement appeared in the Calcutta Gazette that a rosewood writing desk owned by Warren Hastings had been stolen with two little pictures and some personal papers in it while it was being transported from his house in Esplanade to England. Or it had been accidently sold off with other items put up for auction. Mr Larkins and Mr Thompson offered a reward of two thousand rupees to anyone who could offer valuable information about the aforesaid writing desk.

  I soon forgot Hastings and was about to set out for the Bhavishyath when Sanjeev Kumar accosted me in the little space between the salon and the moss-covered courtyard.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve come back to normal after Ramu da’s death,’ he said, taking off his spectacles and eyeing me. ‘Things are only going to get worse if we go on like this. Chetna, return to the channel. We have thought of a special programme that you can handle. And I have a personal interest—I want to be near you all the time!’

  I picked up the cloth bag I’d bought with Champa’s tuition fee and smiled at him. But my eyes welled, somehow. My confidence was being broken by all the great male figures of history who sang of the memories of their love in inflated terms. I thought I could forgive Hastings all his evil: after all, he had survived lack of food and air by falling in love with a woman who was near him! Once, only once, if only Sanjeev Kumar Mitra could love me like that! I longed in vain.

  As I moved towards the door, he stopped me. ‘Chetna, don’t abandon me like this! I am sorry for whatever wrong I have done to you. I couldn’t meet you when you were grieving only because there were urgent things to be done at the office. I was shattered, Chetna. This programme about the death sentence has been the biggest thing in my life.’

  I smiled again.

  ‘Don’t shame me like this, with smile after smile. Say something!’

  ‘The death sentence was also an important event in Jatindranath’s life.’

  ‘Look, this is a hot discussion not just here but all over the country! Chetna, you are going to be famous nation-wide! Don’t kick out the goddess of prosperity standing at your doorstep!’

  ‘I have work to do, Sanju babu, please move out of my way.’

  ‘Tell me, what is my great crime?’

  I lost control. ‘What is your crime? Ask yourself!’

  ‘It’s not as if it was I who killed your Ramu da!’

  I was trying to laugh, but my eyes overflowed. ‘You, yes, you—you did kill him! It all started when you stole Thakuma’s coin!’

  My voice broke and dissipated as tiny slivers. If, in that moment, he had held me close, whispered genuine apologies in my ear . . . a small part of my heart beat ardently for this, putting me to utter shame.

  He bent down and touched my feet. ‘Here, I’m begging your pardon. I did behave like a filthy person, Chetna. My fault, all of it. Please forgive me!’

  I swallowed. For some time, it was hard to figure out how to react. ‘I won’t come to the channel’s programme.’ My rage returned.

  ‘Okay, if you don’t want to, then don’t . . . but don’t hate me!’

  I swallowed again, taking him in. The heart, full of wounds but barely twenty-two years old, twitched in confusion.

  ‘My family members will come here formally to propose marriage. Please don’t shame me like this then, Chetna. You don’t have to trust me, but you can trust them, can’t you?’

  I eyed him suspiciously.

  ‘Our family doesn’t care for caste and creed . . . ’

  My heart stopped melting and became frozen again. ‘No, Sanju babu, I cannot trust you any more. You will never realize how I loved you.’ My voice had suddenly become hard.

  ‘But you too have not realized how much I love you, Chetna.’

  He came closer and pulled out a little box from his pocket. He’s going to insult me again with another ring or bangle, I thought. The moment he holds it out to me, I decided furiously, I’ll either slap him hard on the cheek or throw a noose around his neck and end this nuisance forever.

  ‘Look, I have brought back to you that which caused all the trouble.’

  He opened the box and held it up.

  ‘I cannot give back your brother’s life. But I’ll strive to give you the affection Ramu da gave you. And here is the history that you and your family cherish.’

  My eyes nearly popped out. It was Thakuma’s coin! I snatched the box from him and examined the coin, unable to believe my own eyes.

  ‘Where did you get this from?’

  He laughed triumphantly and put his spectacles back on his nose. The black hue of his shirt rendered them smokier still.

  ‘You have always underestimated me. I need you, but you need me more. You know that well, and I know how well you know that!’

  He caressed me lightly on my cheek and walked away. Like flames leaping up from beneath my feet, fear consumed me. Not because I remembered that interaction with conquered people was a way of making their chains feel lighter. I thought he was dead. But I had still lit a small lamp for his soul to make its way away from the earth. But he had used that light to come right back to me. Reaching out with a tail as flexible as molten wax, he had thrown a noose around my neck and pulled it tight once more. But that crystal noose was not of a clear hue at all. It was smoky, opaque. A mourners’ procession that followed an expensive silver-plated hearse went by slowly. The feet of the corpse were red with alta—a married woman. I felt envious; Hastings must have loved Marian till his death and taken pleasure in her presence. The man who walked behind the hearse turned around; our eyes met. I was stupefied. It was Maruti Prasad Yadav. The first man who convinced me that I could be a hangwoman. It was an awful sight to see that man walk with his hands on a woman’s funeral
bier, turning around to look at me, finally disappearing from sight. My breath stopped when I thought of that woman who must have suffered the stink of paan masala and the reek of sweat, and his ignorance of the possibility that a woman could be taken without attacking her. Would she return to the earth as a soul with a tail and hold fast to her relatives? Sanjeev Kumar had melted away from sight. The hearse too. Yet the grating of its wheels resounded in my ears, bringing back the thought of the ghost of Warren Hastings. I saw him cross the oceans, climbing up and down the spiral staircase in search of some old letters and two pictures. But even then—what a pity—Lord Hastings looked just like Sanjeev Kumar Mitra . . .

  39

  When the condemned person falls into the cellar below, the noose tightens around the neck and breaks the spinal cord. The blood vessels of the heart close down. The vessels of the brain rupture. The neck is broken. At that stage most men ejaculate. In women, the reproductive organs are suffused with blood. In the momentary caress of Death the Lover, those mortals, doomed to eternal arousal, will retain their last dream of infinite joy and hurtle into the cellar of the next birth. And therefore, the souls of those who die violent and unnatural deaths will return to the world and continue to seek pleasure. Not that there aren’t a few who stand firmly before death, not succumbing to its seduction. Like Khudiram Bose, hanged by Gauricharan Mullick, the paternal cousin of Grandfather Kalicharan. This was eight years before Father’s birth. Khudiram was Lakshmipriya Devi’s son. She tried to secure a long life for this son, the third born and only survivor, by selling him to her sister, symbolically taking three handfuls of grain—khudi. When he was eighteen years, seven months and eleven days old, Khudiram ascended the gallows. He walked to it as if he were approaching his own bed. He wore his death-hood calmly. When the noose fell on his neck, his heartbeat did not quicken; nor did his chest heave with deep breaths. When Gauricharan pulled the lever, the cellar opened. The body slipped down gently. It did not struggle even once. The rope did not straighten. The British doctor who examined the dead body wiped his eyes and whispered, it’s like he went in his sleep. Gauricharan stood rooted to the spot, unable to lift his arm from the lever after the deed was done. No one in our family has ever witnessed such a graceful passing. If you die, die like that, praised Thakuma.

  Khudiram’s story used to make Kakima really mad. It’s the stories of revolutionaries hanged to death that made Kaku stray, she would say. But Thakuma would retaliate, declaring that it was after he married her, twenty-five years his junior, that he turned into a useless, henpecked sissy. Kaku was constantly scolded: Father called him totally useless; a worrywart, typical of a fellow who doesn’t touch a woman, said Ma; poor fellow, he’s touched by fear, said Thakuma, it has snuffed out his brain. His obese body that shone as though it were a plastic sac filled with water, and small, childlike face that didn’t at all suit the body made him a laughing stock outside the house too. Only Ramu da was kind to him when he mused that Kaku was not always like this. I was not old enough and so couldn’t comprehend how he could have been anything but this: someone who slept till ten, bathed in our courtyard, ate heartily and doused himself with talcum powder before going off to the salon to cut people’s hair, talking incessantly about Uttam Kumar and Supriya Devi.

  When Sanjeev Kumar Mitra and Maruti Prasad disappeared in opposite directions, I stood there by myself for a while. The sun hadn’t fully risen yet. Various kinds of humanity streamed along the road. Defying the deafening roar of the train to Dumdum, a cuckoo sang its first notes of the year from the banyan tree in front of the ramshackle quarters of the Port Trust workers. Both the fear of death that the thundering roar evoked and the hope of love in the defiant birdcall sent a shiver of excitement through me. The last coin from the bag that Grandfather Manohar received for serving in Gwalior became moist with the sweat in my palm. Inside the house, Thakuma was absorbed in the re-telecast of the series on Khudiram shown last night. She glanced absently at the coin, reluctant to take her eyes off the TV screen, then jumped, finally noticing it. When her eyes turned to me, a tear flowed down her bony cheek. She kept staring at it till the furrow on her cheek dried up and became a dark line dividing it in two. On the screen, Khudiram stood holding the bars of the cell, lost in thought.

  ‘What use do the poor have of history, Thakuma?’ I asked gently, kneeling beside her.

  ‘Chetu, only now, when I have it back, do I realize its value.’

  She laughed. Only women of ripe old age can laugh so.

  ‘How did you get this back?’

  ‘He gave it.’

  ‘How did he get it? Didn’t Sudev sell it?’

  ‘Those who buy it keep selling it. And those who sold it keep buying it back,’ said I, remembering Ramu da’s words.

  Khudiram was hanged eight years before Father was born. The magistrate of Muzzafarpur, Kingsford, ordered the caning of a young man, Sushil Sen. The punishment left him with serious injuries. Enraged, his colleagues in Jugantar tried Kingsford in a people’s court and sentenced him to death. The mission of carrying out the death sentence fell upon the shoulders of two young activists, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki. Thakuma would describe how they hung around the courthouse watching Kingsford, plotting to blow him up with a bomb, as if she had been right there. Her descriptions buzzed in my mind when I stepped into Kaku’s room. His room was opposite the kitchen in our house which was like a rectangular box with its mouth open. When I went in, Kaku was lying on the double cot in their small room, rubbing his ample, hairless chest as he watched the series on Khudiram on the fourteen-inch TV mounted screen on their wall. The room was tiny; the double cot and the almirah filled it completely. The children’s books and old toys were on iron shelves fixed on the walls.

  After Ramu da’s death Kakima and the girls rarely slept in our house. Kakima would come back after taking the girls to school, enter the kitchen, turn her back to us and cook for Kaku and herself, and serve him in their room. She constantly spoke to him in a reproachful tone. Then she would shut the door firmly. The men in this house have no sense of day and night, they see no difference between a house of mourning and a bridal chamber—Ma spat in disgust. Thakuma winked and smiled: I conceived him during the day.

  Seeing me, Kaku sat up, took his gamchha from the head of the cot, wiped his neck and chest, and gave me a helpless, sad smile. I went up and sat next to him.

  ‘Uh . . . you haven’t spoken to me for so long, Chetu!’

  I could recollect our last conversation exactly. One and a half months back, on 18 May. The day the governor rejected Jatindranath’s mercy petition. That was the day when Kaku sent me off to get paan and I walked with a carefree bounce in my step before Sanjeev Kumar Mitra’s camera. It seemed ages ago. My head whirled at the thought of all that had happened in my life since that day.

  ‘I have had nothing to say after the decision to become a hangwoman, Kaku.’ I fixed my gaze on his eyes. ‘How did Manohar Mullick’s gold coin reach Sanjeev Kumar Mitra?’

  My question left him flustered. He was about to ask, which coin, but then, as if he decided not to, he took my hand and, caressing it, said, ‘My dear, Kaku is an old man now, isn’t he? Isn’t he nearly sixty-five? Two little children . . . you know, don’t you? They are still so small. What will happen to them if something happens to me?’

  ‘My baba is eighty-eight, I have never felt afraid about what will happen to me if something happens to him. Do you know why, Kaku? Because I know that you will be there for me.’

  When my eyes overflowed and my voice fell, heavy with sorrow, Kaku wiped my eyes wearily.

  ‘Kaku is a good-for-nothing, unfortunately, Chetu. All of you have suffered nothing but loss and pain because of me. Anything I have ever done with the intention of protecting others has always damaged them. Isn’t that why your baba keeps reviling me, calling me useless?’

  He covered his face with both palms and lowered his head.
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  ‘I . . . this happened to Ramu because of me!’

  The guilt in his words was unbearable.

  ‘I think it happened because of me. But I didn’t come here to tell you that. How did Sanjeev Kumar get hold of the coin?’

  A wrongdoer’s sheepish look dawned on his face.

  ‘It wouldn’t have reached him unless it was through you. I know that.’

  He sighed.

  ‘Syami told me that antiques sell for high prices. When I thought of it, I felt that Sanju babu might be interested. So I saw him . . . ’

  I kept looking at him steadfastly. I could easily imagine the moment when Kaku dragged his fat, sweaty body and stood before Sanjeev Kumar Mitra, panting. How did he respond when the coin was shown to him?

  ‘He burst out laughing. And said, I’ll take it, for any price you quote.’

  I could hear him laugh too. A new noose fell around my heart. Every pore in my body shivered.

  ‘It was wrong, Chetu . . . but when Syami insisted . . . ’

  When I was a child, he used to take me to school and bring me back. I thought of the mornings and noontimes we had spent going to and coming back from school on his bicycle. That was another Kaku.

  ‘Old age had sapped my courage, Chetu. Not because I am old, but because of the children’s faces.’

  His voice faltered and tears flowed. I tried to quiet my heart and leaned on his shoulder.

  ‘Like I am sure you’ll be there for me if Baba is no more, you can be sure that I’ll be there for Rari and Champa, Kaku!’

  ‘But you . . . you are so gentle, and will be married off today or tomorrow. What can you do, my daughter?’

  ‘Whether I marry or not, I’ll always be there for Rari and Champa. Isn’t that enough?’

  My voice faltered and tears flowed too.

  ‘I was never afraid in the old days, nor did I worry so much. I was ready to give myself up for the country, like Khudiram here. Death, the police, the army—I feared nothing. I laughed even when they beat me black and blue in jail. In fact, I hummed a song . . .’