Hangwoman

by K R Meera

  ‘Ekla . . . ?’

  ‘Oh, that was Mano da’s song! Mine was Aandhar shokoli . . . ’

  He smiled through his tears.

  ‘The policemen hammered nails into our fingertips, whipped us, branded us . . . but I never stopped singing. But now I am afraid to remember that self. I don’t even feel I am myself any more. That old me can never be retrieved!’

  ‘Kaku, you are the same Kaku.’

  ‘No, my dear. Dada is right. I am not good enough to kill even a hen.’

  He looked at his own hands.

  ‘Huh . . . they killed me by half. In return, I tried to exterminate them. Wanted to be like Khudiram . . . ended up useless, not capable of finishing off even a fowl!’

  His voice fell. His favourite childhood tale was the assassination planned by Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki. They tried to kill the magistrate with locally made bombs and bullets. It had happened some twenty years before his birth but he always narrated the tale with such fervour. First, they decided to plant a bomb in the court. But since that meant other people might get hurt, they decided to strike when he arrived at the club. They bombed the magistrate’s carriage, but only when they heard the cries of women did they realize their mistake. Kingsford wasn’t in the carriage; it was the wife and daughter of a barrister. In the melee that followed, Khudiram and Prafulla fled in different directions. Prafulla reached Samastipur and took a train; a police officer in the same compartment began to have suspicions. When it appeared that he was going to be arrested for sure, Prafulla shot himself in the head. Not knowing this, Khudiram trudged twenty-six kilometres to reach Samastipur. He was in a tea shop when two police constables saw him. He tried to escape but was soon nabbed by the crowd who checked his clothes—two pistols fell out of his pockets. He had enough ammunition on him to fire thirty-five rounds. He did not lose composure even with the crowd that kicked and hit him just for fun. Even as he was being led to the police vehicle, a keen look remained on his face.

  ‘I was a fool, Chetu. I could never really see through our people and our leaders. I began to have my doubts when they tried to manhandle us at Baranagar in 1971. Those were Congressmen, but the communists supported them. I felt giddy when I looked at our attackers. We’d taken to arms for their sake. Right before my eyes, ten or twelve young men were beaten to death. I still see that horrible scene . . . the sticks, stones, bricks, the blood splattering at each blow . . . ’

  Kaku was jailed in 1973.When he got out in 1975 the Emergency was declared. He went underground, migrating to Bombay where he lived as a shoeshiner, a tea vendor and even a blind Muslim beggar, distributing George Fernandes’ subversive letter written after he went underground. How he picked up the courage to do such things, I don’t know even now.

  The TV suddenly grew louder. The cell was being opened in the screen. Khudiram was being brought out by policemen. They stood him in front of the gallows, but it was time for the commercial break. Kaku got up suddenly and switched it off.

  ‘There was no woman in Khudiram’s life. If there had been, he couldn’t have died with a cool mind and strong body. I tried to run away from women. Reached nowhere. So I decided to return to them. But still, I am nowhere . . . ’

  I did not move. His words made no sense to me. But I could see Khudiram’s eyes on his face. Even when he was brought before the magistrate, he did not know that Prafulla was dead. To save his friend, he admitted to being the sole conspirator. As soon as he had testified, Prafulla’s body was brought; Khudiram recognized his friend. But the British were satisfied only after they had severed his head and body, and sent the head to Kolkata. It was my grandfather who took it there, wrapped in a red cloth.

  ‘Whenever I go to the foot of the gallows, I am filled with fear about myself. What am I doing? Protecting or punishing? When Dada pulls the lever, I shut my eyes tight. The lines of Aandhar shokoli ring in my head. Each of those deaths was my own. Dada hanged me all those times,’ he kept mumbling in pain.

  ‘Don’t cry, Kaku,’ I pleaded sadly.

  ‘Had forgotten it all . . . now, it is back. I’ve had enough, Chetu. How can one get rid of all these memories?’

  Unable to sit there any further, I got up slowly.

  ‘I have to go. I’ve found work at the Bhavishyath. Let me leave now.’

  ‘Forgive me . . . ’

  ‘Don’t say things like that.’

  ‘No one speaks the truth. And even when they do, the truth is always incomplete.’

  He began to tremble. When I came out I was covered in sweat as if I had been inside a burning furnace. So, Sanjeev Kumar Mitra had managed, once again, to make me all the more weak and helpless. I went towards the door and saw Thakuma standing at the doorstep. She turned to me. A small procession of mourners passed by.

  ‘Oh, these children!’ Thakuma exclaimed without emotion. ‘Today also a child’s been playing with the noose.’

  I went right back in and sat down on her cot. In this Kolkata of ours, it’s impossible to pass a day without remembering someone from the past or stepping on the clods of history. The TV channels hadn’t made a story of Belu and Benu’s game inspired by the sight of Khudiram walking up to the gallows and putting the noose around his own neck. I felt drained thinking of Benu looking up at his sister dangling from the noose. At that moment, Father came hurrying in with an angry yowl. His feet were hardly on the floor. Ma caught hold him just as he was about to fall and carried him back to his room. She came out after a while.

  ‘So, today it begins early.’

  I didn’t ask, but Ma told me anyway. ‘Didn’t you understand? They are finding new lawyers for him, it seems.’

  Ma was referring to Amnesty International arranging a group of lawyers to fight Jatindranath’s case. They would argue that he was mentally unstable. I sat motionless on Thakuma’s cot. They sentenced Khudiram Bose to death. But a group of prominent lawyers volunteered to fight his case for free. Khudiram changed his testimony under their supervision. They split hairs over the law, but the death sentence was confirmed. It apparently brought a smile to his face. The judge was puzzled. Maybe he heard the judgment wrong, he thought. But Khudiram said, give me some more time, I will teach you how to make a bomb. He went to the gallows with his head held high. My ancestor Gouri Charan was old and wizened, but it was the first time that he met a condemned man who greeted him with a smile as he put the death-hood on him. After the hanging, Grandfather Gouri Charan broke down. The cold feel of the coin lingered in my palm. Sanjeev Kumar Mitra sat somewhere, shaking with laughter. I got up in a hurry and slung my bag on my shoulder.

  ‘Where to?’ Ma asked suspiciously.

  ‘Nowhere in particular,’ I murmured, since the truth must be told but not all of it. Probably the cuckoo from earlier cooed with sarcasm. A circular train dashed in the opposite direction. The caress of Death the Lover aroused me too. What if I do not realize ultimate joy in this world and have to leave with an unquiet body to the other world? With that perturbing thought, I hailed an auto rickshaw. The days were flying past. Time was running out. If I had some more time, I’d teach him to make a bomb too, though that meant one of us would be annihilated.

  40

  I flew through Madan Mohan Lane like a bird with wings on fire. The song Aandhar shokoli clung to my lips like a burning spark and singed tongue. The song that Kaku sang when they hung him upside down in the police cell—I simply could not stop humming it. I walked by the Batliboi bookshops through the busy moss-covered road towards Bhavishyath and daydreamed that a dreamy-eyed young man was standing in one of Thakurbari’s imposing red buildings and singing this song. The anguished eyes and lovelorn face of the young man walking down the stairway, saddened by the absence of his muse, pierced me so. I always pictured all women who commit suicide as dangling statues. They hung, heavy forever, at the tip of the rope stretched tight like a violin string. I thought of the woman who
produced music when her devastated lover touched her lifeless body. ‘Chhalana chhaturi aashe hridaye bishaado baashe,’ I hummed, as I entered the Bhavishyath office. Mano da, who had been joking and laughing with someone on the black telephone, stopped laughing and looked at me in surprise. He became glum all of a sudden. He ended the conversation, put the receiver back and smiled sadly at me.

  ‘Your kaku used to sing magnificently. That song . . . when he sang when they hung him upside down, all of us would forget our pain, close our eyes, and keep rhythm. Oh, what a song it is! Who else but our Thakur could write such a song! But the funny thing is that it was one of the songs banned then. You see why? It begins with a reference to darkness, right? I look into the dark to see when you will arrive, but I do not see you. The state interpreted it as: There is Emergency everywhere, when will democracy arrive, I try to see! But, hey democracy, I do not see you! So Siddhartha Shankar Ray found politics even in the poems Thakur wrote for his Lady Hecate!’

  I smiled, so did the statue-like Nischol da.

  ‘Don’t laugh, Chetu, this is no joke! All poems with words like darkness, sorrow and pain were supposed to be banned. Even phrases like “the barriers will be overcome” or “barriers will not last” would invite instant proscription! What else is there in Thakur’s poetry other than darkness and sorrow and pain?’

  ‘Tomare dekhi na jabe . . . tomare dekhi na jabe . . . ’ I hummed involuntarily, I cannot see you. And when I replaced Kadambari Devi with democracy in my mind, my heart grew lighter.

  ‘At first this was a great shock to me. Thakur was Indira Gandhi’s guru, after all. She studied in his Shantiniketan. There she was apparently fond of dancing. But Nehru would not permit that. How do we comprehend the fact that a woman who’d declared that her happiest years were at Shantiniketan went on later to ban Thakur’s songs? But later, it ceased to be a mystery. She banned the words of the Father of the Nation and even those of her own father! Why, even parts of her own speeches were proscribed! What honesty! Only women can do such a thing, Chetu! You women, I swear on my own mother, you women are extraordinary creations!’

  ‘Chhalana chaturi aashe hridaye bishaado baashe/Tomare dekhi na jabe, tomare dekhi na jabe . . .’

  I smiled and continued to hum. Betrayal enters with élan, it fills the heart with dejection. The television and the fans came to life when the power outage ended and suddenly I could hear Sanjeev Kumar Mitra’s voice.

  ‘So the issue before us, Advocate Kulkarni, is this: It has been more than ten whole years since Jatindranath received the death sentence. Someone who receives a sentence for an ordinary murder case would normally be out by now.’

  I lost my lines and looked at Mano da. He peeped in and went back to the papers on his desk. I went in and sat in my chair. I wanted to turn off the TV but couldn’t bring myself to do it when his face appeared. It is a truly unique experience for any hangwoman to witness a discussion about the legal arguments that the lawyers appointed to save the prisoner—who is to die by her hand—hope to take to the Supreme Court. My head grew heavy thinking of this blindman’s buff we were playing—Jatindranath, I who had been deputed to kill him, and the lawyers attempting to save him.

  ‘What you said is true, Mr Mitra. The delay on the part of the government in forwarding the relevant documents about Jatindranath’s sentence was the main reason why his mercy plea was rejected. So, in a way, the state government is responsible for his present plight. That’s what we are trying to point out. What happened in Punjab in 1983? The condemned convict Sher Singh remained on death row for two and a half years. He submitted a petition. The court opined it is one thing to receive a death sentence, but quite another to suffer the agony of waiting for it interminably. His sentence was reduced to a life term. Compared with that, Jatindranath ought to receive compensation from the state government! Not a year or two. Eleven whole years spent waiting for death! Is this permissible in any civilized country?’

  ‘Your point is very relevant, Advocate Kulkarni. When a citizen’s freedom and life are to be taken, shouldn’t they be taken in a fair, just and reasonable way?’

  Mano da who came in, asked me, seeing Sanjeev Kumar Mitra’s bubbling enthusiasm: ‘Tell me, is this lover of yours truly against the death penalty?’

  I kept silent.

  ‘Isn’t he the same chap who went whining behind that child’s brother yesterday?’ He laughed outright. ‘The truth, Chetu, is that these days my respect for Einstein is on the rise. How right he was—everything is relative! This earth and its position, its speed, why, even the distance between you and me—everything!’ He stopped briefly. ‘But then, why do we need measurements at all? I don’t understand!’

  The sparkle of his rapturous smile was contagious—I smiled too. The state, when it decides to take the life or freedom of its citizens, will do so only after ensuring that any measure to this end is just, fair and reasonable. That too was a strange day. I realized that when hung upside down, those who have a heart can sing only of dead loves. Like the sea trapped in a pot with its mouth shut tight, the soul surged fruitlessly. Everything inside the Bhavisyath’s office seemed to rise and fall. The leaves of the ancient fans which looked like the sails of a sunken boat, the multicoloured sheets of paper flapping in the hot breeze, Mano da’s silver locks, Nischol da’s fingers—all of it was boiling and bubbling. Outside, the sky was dark with menacing rainclouds ready to burst.

  ‘Chetu, I was thinking—why not attack the prison and finish off this Jatindranath?’ Mano da had hobbled in to hand me a few papers on his encounter with Charu Majumdar. ‘This bother will be over and done with! Right now it’s: Will he be hanged? No! Will he be let off? No! ’

  ‘This man is the government’s prey. It won’t like anyone else taking his life,’ I said.

  ‘Ooh, so what is this government?A Bengal tiger? That it should be so insistent to knock down its prey by itself and maul it to death?’

  His lovely mischievous smile came on.

  ‘Jyoti babu once asked Feroze Gandhi, do you know why your wife has turned out like this? You know what his reply was? He said, if you live in that house, you’ll see for yourself the submissiveness that Congress leaders and freedom fighters keep showing . . . any girl would turn arrogant there.’

  He smiled again.

  ‘Like I turned into a hangwoman!’

  Mano da looked straight at me.

  ‘Chetu, are you capable, really, of hanging someone?’

  The question infuriated me enormously. The same belligerence and fury that overtook me when Maruti Prasad attacked my body, and Sanjeev Kumar my soul, re-emerged with a vengeance. Without stopping to think, I pushed back my chair, pulled off my dupatta, looped it lightning fast into a noose, threw it around Mano da’s neck and pulled the other end through the bars of the window. Mano da was taken completely unawares. Though he was quite tall and well built, he was only as heavy as a baby bird for me then. Before he knew what was happening, his thin right leg stuck out from under his dhoti and banged on the table and his eyeballs bulged and popped dangerously. I let go. Hearing the sound of Mano da falling on the floor, Nischol da came in running but stood rooted to the spot, unable to even cry out. I removed the noose just as I had made it—speedily—rubbed his neck and soothed it, and helped him into a chair. At the brink of losing consciousness, he coughed and spluttered and looked at us in turn. When Nischol da went up to him, he stroked his neck and chest, pointed his finger at me and tried to say something. I poured him a glass of water from the earthen pot there and stood leaning against the table as if nothing extraordinary had happened. After he drank it and took several deep breaths, and calmed down somewhat, he looked at Nischol da and said, ‘Give her a hundred-rupee raise!’

  Nischol da stood there as still as a statue. ‘Who’ll give us that money?’ he asked after a couple of seconds.

  ‘Look at him, how he is!’ Mano da said, coughing.
‘What keenness to insult the capitalist in front of the proletariat! Hey mister, I am going to dismiss you!’

  Nischol da left with an unsmiling face. I, unable to face Mano da, went back to the proofs of his autobiography. Sanjeev Kumar Mitra’s voice came back after a break.

  ‘What other arguments do you intend to raise in court?’

  ‘Mr Mitra, the next question is whether Jatindranath’s mental condition renders him fit for the death sentence or not. We say, no. A group of experts . . . doctors . . . must be appointed to examine him.’

  ‘That too is a vital point, Advocate Kulkarni. But tell me, why should we worry so much about the mental condition of someone who is about to die anyway?’

  ‘Because of the possibility of paribartan, transformation. Isn’t transformation everything in the world? Does not the death penalty bar the possibility of transformation forever? A life sentence can be converted into a death sentence, Mr Mitra, but not vice versa. Any kind of punishment that cannot be reversed is best avoided.’

  I switched off the TV, went to Mano da and, kneeling, put my head on his shrivelled right leg. He smoothed my hair affectionately. ‘Interesting. This experience of death is interesting!’

  ‘Killing too is interesting,’ I murmured. It had now become evident to me that none of the hangmen in our family, beginning with our earliest ancestor Radharaman Mullick—none of those who had become the arm of the state and the intoxicant of the crowd—had undertaken this work for material gain. Over and above money, there are two gains to be made in murdering another. The first is fame. More than the desire for money, it was the thirst for fame that drove Father. The fruition of his desire for fame as an actor was satiated only by the gallows. The second is a connection with the powerful. That drove my grandfather Purushottam Grddha Mullick. For Kala Mullick, it was the delight of delivering before a crowd of his betters and superiors the crazy pleasure of witnessing death. Grandfather Bhisma took satisfaction in performing his inherited dharma with precision and dedication; it was revenge that fired Pingalakeshini. And for Grandfather Kalicharan, it was the chance to demonstrate his aesthetic talents. But the true force that drove all these individuals was something else: when they woke at the crack of dawn, took a dip in the Ganga with eyes still sore from sleep, offered Ma Kali and Bhagawan Mahadev red-coloured flowers, liquor and blood from one’s own thumb, prostrated themselves at their parents’ feet, and set off with the readied rope to the foot of the gallows, their chief gratification came from the knowledge that they were thereby proving that they possessed the ability to perform the most difficult of human acts. I did not believe even for a moment that justice would be done if Jatindranath were hanged to death. But the very thought of putting the noose around his neck and pulling the lever made my hair stand on end. The rage that Mano da’s question produced taught me that I too was driven by the need for such gratification. That possibility sank its teeth into my body. Time was running out fast. I, hailed as the symbol of the strength of Indian women and all the women in the world, had to do it. When I put the mask on his face, Jatindranath would look directly into my eyes. My hands tingled to break into the prison, as Mano da suggested, and strangle him to death.