Hangwoman

by K R Meera

  ‘Yes, but they are still hoping that the President will intervene.’

  ‘Seven hundred and seventy people have applied for permission to witness it!’

  He glared at me steadily.

  ‘If she slips up before that huge crowd, I won’t let her off easy!’

  ‘There won’t be any slip-ups, Babu,’ Sibdev babu said in an appeasing tone.

  ‘She will be here all of today, right?’

  He stroked his face, mad enough to butcher me alive, surveying me from top to toe.

  ‘The order from above is that she should stay here till the hanging takes place at four in the morning day after tomorrow.’

  ‘I want to have a special meeting with her after that.’

  He gritted his teeth. The only thing that worried me was my own lack of fear. After the IG and his group left, I went back to the welfare office. As I went up its steps I glanced towards the gallows once more. Another wrestling match was on—between Grandfather Mosh and a relatively young-looking person, with skin as dark as rosewood. Only when I saw him get on the sandbag I’d hung up and sit there, swinging his legs, did I recognize Grandfather Kala! I shut my eyes tight. The termites of memory were boring into my brain.

  ‘This Mullick is a devil. The earlier one, Chakrabarti babu, was so good!’ said Kadambini, coming to the door. I went in, sat down in a wooden chair, and looked out. The doorways of the two-storeyed wards in front of us lay open. In the days when Grandfather Satyanatha Grddha Mullick had met Sanjeev Kumar’s ancestor Naren dakat, jail meant Harinbadi. It was the largest gift Europeans gave Kolkata—Harinbadi prison, next to the Maidan. But by my grandfather’s time, the splendour of Harinbadi had dimmed. The city had just three main prisons. Dadu preferred Presidency Jail near the Maidan; but Grandfather Kalicharan liked Alipore Central Jail. My uncle Nagbhushan, however, liked the women’s prison at Bhawanipur best of all. I blankly watched the freshly bathed convicts sit down in a row for food. The scent of woodsmoke and spices rose from the kitchen on the right. Two ageing convicts hobbled towards the seated rows carrying large pots of food, with pieces of wood attached to their handles. The convicts who hung around the kitchen and the veranda observed us, two women, closely. Two people went over with food towards the condemned cells. Then, Sibdev babu called, asking me into his office.

  He was having his breakfast in his room. ‘You haven’t inherited your father’s best quality,’ he mused, while chewing a large piece of luchi, gesturing to me to take a chair. A constable came in with plates and served us luchis and aalu. They reminded me of death and our house on Strand Road.

  ‘Chetu di, learn how to speak with the big people. You will reach nowhere if you try to challenge them and make them feel small instead of trying to please and appease them.’

  He poured himself some water and drank it. And then completed what he was saying: ‘Don’t forget, you are a woman.’

  ‘I’ll remember that, Babu,’ I tried to smile. There was nothing further to do, and so after the food, I went to a corner and sat there, leaning against the wall. Sibdev babu was busy sending off someone on parole and readmitting someone who had returned from parole. Time passed sluggishly. Sibdev babu’s phone rang. He picked it up and smiled at me. ‘This is he . . . your . . . the other fellow,’ he said affectionately.

  ‘Uh . . . uh . . . yes, yes, she is here . . . but, sorry, till the fourteenth, not even a fly in this world can speak with her. The mess last time! A full day of shooting, the quarrel; didn’t you fly at each others’ throats?’ He laughed good-naturedly. It made his gentle face brighter still.

  ‘Oho?’

  He held the phone a little away and looked at me.

  ‘The President’s response to Jatindranath’s brother’s mercy plea will come soon.’

  The news didn’t touch me the least.

  ‘Will it be postponed this time too?’ Kadambini, who was sitting in the other chair, leaned towards me.

  ‘No . . .’ I murmured.

  She looked at me in surprise.

  ‘I can see the signs of death on him . . . his neck has turned bluish.’

  I was amused to see her rub her neck at that. Outside, the convicts were out with hoes and other implements to clear up the yard.

  Three of them were talking together; suddenly one pushed down another. The third tried to intervene, but he got into a fight with the second. It went on till a policeman ran up and started lashing them with a cane. Sibdev babu put the phone down, came over, and sat down beside me.

  ‘See, there’s a lot of hard work to do in jail,’ he pointed out.

  ‘I’ve heard that in my ancestors’ time, it was khanidhaana,’ I said. This was the practice of extracting mustard oil by employing prisoners, bound hand and foot with iron rings, to operate an oil press.

  Sibdev babu was about to say something when a policeman came up and whispered something to him. He stood up, put on his cap, and looked at his watch. ‘It is Kartik, Jatin’s brother. Let me take him to meet his brother. You can go back to the welfare office.’

  Not long after Kadambini and I had reached the office, a policeman came to fetch me.

  ‘Where to?’ I asked him, ‘Cell no. 3?’ My heart beat faster.

  ‘He says his last wish is to marry his brother to you.’

  ‘He has no right to wish so,’ I retorted, disturbed. I went reluctantly to Jatindranth’s cell.

  Jatindranath stretched his neck out from behind the bars. ‘Chetu di, meet my younger brother, Kartik. Please won’t you marry him?’

  The young man and I looked at each other. He was about thirty or so; want and sorrow had marred his face. I recalled seeing him with Kokila Banerjee in the studio. He looked far more exhausted now.

  ‘I don’t plan to get married now,’ I said seriously.

  ‘So the only plan you have is about my neck?’ Jatindranath asked. His smile had faded. He crept back in, disappointed. Then we heard a Saigal song from in there.

  ‘He’s been like this recently. Gets very sentimental quickly. Any reference to death makes him distraught,’ Sibdev babu said.

  Jatindranath’s brother went out, head bowed, after standing there silently for a few minutes.

  ‘Will no one else come from home, Kartik?’ Sibdev babu asked.

  ‘No, nobody else . . .’

  ‘Jatin’s wife?’

  He shook his head in the negative.

  ‘He’s signed papers to donate his organs.’

  ‘Very good, we have no objection.’

  ‘But according to the law, he can be brought down only after half an hour. By that time it will be too late.’

  ‘He’s an unfortunate one,’ Kartik said to himself.

  I stood there with Sibdev babu even after he went away.

  ‘I have done everything else Jatin asked for . . .’

  ‘He behaves with me as if he’s known me for a long time,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t understand him. When we asked about his last wish, he said, I just want to see her.’

  I turned around and walked slowly.

  ‘Do you hope that Sanjeev Kumar Mitra will marry you?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think it a great piece of fortune to hope for!’ My voice was rough. Suddenly, a terrible scream rent the air. A horrid wail, a man’s—it came from cell no. 3. I saw, as if in a dream, Sibdev babu bounding back, the police and convicts rushing there. I was calm; somehow, I felt no special anxiety or fear. The wail, strong enough to shake the sky and the earth, tapered off gradually, like a long-echoing prayer. All the sounds from the printing press and the jail school were submerged by Jatindranath’s immense cry of desperation. When it stopped, a strange quiet filled the jail yard. I stood watching Sibdev babu and the policemen open the cell and go in. They came back after a while, locking the door of the cell.

  ‘The petition’s bee
n rejected,’ Sibdev babu let me know, his face very dull. ‘The news is being read on his radio.’

  I continued to stand, like a statue. We both stood there for a while. The heavy sobs from cell no. 3 followed me. When I looked at the gallows, a burning sensation flashed inside me and disappeared. In the end, after centuries, I too had ended up here. Unbelievable! I saw all my ancestors. When I closed my eyes tight and opened them, I saw Grandfather Jnananatha with his black curtain behind the gallows, making his calculations on it. When the curtain swayed in the wind, I saw Ratna Begum sit behind it, predicting the future. I feared I was losing my sanity.

  The hours passed by quickly. The policemen told me that Jatindranath had neither got up, nor spoken, nor eaten, that night. I could not sleep, either. At six, I heard the puja bells ring. I opened the window and looked at the gallows. A small crowd was waiting impatiently on its platform—my ancestors. I looked towards cell no. 3. Some convicts and ten or twelve policemen were gathered there. Kadambini came inside.

  ‘He’s performing the Kali puja there. Wants to meet you after.’

  I felt like seeing him too. I bathed quickly and changed. When I reached cell no. 3, the puja was over. He handed out the prasad. I got a guava. I took it with folded hands; he went back in and returned with a radio. ‘I don’t need it. You can have it.’

  I accepted it with numb hands. He kept his gaze on my face.

  ‘I went to jail just four years after I got married. Haven’t been with my wife since then,’ he said in a low whisper. ‘I don’t remember the happiness of holding a woman close to my body at all . . . Would you please embrace me one time?’

  I jumped back, shocked.

  ‘I don’t know how to persuade a woman to hold me. What do I lack?’

  I couldn’t pull away my gaze from his. Before my eyes his face became that of a child. A child who had lost the game, an injured child. I was filled with compassion. Making an effort, I moved forward. I tried to raise my arms towards him. He smelt bad, like mouldy bread. When he held me close, tears pricked my eyelids. We were almost of the same height. He pressed his face on my shoulder. I shut my eyes tightly; his overflowed and my shoulder became moist. He then looked at everyone and smiled.

  ‘I can go happily now . . . all my wishes have been fulfilled!’

  The convicts and the policemen looked truly shocked. Jatindranath kept smiling at someone he alone could see. When they served breakfast, he was still smiling. When he was done with the tea, tender coconut and the lassi, Sibdev babu held out a glass of glucose solution to him. He downed it in a single gulp. He went back to do another puja. Gave out prasad to everybody. This time I got a piece of dried grape. I held it along with the guava. He folded his hands and asked Sibdev babu, ‘Can Chetna be here? I would like to keep looking at her.’

  ‘You donkey, she’s here to kill you,’ said Sibdev babu. He obviously pitied the man.

  ‘So what, isn’t she very pretty?’ He laughed heartily.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or not. But I sat cross-legged on the floor in front of his cell, still holding the prasad and his radio.

  After some time, he came closer to the bars and told me: ‘Be careful when you tie my arms and legs. The skin’s delicate from getting too little sun. If you tie the rope too tight, it’ll break and bleed.’

  I stayed quiet. At one o’clock, the welfare officer Hari Ray, Sibdev babu and some policemen came. They laid a table and some chairs before cell no. 3, and had their noon meal.

  ‘I’d asked for ilish shorshe,’ he smiled at the officers. When the ilish was served, he picked up the serving dish, brought it close to his nose and took a deep breath. ‘The last hilsa of this life!’ he laughed to himself. I put back into my plate the ball of rice and dal. My eyes darted towards the gallows below which my ancestors from the earliest times waited. I could not eat my food. It was unbearable to witness a man eat his last hilsa.

  At two o’clock, he came back close to the bars again and smiled. ‘Are you bored? No one from home is going to visit me here. You are now my relative and my foe! What a joke!’ He went inside without waiting for a reply.

  At four, Sibdev babu brought him tea and biscuits. After we drank our tea, he washed his mouth and sat down to Kali puja again. As I sat there keeping him company, the policemen standing on guard looked at me and tittered among themselves. My body has his mouldy smell too, I thought. During the course of the day, it had merged with the fruity scent of the guava.

  At eight, the jail authorities brought him dinner, but he didn’t eat. Better to travel on a light stomach, he said.

  ‘Hey Jatin, have a little bit, fellow?’ Sibdev babu insisted.

  ‘Okay, do you want mishti doi?’

  Sibdev babu handed it to him; he wolfed it down and looked at me with a smile. ‘This life’s last bit of mishti doi!’ He licked his lips and turned towards Sibdev babu. ‘In a way, this is much better, Babu. This is the first time someone has asked me what I’d like! No one’s ever asked me even when I was a child . . . till I came here. The truth is that I became aware of what I liked only when the death sentence came close each time.’

  ‘Be brave, Jatin!’

  He laughed and went in. Sibdev babu looked at me. ‘You’ll continue sitting here?’

  I got up and followed him. When we came close to the gallows, it began to drizzle. The hot raindrops fell on my face as if they were being flung down. I did not see any of my ancestors under the gallows.

  ‘Be up sharp at two. The hanging is at four-thirty. Don’t oversleep.’

  My body tingled. I couldn’t sleep. For the first time, I was able to imagine a man’s form dangling in the air. Outside, it sounded as if a whole sea was rolling. I woke up at two, and did the final Kali puja the way I had heard Father and Thakuma speak of it—with flowers, liquor and blood. Then I walked to the gallows. I untied the rope and tied it back firmly on the hook. I made sure that it was secure. I heard the door of cell no. 3 creak open. As I watched, Jatindranath Banerjee stepped out in new white garments. A whole group of men stood before him: Srinath Mullick, Sibdev babu, the jail magistrate and some others. Sibdev babu read out something in Bangla. I could hear it only vaguely. He and the jailer declared loudly that the Jatindranath Banerjee mentioned in the order was indeed the person before them. They moved forward, Jatindranath in the middle, the policemen flanking him. I closed my eyes and saw him approach the gallows. Slowly. His very last footsteps.

  51

  The last drizzle of his life; the last dawn; the last smile. I saw Jatindranath Banerjee’s sallow face and sunken eyes clearly even in the dim light. As with all the women in our family, in moments of deep crisis, my hands were doing and undoing nooses on the hangman’s rope. My nervousness doubled when I realized what I was doing. In my determination to be ready before he reached the gallows, I looped the rope twelve times; it moved twelve times like the cord of a garland of invisible flowers. By the time he came up the steps my noose was ready with its thirteen beautiful loops. Its perfection and strength was alluring even to me. When he walked towards the small circle drawn in white in the middle of the planks, a cold wind blew. My pores tingled with the delight of the beloved being embraced for the very first time by her lover. I wished to be embraced thus and to hear the sweet assurance of love: I will be with you until death. The magistrate, the IG, Sibdev babu and others stood in a row. If only Sanjeev Kumar Mitra could have joined them. The jailer came up and held out a coil of rope to me. The moment the condemned man reaches the foot of the gallows, tie his arms together and fix the leather strap on his legs within a second—Father’s words rang in my ears. He always said, ‘If you take too much time, the condemned man might collapse out of sheer mental tension. Sometimes he’ll go weak and his bones will cave in, and the body will flag. That makes the hangman’s job quite hard.’

  While I was tying his arms, Jatindranath turned around and looked at me
. ‘Someone is speaking . . . who is that?’ His voice was calm.

  ‘My ancestors . . . maybe yours too!’ I whispered.

  ‘Why do you tie up my hands?’

  ‘An open and outstretched hand is a formidable weapon.’

  I tested the knots hurriedly and held out my hand for the leather strap for the legs.

  ‘In our childhood we thought the palm was a great instrument,’ he said, opening and closing his palms within the knots on his wrist.

  I put the leather strap around his calves.

  ‘Are feet weapons too?’

  ‘The feet are the wheels of the soul’s vehicle. If they are not together, the journey won’t be smooth.’

  He sighed deeply; his feet seemed to echo it back. I finished, and stood up. The next task was to put a death-hood on him.

  ‘Jatin, pray if you want to,’ said Sibdev babu, patting him on his shoulder.

  ‘I don’t want to pray now, Babu,’ he said, ‘. . . please say something to me before my time is over!’

  Not able to meet his tranquil eyes, Sibdev babu lowered his gaze.

  ‘I feel greedy for conversation, for laughter . . . I haven’t heard enough of both. I didn’t realize that till now. The real pleasure of human life is hearing other human beings, experiencing their presence. Who knows if I’ll get those where I am going? And if I’ll be able to hear them? Chetna di, say something. Your voice is so sweet . . .’

  This was the greatest test in a hangman’s career. I didn’t know what to tell the living body now barely moments away from the 3.2 kilo Buxar rope knotted with thirteen loops, hanging from the hook. What would have Father done in my place, I tried to think nervously. If Kala Mullick, or Grandfather Mosh, or Grandfather Kalicharan were forced to tell a story to gladden the person about to be sent away, what would they choose, I searched my mind.

  ‘What did you eat this morning?’ I asked, wiping my perspiration.

  ‘A piece of sandesh,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to go without tasting it again.’ A smile appeared on his face.