Hangwoman

by K R Meera

  ‘It’s clicked, Chetna!’

  When Biswajit Ray sat down, Harish Nath stood up.

  ‘You are a phenomenon now, a big role model for today’s India!’

  He turned towards Biswajit Ray.

  ‘I am not bluffing, there’s evidence—eleven children played hangman yesterday and died.’

  I froze in my seat.

  ‘What does that indicate? That this hanging has created a huge impact among people. Which means your name is etched forever in the mind of lakhs and lakhs of Indians!’

  Something exploded inside my head. My heart splintered like a discarded earthen cup that had been flung away. Sparks flew around my eyes like flies announcing the sign of death. I saw clearly, from across a glass wall, that I’d reached the gates of the hot hell, which looked like the ancient and dingy entrance to Nimtala Ghat. The dead Gautam Deb and the lightning-hit Rabia Khatun, with bodies transparent as crystal and tails soft as molten wax, ran around Biswajit Ray, Harish Nath and Sanjeev Kumar, playing tag. On the table, three children with black bodies lay dead with blood marks on them. Which explosion killed them? I asked myself in utter panic. I ran my fingers on my cheek and found a large black mole burning my skin and spreading fast. Let me not go mad, I prayed.

  ‘The death toll may go up to fourteen. One child is critical in Midnapore. Another from Purulia has been admitted to SSKM Hospital with a broken neck,’ Sanjeev Kumar added.

  ‘Yes, yes . . . but more than that, Sanjeev Kumar Mitra, who’s been tirelessly pursuing this story since Jatindranath Banerjee’s mercy petition was first rejected, deserves hearty congratulations! With this, CNC has gained a clear lead over its rivals. Well done, Sanjeev!’

  Harish sat down. A beautiful forty-odd-year-old woman with stylish short hair got up.

  ‘This story does show that if we put our minds to it, we can pull up the ratings and maintain quality as well. For me, the most exciting thing is that a woman has rewritten history. My hearty congratulations to Chetna!’

  Sanjeev Kumar was next.

  ‘I want to thank for the success of this event, first of all, Harish babu and Ray babu who encouraged me in all possible ways. Besides, both Phanibhushan Grddha Mullick and Chetna have extended their complete support to CNC since the beginning. I hope you will all continue to support me in all my future ventures. Let me congratulate Chetna for her great achievement. Well done, Chetna! Let me ask you, from where did you amass such presence of mind and strength?’

  He was clearly on the azar, mouthing dialogues in costume. I was revolted. I rubbed my neck as all of them looked intently at me. My tongue felt glued to my mouth. I tried to smile at the painted faces around me. ‘My Thakuma has often told me: If you want to stand up straight, you will have to bend occasionally. Thank you.’

  They clapped. They didn’t get it, of course. They were too busy celebrating. When Biswajit Ray patted Sanjeev Kumar’s shoulder, the latter’s face showed elation. They chattered excitedly with each other, offering mutual congratulations. Sanjeev Kumar’s humble, simple avatar looked as distant and unreal as a TV serial. I was not disturbed any more by the vagueness of his feelings for me. The paths his forefathers had taken did not arouse my admiration. I was still standing at the foot of the gallows. My hands were slimy with death. The memories that stretched back two thousand years in the past lay tied up in knots in my brain; they were being pulled from all sides. I decided if my name and my life were to become undying in India and the whole world, it should not be in the name of this wretched love which may be realized only through spilling either my blood or his.

  ‘Okay, let’s leave after tea,’ said Biswajit Ray, holding out a cup from the tray which a uniformed waiter had brought in. ‘The show begins at ten o’clock. I will be there at the studio with a friend.’

  His voice was modest but resonated with authority. Everyone lunged at their tea. Plates full of snacks went round the table.

  ‘I am sorry I couldn’t see your performance. The chief minister and his family were expected to witness the hanging. But they changed their minds at the last moment. I would’ve been there, in that case.’ He gave me a friendly smile. ‘Have some tea, Chetna.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘The hangman does not eat without having a bath and conducting the puja at home, isn’t that so?’ The short-haired woman looked at me with interest. I didn’t disabuse her. The cups were soon empty, the celebration was over, and everyone went back to their respective places. Only Sanjeev Kumar and I and the gaping garland were left.

  ‘They are talking about you everywhere. You’ve become a star overnight,’ he smirked. Even when he submitted himself to the make-up man’s ministrations in the new make-up room that had mirrors all around, he had the same smirk on his face. My mind wavered like a kite, not knowing what to do. Get off the azar, end this drama, someone inside me said urgently. Someone else became greedy for the experience of making a noose and holding the weight of a body with a single hand. Sanjeev Kumar smiled at me. My fingers moved rapidly; the fringe of the dupatta became little nooses and tightened around them, breaking the skin. A strange woman with the vulture eyes of the Grddha Mullicks looked straight at me from the mirror. Her reddish bulging eyes scared me. Her face was burnt dark. There were shadows under her eyes. Her plaits had come loose and her long hair snaked downward to her breasts like serpents with slender necks. I saw Devi Manasa in the mirror. I was afraid to open my mouth; what if someone else’s blood dripped from it? The stink of mouldy bread spread on my body; my hands felt greasy; the sourness of the bile from someone else’s intestines filled the hollow of my throat. I felt nauseated.

  ‘Don’t forget me in the end, okay? Don’t say I never told you how many strings I had to pull, how many I had to please,’ Sanjeev Kumar said.

  The gold coin gifted by the king of Gwalior to Grandfather Mosh who sent off each condemned man with loving advice, and who went straight to his fields after each hanging, was stuck in my throat. Around my head, Ramu da’s translucent body buzzed like a fly with its wings plucked. His eyes rolled like two footballs caked brown in the mud of the Maidan.

  ‘Shall I give you some more happy news?’

  When the make-up man went out, Sanjeev Kumar glanced at me, at the same time enjoying the sight of his own good looks in the mirror.

  ‘Both the CPM and the Congress will invite you to join politics. Make your decision only after you discuss it with me. I say this because I know your old man so well. Make smart moves, and you may even become an MP! It’s good that you didn’t get married. Your market value would’ve fallen greatly.’

  As I looked at him, the old sensation of a worm wriggling inside my left breast came back. My breast felt like it did the day he had assaulted it, all swollen and aching with pus.

  ‘Get ready soon. It’s time for the show. After this, it’ll be impossible to see you . . . every TV channel in the world is running madly in search of you all over Strand Road.’

  He was wallowing in the pride of having captured me for his own, of making a fool of everybody else. On my finger, an invisible ring tightened. The broken pieces of bangles tore the skin of my arms.

  ‘That police jeep—how did it come to your studio?’ I tried to hide the woman inside and smile.

  Sanjeev Kumar smiled again. ‘Who can’t be kidnapped in this country if you hand out the cash?’

  ‘Whom did you pay? Sibdev babu?’ My blood boiled.

  ‘That’s a trade secret—who was paid and how much!’ He laughed merrily.

  I felt breathless. I remembered my fall into the cellar in Alipore Jail. I remembered the way he bruised my body to brand himself on me, like a dog marking its territory.

  ‘Putting up with you is really hard sometimes, Chetna. Your talk—you completely forget your position and your condition when you talk. But I still like you very much. Even now, if you can moderate your behaviour a
little, we’d get along really well.’

  Just then Father appeared on TV. I sat up, alert. The camera panned down from the yellowing news report from 1960, the first one about him, on our wall, to where Father sat looking at his watch, smoking his cigarette slowly.

  ‘At the same time, Phanibhushan Grddha Mullick who was earlier the chief hangman of the state, said that he was proud of his daughter Chetna for her flawless execution, as a father and as a citizen of this country. Grddha Mullick was excused from his duties as a hangman as he faces trial for the murder of his younger brother and his wife.’

  The newsreader tilted her head and waited for him to respond.

  ‘My name and life have been rendered eternal in Bharat and the whole world. I can now die in peace.’ He exhaled slowly.

  ‘What if the court sentences you to death, Grddha da?’

  ‘I will tell my daughter, Chetna, let the length of the rope be precise. When you put the noose around my neck, it should fall right on the hollow of the throat.’

  He contorted one side of his mouth and smiled as if he were challenging the questioner.

  ‘You haven’t said why you killed your brother and his wife?’

  He sucked on his cigarette again. ‘That’s a long story. I have plenty of stories to tell. Why don’t you come at leisure, and I’ll tell you.’

  I began to feel sleepy. When the make-up man came near me and asked, ‘Didi, shall I apply your make-up?’ I jumped awake. Sanjeev Kumar had left. ‘Make-up? For the hangwoman?’ I teased him and got up. My hair was now fully undone. The thick, wavy strands shone like live black serpents. I went to the studio. In the studio beside Sanjeev Kumar who was rehearsing his smile—meant for viewers—there were two chairs. In one sat Kartik Banerjee. My legs stiffened.

  ‘All of us are instruments, didn’t I tell you?’ he said, smiling affectionately when he saw me. ‘Perhaps the money I get for this will settle one of our smaller debts . . .’

  I could not find the courage to look into his shining eyes. Behind us, against a black-and-grey background, a gallows tree had been raised. A coil of rope hung from its hook like a serpent on a tree. My heart writhed.

  ‘Remember this? We got this ready last time? You know how much money it gobbled up? Luckily, we now have an opportunity to use it,’ Sanjeev Kumar said. I sat in the chair, barely able to believe myself. I wanted to run out but the woman inside stopped me. My fingers twirled the fringe of my dupatta again and again.

  ‘Yesterday we did a survey in schools: whether death by hanging was necessary. You won’t believe it, Chetna, two hundred and seventy out of the three hundred children surveyed said it was necessary.’

  He stopped, pulled off his glasses and looked into my eyes with those green eyes in the way only he could.

  ‘Ninety-three percent of the girls said that they want to grow up and be Chetna Grddha Mullick and punish criminals.’

  As I looked vapidly at his face, I recalled that this was the man for whom I had had such intense feelings. I tried to love, like before, his green eyes, his attractively styled hair, his bluish neck. It pained me to think that he would never have a chance to experience a woman’s love from me.

  ‘Okay Chetna, we have two guests today, be ready.’ He began to hurry when he got the signal from somewhere through the earphones.

  ‘This is not live, but the telecast will happen in just about half an hour. So think of it as a live telecast. Another thing . . .’

  His voice, however, broke suddenly and his eyes bulged desperately. His face blanched as if he had seen a ghost. The merriment faded; instead, anger and pain and humiliation and helplessness flashed on his face. My eyes darted to the door. Harish Nath was leading in Biswajit Ray through the glass door; he turned around and made way for a woman in a red silk sari. She sauntered in gracefully and sat on one of the chairs brought in especially for them. Crossing her legs at the knees, she placed her arms lightly on the armrests of the chair and smiled at us. It was her. Hair tied up, a large red sindoor mark on her forehead, red paint on her lips. Trailokya Devi.

  I was amazed. Sanjeev Kumar wilted. He busily searched for a piece of paper; ran his fingers on the keyboard of the computer; looked here and there in deep unease. He split apart beautifully, like Jatindranath’s vertebra, in a precise fashion, like a seashell opened. Then, like a character on the azar, Sanjeev Kumar cleared his throat and tried to play his part.

  ‘Welcome to CNC once again, Miss Chetna Grddha Mullick, the first and only hangwoman of India!’

  I observed him. He was hanging on a rope that was fraying. Strands of the rope were breaking one by one. He became weaker by the minute. I leaned back in my chair.

  ‘Chetna di, today a woman touched, all by herself, the lever which has been operated only by men all through the history of independent India. This is a great achievement for all the world’s women. What do you say about that?

  His voice went hoarse. I looked at him with pity.

  ‘We women never achieve anything by ourselves. Our lives are bound to each other like the links in a chain. One completes what someone else has begun in some other time. The one who begins does not ever complete it and those who complete it, do not begin it.’

  I made sure my voice was gentle. His tremor was truly piteous.

  ‘Kartik Banerjee, you are here after seeing your own brother being hanged. How were his last moments?’

  Sanjeev Kumar turned towards him with empty eyes.

  Kartik sighed deeply. ‘Dada wanted to listen to a couple of stories. Chetna told him one.’ He smiled at me. His voice had an unexpectedly dignified tone. ‘They didn’t let her tell him another.’ Kartik turned to me again. ‘What story was that, Chetna? The last story Dada would have listened to in his life?’

  That was a story written by Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain who started the first school for girls in Bengal. ‘One evening, I was lounging in an easy chair in my bedroom, thinking lazily of the condition of Indian womanhood . . .’ it began. It frothed up on my tongue. Thakuma’s brother Jaganmohan Grddha Mullick had run off to Bhagalpur to meet her after reading her story ‘Pipasa’, published in 1902. When she was born in 1880, Grandfather Kalicharan was nearing seventy-five. His heartthrob Binodini Dasi had appeared on the stage for the first time six years ago. The son who had come from the southern tip of the country in search of Naren dakat had become a rice trader and was also running a gymkhana. The year before Rokeya was born, Begum Hazrat Mahal, who had waged war against the British and lost, had died in Nepal. It had been two years since Kadambini Ganguly-Bose passed the entrance exam to the University of Calcutta.

  ‘Yes, yes, what was the story? Let us hear it,’ Sanjeev Kumar was apparently in a hurry to finish the show.

  His eyes flew towards the door now and then. Biswajit Ray’s arm was thrown around his mother’s shoulders. I tasted the sourness and viscosity of blood in my mouth. I was thirsty.

  When the narrator of Sultana’s Dream went for a walk one evening, she met a friend, Sister Sara, and left with her for an unknown land. Because she saw only women in the markets, during daytime, she asked Sister Sara where all the men were. Only then did she learn that she was in a strange country where all the men were shut up in purdah inside their homes and the women went about their tasks in the outside world. On hearing this, Sultana was astonished. It is exactly the reverse in Kolkata, said she, and her friend exclaimed, how terrible that gentle and mild women are locked up in the house, and men, who are indeed dangerous, are allowed to roam outside!

  Hearing this, Sanjeev Kumar let out a burst of utterly false laughter.

  ‘Great, Chetna di, a story that truly suits this day, the very first day of your hangwomanship! All right, tell us then, how were Jatindranath’s last moments? Can you demonstrate for CNC viewers? Here, we have readied for you a gallows tree and a hangman’s rope.’

  He got up and stepped towards
it. In my ears, the hoof beats of eighteen stallions thundered. A bear-faced woman came riding a stallion with a golden mane. Behind her, Protima di and Kokila Banerjee sat, holding each other so that they did not fall off. In the middle of the city, through the mud paths on the fields by which the portia tree blooms, village women ran with rifles. They lined up on both sides of the corridor parting their red-painted lips in a smile, placing their hands on their hips, revealing their breasts from which milk flowed freely, looking like statues put up for sale. One of them, surely, was Kakima. Because the bloody chopper was still wedged in her neck.

  I followed him, slowly. He handed me the coil of rope which seemed to be biding its time, like a serpent about to lay eggs. It was actually not a hangman’s rope, but it felt so heavy! A fully naked woman stood under the gallows tree with her long, thick hair flowing down her back, testing its strength. On the piece of wood on which the hook was fixed, an ugly housewife sat, tuning her tanpura. That was Kalicharan Grddha Mullick’s wife. A young girl, still a teenager, tested the strength of the hook. When she opened her mouth to laugh, the blood that had collected inside from her severed tongue began to drip. She raised her fingers in the air and wrote 100 x 1022 in the air, and a six-year-old girl with wounds all over her body ran into our midst screaming, ‘I, Khona!’ A woman in a veil pointed her gun and fired it. ‘Nawab!’ someone sneered.