by K R Meera
‘Look, it seems pretty strong. You can actually hang someone if you want,’ he said as he stood under it.
‘If who wants?’ I asked, looking one by one at all the human forms I alone could see.
Sanjeev Kumar paid no attention and faced the camera.
‘Viewers may be eager to know how Chetna hanged Jatindranath Banerjee today. How it took place and where, and what she did. Here we will recreate the experience for you!’
He tried hard to retrieve his confidence, but could not manage it.
‘Come, Mr Kartik Banerjee, show our viewers clearly what your brother must have gone through today.’
Petrified, I watched Kartik get up and come up to the gallows, stand inside the white circle below the rope, and stick his neck out obediently. He smiled at me. ‘If we pay off the debt, the land will be ours again, that’s what this drama is about . . .’
It was either a dream, or I was going mad. I broke into cold sweat; many nooses tightened around my neck. Eighteen stallions pulled me in different directions.
‘Tell me a story, Chetna, one that’ll make me happy?’ Kartik gave me a naughty wink. ‘I like to listen to love stories.’
‘Quick, Chetna, we have no time, we have to continue the discussion.’
A completely naked woman with loose hair leapt out of my body. She pushed me aside and snatched the rope from me. She was immensely strong. Her body burned like a forest on fire. The cells of my body melted. A thousand serpents fled in different directions from the top of my head. She knotted the noose. Smiled at Kartik. Do not fear, Kartik da, she comforted him. His smile became broader. His eyes were filled with love, mine with peace.
‘The length is not right for you, it won’t suit you.’ My voice was calm. Kartik moved out of the white circle, looking very disappointed. ‘Cut! Cut!’ said someone, and the lights went off.
Sanjeev Kumar became impatient. ‘What’s going on, Chetna, please be quick!’ He came up to me, his face red with impatience.
‘Sanjeev Kumar, this rope actually suits you better,’ I declared. My long curls were in total disarray. Fire shot through my veins. The lights came on again. Someone called out ‘Start!’ I looked towards the door. Trailokya Devi’s chair was empty. The first thunderbolt passed through my body. My hands knotted the first noose. Suddenly, the scent of herbs and ghee-soaked medicinal pastes filled the air. A woman’s cool hand suddenly took charge of my fingers, knotting noose after noose, as though she were helping a child write its first letter. I learnt to make the noose while having all my ten children, a blast of air hummed in Chinmayi Devi’s voice. There is actually a seven hundred and twenty-eighth way to hang a person, Pingalakeshini reminded me, mussing my curls. Elokeshi . . . Niharika called loud and long. Careful Chotdi, suggested Thakuma. Come, she called, come into the world of bliss! I smiled and displayed the noose of thirteen loops my hands had forged, to the world. When I brought the other end of the rope through the hook, the noose gaped—its tongue, too, had been chopped off.
‘Sanjeev Kumar babu, will you please step a little closer?’
I lured him with the noose as if it were the marriage garland. When he came closer, the memory of the ruined mansion where the bankalmi, the ramsar, the angulilata and the chehurlata stood blooming rose up in me. My body broke into new shoots once more. I ached for his embrace. My ears yearned to hear him say: ‘I will be with you till death.’
When I took the glasses off his nose, I whispered, ‘I want to fuck you at least once . . .’
He turned pale.
‘Babu, take off that tie, please?’
He undid it with trembling fingers. I tied his hands behind his back with it. It was I who undid the first two buttons of his shirt. I touched the hollow of his bare neck with a finger. His face became piteous. I saw Trailokya, Utpalavarna and Annapurna. I saw his mother’s henna-tipped fingers and Kakima’s alta-soaked feet. In the land of women that Sultana saw in her dream, there was no such thing as war. The tiniest bit of earth which belonged to another, the smallest jewel that was another’s, even if it were more valuable than the Koh-i-noor, and another’s seat, even if it were more precious than the Peacock Throne, were not to be coveted in that world. The women there sought only the pearls that nature had fashioned in the bosom of wisdom. They lost themselves in the pleasures of nature.
‘Here, this is where the noose tightens. The C-2 vertebra should break,’ I announced loudly as I made him wear it.
Our bodies were so close, they nearly touched. Forgetting that we were surrounded by strong lights and the whole world, I looked into his eyes with desire. The man I had loved. I saw his long eyelashes, his fair cheeks, the innumerable veins in his neck. I remembered the streets of Kolkata where I had wanted to walk with him, the history I had wished to share with him. The blood of the hangman coursing in my veins cried out greedily for his life.
‘Do not be afraid, Sanjeev Kumar Mitra,’ I whispered like Grandfather Mosh. ‘There is nothing, really, to be afraid of.’
His eyes were trapped in my gaze. Fear filled his; love filled mine. The aparajita vine with its blue flowers sprouted and grew through my veins. Slowly, I tightened the noose. Then, lightning fast, I pulled the other end of the rope. Sanjeev Kumar rose to the ceiling with a stifled moan. He weighed about seventy kilos.
‘Come back, as your forefather did, to tell us what death is like,’ I teased, tying up the end of the rope to the gallows tree. The noose tightened on his neck and he screamed ‘Amme!’ Ma, mati, manush, I answered. His legs danced in the air. Like a plastic bag filled with water being pressed hard, his life force tried hard to escape through different routes. His eyes rolled like balls. His tongue stuck out. His hands stuck closer to the body and scratched his thighs in sheer agony. I beamed into the camera, pulled off my mike and threw it down. Picking up my old bag from under the table and slinging it on my shoulder, I walked out. What the world gave me, I returned to it. I kept moving like the ilish swimming into the Padma, passing Sanjeev Kumar’s desperately thrashing limbs, the people who had run up to hold him, and the numberless television screens all around. Nobody stopped me. Outside, Sanjeev Kumar’s mother waited for me. I saw her and felt puny. Children, I sorrowed. My hands are slimy. Never mind, she said, kissing me on the head and handing me a small cloth bundle full of soil.
‘The statue of Durga is made out of soil taken from the beshya’s doorstep. That is because the ego of the man who crosses it unravels and falls on the ground there.’
Just like at the gallows, I burst out laughing. The grains of sand made a grating sound inside the silk cloth. I held it tight with hands slimy with death. Thus my name and my life became undying in Bharat and the whole world, in the name of love, soil and death. I knew well that no one would stop me. Rain, soil, light and history stood waiting for me. Jodi tor daak shune kevo ona ashe tobe ekla chalo re, I hummed as I began my journey to the future, to Bhavishyath.
Acknowledgements
Ever since Aarachar, the Malayalam original of Hangwoman, appeared, I have received a flood of compliments—in person, by post, by phone—almost every day. The question that arrives inevitably after the compliments is: How long have you lived in Kolkata? I have written short stories set in Spain, England and France, but writing a novel in which the narrative takes shape through the eyes of a protagonist born and raised in a place completely unfamiliar to me—I never even thought I’d attempt that. However, writing a novel that explores the place of women in India was a dream I had nurtured for long. For many years, I sought a satisfactory backdrop—finally, the spark came when I saw Joshy Joseph’s documentary One Day from a Hangman’s Life.
My first visit to Kolkata was in 1999, on my way to Jamshedpur to receive a coveted national award for journalists instituted by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties. Having seen Bengal only through Satyajit Ray’s movies and the Malayalam translations of Bengali novels, I’d thought un
til then that all Bengali men and women were fair, slim, tall and good-looking. Bengal in my imagination was pristine, elegant. What I saw was just the opposite. Rusty old Fiat taxis riddled with holes. Roads full of spit and phlegm and poverty. Humans with teeth blackened by betel and ancient buildings with facades blackened by dried moss.
When I began writing a novel set it in Kolkata, it was Dileep, my husband, who first read the opening chapters. He read a few pages and said, ‘It’s good, but there is no Kolkata here. Let’s visit the city again.’ So we went to Kolkata again. The place had changed. Instead of Fiats, the taxis were ramshackle, rusty Ambassadors. Many huge concrete buildings had risen by then. McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets and various pubs had made their appearance. The city welcomed us bathed in red, yellow and blue lights. Large vehicles jostled for space with dust-covered buses and emaciated cycle rickshaws. There was no dearth of child beggars. Gangs of them surrounded vehicles that stopped at traffic lights. I had no idea what I was going to write but I was overwhelmed with the joy of anticipation. I saw that no better backdrop than Kolkata could be imagined for the story I wanted to write—the Indian woman’s her-story.
Subhajit Das Bhoumik, photographer and director, took me everywhere—to Kalighat, Sonagachi, the Ganga, to Bengali homes. I wandered all over Kolkata with my cousin, the well-known sculptor K.S. Radhakrishnan. When Aarachar was ready for publication, DC Books suggested five different covers, two of which were his designs.
I returned home, only to be buried in books that told Kolkata’s story. The more I read, the more confused I became as to where the past ended and the present began. It appeared to me that the experience of European colonial rule and that of corporate colonization were not too far apart. The stories of those who ruled and those who fell were the same. What left me astounded, however, was the presence of women—rendered completely invisible throughout history. Within decaying tombs in the ancient cemetery of History were the women who had revolted inside and outside their homes, the women who had dreamed of new worlds, the women whose tresses continued to grow long and longer even when their skulls had crumbled to dust. Those who did not seek them out would never know that they had indeed lived.
The theme I chose to work upon is such that some characters may remind readers of people and incidents in the real world. This resemblance is purely coincidental. A true incident is gestured at as the broad setting of this work but the characters are all purely fictional. Except for a few incidents and historical facts drawn upon to render the narrative believable at certain moments and to maintain its aesthetic balance, everything in this novel was entirely forged in my imagination.
I began writing Aarachar only because of the constant encouragement from P.K. Parakkadavu, editor of the weekly Madhyamam and a distinguished short story writer himself. I remember here with much warmth and immense gratitude historian P. Thankappan Nair who helped me find valuable historical material, K.K. Kochu Koshy of the Central Reference Library, Kolkata, DC Books, the publisher of Aarachar, and my Malayali friends in Kolkata.
Nisha Susan, writer and journalist, called to tell me that she liked the stories of Yellow Is the Colour of Longing and asked if I would contribute to Tehelka’s 2012 fiction special. Thus the first chapter of Aarachar was published in English, translated by Sajeev Kumarapuram, even before the novel as a whole was published in Malayalam. The day the Tehelka issue was out, R. Sivapriya, my editor at Penguin, emailed me, eager to commission the English translation of the novel. And to my excitement, J. Devika was willing to translate it. She made the time to work on this long novel. T.T. Sreekumar read through her early drafts carefully and offered many useful suggestions. Putting down in a few meagre words the great appreciation I feel for these friends would be to squander away those feelings. Therefore I choose to consecrate my feelings for them in my heart forever.
I am not a Bengali. I have never lived in Kolkata. I am not even confident about my Hindi. I am an ordinary woman, born and raised in a village in Kerala, in a middle class family. I became a writer only on the strength of my wayward dreams and my crazy ability to have genuine faith in those dreams. Writing, indeed, is my Chetna, and also my Bhavishyath. Truly.
K.R. Meera
April 2014
Translator’s Acknowledgements
At the end of translating a book like Aarachar, I know exactly what swimmers who take up the challenge of swimming across choppy seas and treacherous straits feel when they emerge triumphant from the waters. Besides the exhilaration, they know with unprecedented intensity that the feat would have been impossible without the active support of many people.
I have many such people to remember, but of all of them, I value the contributions of three: R. Sivapriya and Shatarupa Ghoshal of Penguin, and my friend T.T. Sreekumar. Sreekumar, who is a well-known social scientist and literary scholar in Kerala, went carefully through my early draft keeping in mind the Malayalam original and made very many useful suggestions. It is no doubt the common love of Malayalam literature that drew us both to this extraordinary novel; and surely it is the same passion that gave him the energy, made him find the time, to plunge into it. The painstaking, difficult task of polishing the translation was taken up by Sivapriya first and Shatarupa later, and with great sensitivity to the novel’s eccentric narration and its aesthetics, mixing up all sorts of familiar binaries and chronicling our times which seem to have generated a new rasa appropriate for itself—out of jugupsa, revulsion. I know from experience that working on a translation with others will be fruitful only if they are all equally infected with the rhetorical intensity of the text. I think the four of us did experience that great pleasure alike and at the same time, and so I do not know whether offering thanks is the best way of acknowledging Sreekumar, Sivapriya and Shatarupa.
I also want to thank Amit Shovan Ray and Vidyarthi Chatterji who read the chapters and whose enthusiastic response was a valuable source of encouragement.
Most Malayali readers are exposed quite early in their lives as readers to very competent translations of Bengali novels and many Bengali authors are as familiar to us as our own writers. But it is K.R. Meera alone who could craft Malayalam’s ultimate gift of love to Bengal, in the form of an astonishing novel, Aarachar. It, perhaps, is not a truthful representation of Bengal—I am however sure that it is our Dream Bengal, one that has sunk deep roots in our imaginations. I thank her for the enormous effort, and for holding my hand and being there as I crossed these strange and turbulent waters, her creation.
J. Devika
May 2014
A Note on the Type
Dante was the result of collaboration between Giovanni Mardersteig, printer, book designer and typeface artist, and Charles Malin, one of the great punch-cutters of the twentieth century. The two worked closely to develop an elegant typeface that was distinctive, legible and attractive. Special care was taken with the design of the serifs and top curves of the lowercase to create a subtle horizontal stress, which helps the eye move smoothly across the page.
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Malayalam as Aarachar by DeeCee Books, Kottayam, 2012
First published in English in Hamish Hamilton by Penguin Books India 2014
Published in Penguin Books 2015
www.penguinbooksindia.com
Copyright © K.R. Meera 2014
English translation copyright © J. Devika 2014
Cover illustration by Ranganath Krishnamani
Cover design by Meena Rajasekaran
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-0-143-42469-7
This digital edition published in 2016.
e-ISBN: 978-9-351-18726-4
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.