Hangwoman

by K R Meera

  ‘On the 14 August let them be taken from the jail to the place of execution, which place the sheriff directed to prepare, as near the house of the slain victim Kunjali Mappila, as conveniently may be, and there let the said Naren dakat, Hari dakat and Ali dakat, every one of them be hanged by the neck . . .’

  Hari dakat’s and Ali dakat’s hangings went smoothly. When it was time to tie up the limbs of Naren dakat who watched the proceedings emotionlessly, he murmured, ‘There is a mistake in that order. I am not Naren, I am Narayanan.’

  To Grandfather who was looking at him uncomprehendingly, he said, ‘I come from down south.’

  ‘Should never have . . .’

  ‘My mother Vasundhara Devi thinks that I am her long-lost son . . .’

  ‘Why did you do such a thing to that poor woman?’

  They could not speak further. The noose was fixed in its proper place. When the magistrate let the kerchief drop, Grandfather pushed away the stool mechanically. The man struggled on the rope. Grandfather shut his eyes and waited a second. Then, with a colossal sound, the gallows tree came crashing to the ground. People scattered, screaming. Naren dakat lay thrashing on the ground. Grandfather went up and cut the noose off his neck. He writhed again and screamed in pain. Grandfather helped him up and gave him water to drink. The deputy police commissioner and the judge left to prepare a fresh order. Narayanan dakat opened his eyes on Grandfather’s lap.

  ‘True, you have come back,’ Grandfather whispered warmly.

  ‘You shouldn’t have cut the noose . . . I had begun to find my way . . .’

  ‘Those who set out never come back, son,’ Grandfather said, smiling.

  ‘But I speak the truth. I know what death is like . . . maybe I came back to tell you about it.’

  Grandfather tensed. He swallowed.

  ‘First, I felt the pain from the noose tightening. Though outwardly smooth, I found out that the noose contains many thousands of sharp spikes; besides the terrible pain when they pierce the tender skin of the neck, I also felt the entire weight of my body on the neck. The body separated very rapidly, like fat in curdled milk. A sharp dart of pain, as if from a strung bow, shot up my spine, piercing all my organs, passing in a straight line through the heart and the brain, reaching the skull. Before my eyes, a tongue of flame flew out, like a bird released from a cage. That moment, all pain ceased as if pulled back sharply. At the same time, the sensation of being caressed with a feather from the feet upwards enveloped me. The calm body felt delicate, without the skeleton’s hardness. I felt weightless. I was below a mountain. I began to climb it, my feet not touching the ground, with no effort at all . . .’

  His eyes were full. Struggling for air, he told Grandfather. ‘Death is climbing a mountain. Believe me!’

  Just then the judge’s carriage returned, its bells ringing. The deputy police commissioner’s black stallion kicked up the dust near Bara Bazar. The fresh order was ready. They took Grandfather and Naren dakat to the gallows near Fancy Lane. The hangman and his victim took a shaky ride together towards death in the same vehicle.

  ‘Why did you become a thief?’ Grandfather asked him, truly grieved.

  ‘The question was whether I should become a white thief or a black one. I chose to be black . . .’

  A short while later Naren dakat’s dead body dangled from the gallows tree on Fancy Lane. Grandfather wept after he had delivered justice. He took a hundred and eight dips in the Ganga to rid himself of sin and started for home. At the top of the steps that led down to the ghat he found a woman waiting for him. She had covered her face with her aanchal.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Grandfather.

  She raised her tearful face to him.

  ‘Why do you cry?’

  ‘Chorer mayer kanna, ugar baaro noi, phukar baaro noi . . .’ she said.

  The undeniable yet impermissible tears of the mother of the dacoit.

  ‘What did they do to him?’

  Grandfather stood before her like a guilty man. The hangman did not get to know much about the victim after he had hanged him and taken his wages.

  ‘They didn’t return his body, not even a piece of bone. Why, have they eaten it up?’ she burst out. ‘Give me a piece of his bone at least. I will break it in thirds and make three Narens from them. And if each of them creates three Narens, Mahashai, I will gift to this world Narens too numerous to wipe out even if all those dogs, your white and black masters, get together.’

  Staggered, Grandfather stayed silent. Across the centuries, my body tingled in excitement.

  ‘The story’s taken a lot of time, Chetna. I have to go,’ Sanjeev Kumar looked serious and glanced at his watch.

  ‘I need to talk to you.’ I refused to get up.

  ‘You should not be talking to me, but to the world . . . and you are not prepared to do that.’

  ‘I did love you . . .’ My voice congealed. He looked at me carefully.

  ‘Did love you—what does that mean?’

  ‘I believed you would love me . . .’

  He tried to smile without giving me an answer. ‘I wanted to marry you. But you and your baba, did you both not insult me? But I have no ill will, only that you must obey me.’

  ‘Who do you take me to be? Prey or slave?’

  ‘Who did you take me to be?

  ‘My mate . . .’ My voice could go no further.

  Destroying all efforts to smile, the tears pushed through. With all the helplessness and sense of inadequacy that marked me at the age of twenty-two, I stood, head bowed, before a man. He could have held out his hand to me. Or rejected me. He did neither. Instead, he turned me into an object for sale. Sanjeev Kumar’s phone rang then. He took the call and walked a few paces, relieved.

  ‘Great achievement, Harish babu!’ His face lit up. He turned to me, looking triumphant. ‘They have agreed to write to the President!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mridula Chatterjee’s family. They are requesting him not to set aside the death sentence. Now things are going to heat up!’

  My heart grew dark.

  ‘They were not in the limelight all this while. Till now other people have been screaming; the victim’s kin were quiet. But the rules of the game will change now!’

  He became cheerful.

  ‘Did you hear Harish babu ask: “How did you manage this?” Truly, Chetna, I don’t know how. I don’t know how they changed their mind.’ He sighed.

  ‘Three raised to the power of eighteen.’

  He didn’t grasp it. Someone knocked at the door. Sanjeev Kumar became alert. He opened the door; a shadow crossed his face. The girl I had seen on my last visit peeped in.

  ‘Didi asked who came in with Sanju babu?’

  ‘Why does she want to know?’ he barked tersely.

  ‘She wanted to see, she said.’

  ‘Tell her I’ll show her when it is time.’

  She stood for a moment, not knowing what to do with those harsh words. After she left, he began to hurry. ‘Chetna, you must leave. I don’t have to tell you . . . this isn’t a good place.’

  He got ready to leave, glasses back in place. I didn’t want to stay back any more. I went down the steps, downcast. I was interested in his history. But he didn’t share it. Like any ordinary fish in the river or sea, he lived locked inside the present. I felt a deep sense of loss about Narayanan dakat’s bones. If only Vasundhara Devi had got a piece, if only she had broken it in thirds and created three Narayanans, if only each of them had created another three, and thus within an hour, the entire adult population of a country!

  I was disappointed.

  43

  Ramnatha Grddha Mullick was the grandson of the sister of Satyanatha Grddha Mullick who had put Naren dakat to death. It was he who made our bodies shiver and our minds fill with sourness at the mention of the courtesans of Son
agachi. He was just sixteen; a poet, musician and orator like my father. At the time when Grandfather Satyanatha had first met Naren dakat, he was with Wajid Ali Shah, the exiled king of Oudh, living with him as a trusted attendant and disciple. Whenever Father put on a laundered kurta and dhoti and set off for Sonagachi, Thakuma would warn him: don’t forget the tale of Ramnatha Grdhha Mullick.Though he had seen, since childhood, his grandfather and father and brothers put to death many criminals, when Ramnatha actually witnessed a murder, he was shattered. Thakuma also cited his story to prove that none of us could kill without the vital signal—the magistrate dropping the red kerchief.

  Ramnatha used to sing beautifully the sad song Babul mora naihaar chhooto jaye . . . which Wajid Ali Shah composed when he was exiled from Oudh to Calcutta in 1856. A picture of the nawab, with his childlike face and belly that was as round as a small hillock, resting his knee on long cushions and enjoying the music with his eyes shut, has been preserved in a contemporary oil painting. Thakuma claimed that the picture showed clearly the tears flowing down the nawab’s cheeks. Whenever she heard Saigal sing the same song on radio or TV, Thakuma would shed tears, raise her arms and fold her palms together, saluting the ancestor she had never seen. When I stepped out of Sanjeev Kumar’s apartment the same song drifted in from some room in the upper storey of the mansion. I stood in the veranda for a second. The song was of a bride taking leave of her father, but it really referred to death.

  O my father, I am leaving home.

  Four bearers lift my palanquin . . .

  We Bengalis have no difficulty fathoming the sorrow of a small ruler powerless to defend himself, leaving his crown and sceptre behind to live as a refugee elsewhere. Hearing the woman’s soulful rendition of the song, my eyes grew moist too.

  I sang along silently as I went down the steps. If only he would call me back, I yearned inside. I knew it was not because I loved him but because, selfishly, I wanted myself to be loved. And so when he dismissed me with a cold ‘Okay, Chetna, I am busy,’ it didn’t offend me. The sweltering breeze blowing in through the courtyard tried to console my sweaty body. Twisting the strap of the cloth bag on my shoulder, I walked down with an empty heart. The peal of anklets could be heard from some room; the sounds of an ektara and a sitar too. Babul mora . . .

  sounded above them; I walked slowly so that I could catch the whole song. But then one of the women who were washing dishes in the courtyard slipped and fell while carrying a very large cooking pot, hitting her head on the floor. I left my bag on the lowest step and rushed to her just as the other woman, who had a bad leg, was trying to lift her up.

  ‘Didi, be careful,’ I told her. Blood trickled down her forehead.

  The other woman, with innumerable lines on her forehead and the bad leg, went back to washing the dishes.

  ‘My head spins . . . water . . .’

  I looked around. The woman with the bad leg pointed towards the kitchen. I helped the injured woman out of the courtyard. Grasping my arm with one hand and bracing herself against the pillar with the other, she stepped up on to the veranda. There were two other women in the kitchen, which had large pots simmering full of vegetables, meat and fish. As we passed that way they looked warily at me.

  ‘What’s happening here?’ I asked. ‘A wedding feast?’

  ‘Isn’t there a wedding here every day?’ she complained, stroking her forehead. She led me to a row of small tin sheds in the backyard off the kitchen. I got her some water from the earthen jar in the veranda there and wiped her blood off.

  ‘God bless you . . .’ she said passionlessly, sitting on the bare floor and sipping the water.

  I wet her forehead, dabbing the wound with my dupatta to dry it.

  ‘What is your name, Didi?’

  ‘Just right for this house—Sushila!’

  There was bitterness in her laugh.

  ‘You aren’t from Kolkata, are you?’

  ‘Jellingham . . .’ she sighed. ‘I had fifteen bighas of land there. I was thirty when the ship factory came. They took four hundred acres. My land too . . . ’

  I could connect the rest of the dots easily.

  ‘I am old now,’ she looked at me harshly. ‘It’s your time now.’

  I was stupefied.

  ‘Fix your mind on it and you can find first-class babus! All the fellows who come here are big, big ministers, politicians, rich kids . . . Catch hold of a good one and you can live well for the rest of your life!’

  Feeling amused and insulted all at the same time, I glanced around without looking at her. It was a large compound. Behind the shed was a house that revealed the nakedness of its red bricks within the crumbling concrete. A sari hung out to dry in the balcony rose in the breeze like the sail of a ship. The holes in it were magnified.

  ‘Don’t trust old men, they don’t value a woman’s love,’ she continued. ‘The young fellows of sixteen or seventeen . . . catch one of them and your life is fulfilled! If the first girl is a smart one, they won’t have the guts to seek another one at that age. The older chaps aren’t like that. They want to sample more and more . . . several . . . different things . . . all in a short while. They are never happy, nor will they make anyone happy!’

  Her voice gashed my heart like a sharp-edged knife. Hers was a terrible face—reddened eyes, a large hole in one nostril left by an absent nose stud, clotted blood on her forehead. I felt afraid and so I tried to imagine her as a busy housewife in Jellingham, moving deftly between chores in a house with cows, hay and a heap of grain. But even that left me very afraid.

  ‘Or, if you are more interested in cash, look for thirty- or forty-year-old fellows, householders. They are worse than dogs. Have no clue how to love a woman or understand her. But if you can learn to argue and get your price, your purse will swell for sure.’

  On one of the upper floors Babul mora . . . continued. My eyes were moist. When they met hers, hers grew wet too. I ran my fingers gently on her slowly balding head. Her eyes grew warm. ‘Go, go to your work. You can make some cash only at this age!’

  ‘I have another job, Didi.’ I wiped my eyes and tried to smile.

  ‘What job?’

  ‘I am a hangman!’

  I said that dramatically. Almost like Father, when he thumps the desk and tries to console people who come to the tea shop after the funeral rites and sit with bowed heads and heavy hearts, declaring, ‘Look, as a hangman who has dispatched four hundred and fifty-one people, let me tell you, death is not in our hands.’ This is what probably made her sit up gaping in surprise.

  ‘Hangman? You? Why are you here?’

  My tongue slipped right back in. I wanted to tell her that, for generations, so many in my family have come to Sonagachi seeking their desires. It was at the age of sixteen that Ramnatha was brought here by the nawab’s servants—it was known as Sonagaji then—to learn the intricacies of intercourse with a woman. It was full of red-brick houses, big and small. He walked through the labyrinthine network of paths with a beating heart and perspiring palms. Finally, he reached the interiors of a two-storeyed house. In the glow of the gas lamps mounted on the walls, a beautiful woman, past forty, entered seductively. She became the first and last woman in his life. In the supreme pleasure he experienced that night, he fell in love with her and decided to marry her. Listening to the young chap with the barest trace of a moustache on his face, the woman laughed. But he was determined indeed. He told her about his relatives near Nimtala Ghat. When it was dawn, he started out, promising to return at night; but no sooner had he stepped out of the room than a young woman, her nakedness barely covered by her sari, rushed out of another room and fell at his feet. Before Ramnatha could even move, the man she was running from caught up and stabbed her viciously. Pausing long enough to make sure that she was gone, he bounded into another room, looking for someone else. The young woman lay on the floor, bleeding from her last struggle. He
r large eyes bulged towards Ramnatha as she breathed her last in his lap. Ramnatha collapsed; for a whole day, he wandered the streets, forgetting the way back home. In the end, he reached home and fell grievously ill. He was feverish for weeks together in the memory of that terrible incident.

  ‘Why did you come here? Why should a hangman come here?’

  The woman, Sushila, was clearly angry now.

  ‘I came with Sanjeev Kumar babu.’

  ‘I know that. But for what?’

  ‘He said he’ll marry me,’ I tried to joke.

  She gaped again with surprise. ‘Sanju babu?’ She considered it. ‘That’s not possible. Don’t believe him.’

  I didn’t respond. I was thinking of the young man who had murdered a young girl, Bidhu, in Sonagachi. He was an innocent villager who received a proposal to marry a rich widow’s daughter in Kolkata, and was invited to see the prospective bride’s home. He and his relatives were impressed by the huge mansion in the city, filled with great luxury. But the biggest lure was the girl’s dazzling beauty. The wedding ceremony was held in the bride’s home and presided over by venerated brahmins; afterwards, both families set out for the bridegroom’s house. All his relatives in the village and from other villages came in their best clothes and finery to greet the bride. There was a grand feast and payesh was served, and all those who ate the payesh began to fall senseless one by one. Unaware of this, the bridegroom waited in the bridal chamber. The bride entered, beautifully decked in jewels. When the bridegroom placed his hand lovingly on her shoulder, she looked at him with contempt. Pulling off his clothes, she sneered at his nakedness, ‘So you are a man, are you?’ Spitting scornfully in his face, she walked out, leaving the young man speechless with shock. He fell asleep, weeping, and was roused at dawn by loud and piteous wails. All those who had come for the feast had been robbed of their clothes and jewels. The young man sought his bride and her family among those who rushed to cover themselves somehow. He ran over a long distance following the wheel marks of their carriages. Finally, he went to Kolkata in search of them, but found that the grand mansion had actually been rented by the woman posing as the rich widow for a few days. Having lost his money and his honour, the young man decided not to return to his village. He went about from house to house in Kolkata, looking for the girl and her mother; in the end he reached Sonagachi. Bidhu did not realize that the client in her room was the man she had married some time back. Seeking revenge for his humiliation, he ravaged her body through the night. When she tried to escape, unable to bear the terrible pain, he hunted her down.