The Hangman

 Prominent, generous features on his plump, lined, old face didn’t make him that clichéd hangman, who is often featured as black, coarse-featured and thick-muscled. Sparse silver bristles on his round head shone in the silvery haze put over the shiny palette by the approaching winter during this last week of October. Intricate wrinkles on his face showed the rough and gruff of the life he had led.

Yes, for a professional hangman this old veteran had a rather peaceful face. With half-closed eyes, he rolled his stubby fingers over the elaborate lines on his face and gave all the indication that he could very well have done better with some other profession.

Wearing an undersized shirt—a put-away of his son—the buttons tightly shut over the bulging belly, he looked a gentle monster, who would do more good than bad. For the lower garment he had a shin-length blue checked coarse cloth draped around his hairless dark legs. On his feet were the ubiquitous Bata chappals.

Belonging to a family of professional hangmen, he had seen the capital punishment’s demise from its earlier position of a fierce redemptive sun chucking out darkness to a distant, faded star of justice. Free India had gradually seen him disburdened of his hangman’s job.

In fact, it was five years back that he had performed his duty the last time at the age of 75 years at Tihar jail in Delhi. In any case, a hangman’s blood ran through his veins; and though his hands shook with age this time, still at the moment of pulling down the handle, he didn’t flinch even for the fraction of a second. He did it without showing any emotions and sentiments. After all, he was following the Godly injunction of punishing the sinner, as he, and before him his ancestors, had always believed.  

He believed in justice; considered himself to be just the plucker of the ripe fruit of justice at the end of the chain; thought that the fruit having ripened flawlessly through the machinery of judiciary, it was now required of him to give the final pull to bring down the process to its justified conclusion.

It was the much hated and discussed serial killer; the one who roamed Delhi streets and its surrounding satellite towns with deadly impunity. The victims came from all streams—children, young, old, beggars, wealthy, haggard and smart. The murderer killed with otherworldly craziness. When this psychopath was nabbed—a haggard, middle-aged man—there was a vast sigh of relief and feeling of security.

He was tried in a fast track court and to increase the circumstantial evidence against him, the spate of mysterious murders stopped during that period. The society’s scourge was sentenced to death. There were jubilations over this collective redemption of the society’s woes against the sinner.

Our old hangman, Mastu Pahalwan, became a minor celebrity for carrying out this collective will. His old, peaceful face came to symbolise the maliceless, unbiased face of justice. So the proud old man returned, with his tiny rewards of paltry hangman’s remuneration and a few newspaper snippets having his picture, to his home in a village in western Uttar Pradesh.

The hangman now lived on a small few hundred rupees pension. His children survived by doing all sorts of menial works because gone were the prospects for official executioners. Although during the modern times, the crime graph has increased both in numbers and heinousness, yet the demand for justice has remained just vocal, not so much in effect on the ground, in a democratic set-up.

So the official hangman of the Allahabad jail now passed his old days in turkey farming in his backyard to augment the sparse income of his sons. He raised robust, large birds both for meat and eggs. A few full grown turkeys matched his hangman’s fees (at the rate of INR 600/turkey). He felt no qualms while seeing a male turkey being fed to reach a weight of around 7 kilograms (and a female half of that) and then selling these in the meat market. It was, after all, a sequence of lawful events.

“A few turkeys do for me what the noose around a criminal’s neck does! A criminal is just worth a few turkeys!” he often mused with his simplest calculation and still simpler logic.

But then more than the monetary remuneration, it was the call of duty—the duty to lawfully execute the notorious criminals and murderers with the instrument of gallows—that mattered the most to him. This inheritance defined him, like it defined his ancestors.

None of his four sons had shown eagerness to don the family mantle. They, in fact, laughed it off as a worthless job in which you yourself become a murderer (though ordained by the law) for a paltry sum of money. Nonetheless, the old man would fight with them against this insult to the family’s hereditary occupation.

There was a time when his forefathers had worked almost restlessly in the oppressive jails under the Mughals, then the Nawabs and other princely houses and later the Britishers. They then worked on the wheels of instruments of torture for slow death; made the final execution in myriads of horrifying ways. Then the Britishers with Western wit said sending the culprit to gallows was fit to be called the civilised way of taking away criminally antisocial lives.

Mastu’s father had worked as the notorious device of torture during his prime years—with no time and intention left with him to do anything else. When not in the Nawab’s jails—other princes also sought his services when some notorious criminal or dissenter or rebel had to be broken—he tortured his wife.

However, after Indian independence, he was mostly left twirling the rope in his hand, as the state-sponsored instruments of finishing the criminal lives turned milder, gentler and prolonged. The disgusted old man gnashed his teeth over the new impotence in which the criminals grinned, while the cases stretched endlessly in court corridors. So like a vulture he waited for the prey to fall his way. Whenever some odd death sentence came his way, he did it with the mammoth sense of meting out justice with a quick stroke of handle. Not that he drew sadistic pleasure out of it. It was just that this is what life meant to him. All of us have an idea about life. His was only this much.

“To kill a criminal has been the religion of our family. It’s a pious deed to finish the wretched existence of a sinner on earth,” he would sermonise young Mastu honing his dark, muscular body in the akhara.

Mastu’s father appeared as dark, menacing and strong bodied as the occupation required. A red cloth tied around his elf-locks; his oil-smeared bulging bare torso would make him appear like virtual Yamraj to the condemned convict. So he trained his son to be the one who would become water-mouthed at the opportunity of hanging a criminal.

“I’d prefer beheading. But it’s considered unsuitable and uncouth these days!” he even grumbled sometimes.

He had a big store of good quality ropes. He wouldn’t believe in authorised provisions in this regard, for these were the victuals of his religion. However, despite best of his efforts, he could not bring about that sashaying current of lolloping sea inside his son when the latter donned the mantle. However, the son took the job without much hassle. But whenever some appointment arose, the senior hangman could not see that greed for dispensing justice in his son’s eyes. Mastu in fact, quite contrary to his father, did his job passively, without any cherishing emotion. Like a mechanical device doing its duty without pleasure or pain. Sometimes, the slightest of a pinprick would tug at his apron, but he just brushed it away without much consequence to his routine.

“If such educated people deem it fit to finish off a criminal, there must not be any question about it!” his simple hangman’s logic thus kept him firmly on the path of his duty.

******

During his last years, Mastu’s father turned out to be a psychological wreck—a victim of hallucinations and delusions. In his dreams he saw sky-high demons, the criminals, chasing him down treacherous paths, yelling, “Now we want our justice against you!”

He felt that some ferocious moustached monster was sitting on his chest and trying with all his might to suffocate him to death. With riotously lamenting cries, he would get out of his cot and try to run away. After many such mad escapades through the dark, they were forced to tie him to the cot lest he took final mad steps to death during some night. So the old man tortured his body against the trappings around his body. All his feelings, thoughts and reasons gone down the rubbish drain, he looked the most grotesquely tortured being at the hands of destiny.

One of the culprits condemned to death had expressed a wish to listen to a folk song as his last desire before being hanged. The kind jailor had obliged the man about to leave the world by arranging a performance by a famous folk-lorist in the jail premises. The about to die person sat there like a VIP of the show. Now that song buzzed in his head for hours on end.

At other times, he felt crawly sensations under his skin as if some mysterious fingers were tickling for a cat and mouse game with him. In the name of treatment he was being given electric shocks and hydrotherapy, but his nerve cells which had gone haywire never aligned themselves along the vector of normalcy.

Whatever might have been the opinion of the society while he was wielding the common remedial handle of justice, now but they put the full onus on him for his horrible condition. When he tortured the criminals, they appreciated him for being such a strong arm of justice. Now when his own self was torturing his own body, they let out the simple logic of karma.

“It’s the result of his karmas. God knows how many innocents must have been killed and tortured by his unsparing hands!” they now opined.

So the once strong executioner and torturer died as an unnerved wreck. It did, in fact, shook Mastu’s belief in the profession.

“Is it all that safe and free from being a sinner in performing the duty of a hangman?” he now found himself questioning.

However, the inertia of the rolling stone of myths, legacies, tradition and conventions pushes one in the same direction for a considerable period of time; even after the pushing force is gone a long time ago. So like an impassive stone—even though the debate regarding hanging, in full colour and multifarious viewpoints, kept the society busy—he kept on following the call of duty when on certain intervals he was called to complete the judge’s broken pen’s promise to dispense justice.

Mastu sincerely believed that God Himself sat on the chair of the judge. It was thus his duty to follow the instructions. However, all that foundation of unquestioning belief in the profession came to be rudely shaken after that satisfying hanging of the evil incarnation who had been held guilty of killing many people at the whims of his criminal fancies.

Even before the city could complete its sigh of relief after the hanging, one more gory murder took place in the dark of night. The pattern of murder was exactly like the previous ones. It was extensively highlighted in the media. The serial killer was on the prowl again. Special police teams were formed to track him down. More than the lengthening chain of victims, the media highlighted the gross lacunae in the system which had resulted in the loss of an innocent life.

All these headlines accusing the system of sending an innocent to gallows struck old Mastu direct in his wrinkled face. Just as he effected the system’s verdict on justice dispensation, he felt that all this was written against him. He had had his little share of heroism from the media, so now when the scribes mulled over the issue of an innocent man being sent to the gallows, he felt himself to be accused by the whole educated world. He could barely read. So others read out to him the hot issue.

Certainly it was a crime against the dead man. Then who is to be held culpable in this matter? The judge? The police? The whole system? Or he himself?

“Maybe people were right when they branded my father as a sinner fit for such suffering!” he mulled over in his simple head.

“In my ignorance, I’ve killed a man. In the eyes of the law, it’s not a killing, but a mistake. But it’s not my mistake. It’s the judge’s mistake. Or the police in that they caught a wrong person? Even those who bayed for his blood so profusely? The media...the country itself!” he was feeling the pangs of unprecedented guilt.

He had come to fetch a Tom turkey from the group to sell at the meat shop, but could not muster up enough courage to grab the young and healthy bird’s bright plumage; for now everything gripped him in its parameters of sin.

He had been proud of his lineage in his own silent way. In his unique unbragging manner, he prided himself for holding the baton of justice on the real ground, the baton once held by his illustrious fathers whose deeds ensured a safe society and instilled fear in the evil-minded people.

“We have been the loyal servants of both good and bad masters. But only God knows whether the sin lies on us—for we actually perform the deed—or on the ones who give orders either out of ignorance or being led by their cruel fancies?”

There were some poor layers in the group who brooded over the eggs for weeks to hatch out the poults. ‘They want to become mothers and I whisk away their eggs,’ ran in his conscience. In order not to qualify as a sinner he freed these. Piteously he looked around at the sacks of bran, shell grit and poor grain.

“Ultimately my every deed stinks of a sin!” he sighed.

Led by a thunderbolt of pity for himself and the birds, he opened the creaky gate onto the backlane leading to the pasture.

“I can melt down the sin, the sin of their slaughter, by taking these to pastures and let them have a fill. Then I’ll give them fish today. But for what purpose?” his frail old mind in his saggy fat bulge was giving a free lease to troubling thoughts.

“If God wants the criminals to be punished and executed, why doesn’t He put His own hands on them? A clever fellow God is! Plays always safe. Always keeps his apron clear. Makes up puppets in this game of justice, sin, crime, good and bad. But maybe these are the hands of God Himself!” he stared into the rough old skin of his thick, veiny hands.

“Oh, how I wish now that these were not my hands! But cannot help it now. Either my hands or the God’s, these have done their deeds. Then who is the real culprit in this affair? The judge? No, no me! It was I who pulled the handle. He was after all some poor, homeless mad man who sometimes talked cleverly, who couldn’t defend himself. A murder indeed! And the murderer...or the murderers? Who will punish them? We won’t punish ourselves by our own selves. Then who is left out to punish all we murderers? India! No, it cannot send so many fellows to the gallows. There will be mercy petitions for saving many of us. Then who will? That leaves God only. But then if God has to do it Himself in select cases, why doesn’t He do it all by Himself? Why does He drag we poor people into the game? But then maybe there are too many sinners in the world. Poor God can’t tackle so many cases. That’s why He takes up the select cases like us who can’t be punished under the law on earth. Oh my God, I hope His punishment will not be that harsh! Gallows I’ll bear easily. After all, it’s a matter of seconds. Is my crime big enough to get me into the tub of boiling oil? Ah, how I wish we could talk to the people who have gone to His court! Babuji hanged hundreds of people. Against how many of them I stand as a sinner, as a murderer? Whatever might be the number but that would certainly leave me as the biggest sinner among all the people I have hanged. The way I have suffered on earth, and will continue to suffer till my death, would it be sufficient to mitigate the sins of all the innocent hangings? Only God knows what would be left in my account book of good and bad when I will be finally pushed into His court. How many I’ve hanged...and how many murdered? This one for sure has been murdered. I hope I have only one murder to my share! If a few Turkeys are worth a man’s life then I owe many more murders. Oh my God, either I’m all of a sinner, a murderer, or no sinner, no murderer at all! God, I can’t decide whether I’m a sinner or not!”

His old head was buzzing with tormenting sensations. For a moment, terribly scared, he took it to be the magisterial voice of God reading out His verdict. However it wasn’t so. Much against his will, his old head cleared a bit and he was left alone by God to sort out the puzzle himself.

“Oh God, please tell me whether I’m a murderer or not! For if You don’t tell me while I’m alive, how’ll I come to know. If you tell me after my death,” he struck his chest, “then how will I come down to tell myself about this, for by that time they will burn me? God, it is a sin to keep mum like this. I just want to know the truth. However harsh it is! Speak loud...speak louder...please...if you don’t tell me I won’t own my guilt. I tell you, I’ll flatly refuse to own even an ounce of it. And then you too will commit a mistake in knowing the truth. Do you also commit mistakes in dispensing justice? If you do, who will punish you? You won’t speak because that will open the lid of the secret of your mistakes. A nice ploy you hatch...remain unseen and unheard so that nobody accuses you for your...”

He was ranting loudly. Neighbours gathered around the yard fence.

“Do you think I’ve gone mad like my father? Let me tell you sinners that it isn’t so!” he shouted at them.

“A mad man never admits him as such!” someone was pretty straight.

He was nervous and fidgety during the next few days. After that volley of oracular bursts at the Godly vault, he went into a silently brooding, almost impassive, state. Smile and energy were all gone from his face. Sometimes during nights he saw long loops, coils of ropes hissing like snakes and suddenly woke up from the nightmare with a cry, his whole body sweating profusely. Thus he walked the tightrope, his mind on razor-sharp edge of sanity and insanity.

During these five years the case had made much headway. The real serial killer had been caught, identified and condemned with almost infallible veracity. Charges against him were based on the firmest of grounds; police investigating team piled up—leaving no loopholes anywhere—evidence after evidence against him; sending down nails after nails to seal his case to the farthest limits of truth. The case thus had moved slowly. So it was not before the 80^th year of the old hangman that the sentence was pronounced to be carried out in actuality.

This time too he was supposed to finish the job with perfect smoothness—devoid of any malice or pleasure. This profession had after all become his identity. Such life-long identities are very hard to break. He was too poor and old for creating such a cleavage. So helplessly he followed the instructions. Going through the gloomy corridor leading to the hanging yard, his old mind—physically he was still strong though—was full of hazy ideas.

He just muttered a prayer to the God, “Forgive me God for my deeds because I don’t know whether I commit a sin or do a good job.”

Standing a bit stooping over the handle of death, he saw the culprit being led to the platform. Their eyes met. He tried to grope into them to sneak into his inner being to find out whether he was still the real culprit or not.

“God please assure me that this time we aren’t committing a mistake!” his hands shook as he took the grip.

However, God doesn’t seem to give such assurances to us in our everyday mundane lives. His hands were shaking on the handle-grip. Palms got almost flooded with sweat.

“Take care old man! You aren’t that old and incapable of taking a judgement for yourself as you think. God is too far and too busy to settle such earthly matters,” he was thinking, trying to muster up courage to pull at the drop of the cloth.

Now with a full penetrating force of his feeble, old eyes he tried to peek into the hooded face of the prisoner and instantly recalled that mocking, cold look of those slanting, brownish eyes before they covered his head with the black cloth. He hadn’t seen any remorse in the eyes; nor was there any fear.

“Either he is a saint or the said killer,” the old hangman waited with thumping heart for the jailor’s signal.

“If he turns out to be saint then I’ll be surpassing all the combined sins of all my ancestors,” his power seemed to fail him.

“Is he more likely to be a saint or the murderer?” he questioned himself.

He searched for saintliness all over that figure clad in washed, clean prisoner’s dress. He but couldn’t find any.

“Maybe I’m too big a sinner to spot saintliness. So I must look for the other. The presence or absence of the other will prove the presence or absence of the former,” his old feeble mind was working rapidly now.

“Saint or a killer?”

“Saint or a murderer?”

“Do I commit a sin or a good deed?”

“Am I a sinner?”

“Am I a good man?”

The questions over the silver strands on his head went on increasing. Its hook struck around his old, poor being. The prisoner’s hands were being tied behind his back. The noose was being fitted around his neck. The jailor looked at his watch to give the final signal. Like most of the moments which find us indecisive and uncertain, the crucial moment arrived similarly. With his hangman’s instinct he pulled the handle. However, it didn’t come smoothly like earlier times. The old man virtually drew out every ounce of his not so feeble strength to pull the death-gear to its full length. It almost rattled his bones like he had lifted a whole mountain.

Nonetheless with that herculean effort something snapped inside him. It was, maybe, hangman’s equanimity and balance. His movements became disordered and abnormal. Once bed-ridden, though it was a ripe age, people didn’t forget to remind him that it was on account of his profession.

“But all of us have to die...get old...get bed-ridden...grow feeble...unable to move...Almost similar fates! Then maybe all of us are sinners! Or...or nobody is a sinner!” he was entering a state of delirium.

His condition worsened. More than his old body, it was the mind that lynched him hard and sucked him into the whirlpools of death. One afternoon he died an unknown death.