[Fiction] What the convict whispered to the hangwoman

When Sibdev babu whispered my name and handed me the hood, I went up to Jatindranath again and stood in front of him. We looked at each other. His body weighed 55kg. Loss of hair had widened his brow. He had thick eyebrows, and below them, like two bottomless pits, were his eyes. Upon his sallow cheeks lay the pallor of long years in a sunless room. And then his neck, from which the bones stuck out. In his eyes there was no fear, but pity for me, or someone else. I closed my eyes, focused my mind on my ancestors. I thought of thakuma, dadu and father. I folded my hands holding the hood. I had heard that father always did this. And I begged forgiveness: "Dada, tumi aamake khomaa koro." Brother, please forgive me. I tilted his face sideways and kissed his cheek. He smelt like the lal champa. He smiled. "Tomar bhalo hobe." God bless you. "Four-thirty!" the IG called. I forgot that this was my very first hanging. I was not myself, I was an executioner. Only an executioner. The hood stretched between my palms like a black pillowcase. I put it on his face easily. He kept looking at me till his eyes were covered. The black head, which had no eyes, nose or mouth, upon the white-clad body continued to look at me. A thunderbolt passed through me that moment; I staggered. Something pierced my bones and flesh hard. That was just the beginning. A thousand streaks of lightning pierced me like arrows. My blood seethed and boiled. The bones and flesh quavered hard. Through each pore of my skin, a thousand souls entered. I realised how true father's words were as I stood there - that it will feel as though you were on the azar. I too went through rehearsed steps, as if I were merely a character in a play, present to satisfy somebody else's sensibility. I looked at Jatindranath Banerjee once more. He stood like a statue with an unfinished head, arms tied, legs tied. That his heart was beating like a rubber ball bouncing in well-defined intervals was evident from the frame of his chest rising and falling inside the new white clothes the government had gifted him for this journey to the other world. I checked the noose, made sure the knot was strong. Then I pulled the rope and passed the noose over his head and fitted it perfectly in the precise spot between the second and third vertebrae, as if I were offering flowers to a deity. I let out a deep breath. "Tomar bhalo hobe," he whispered from inside the hood again. I reached the lever in a flash, placed my hand on it, and looked to the left. The magistrate, the IG and the others were lined up behind the gallows. Their faces were unclear; they were all still. A red kerchief was dropped. The lever's ancient cold spread to my palm. My heart too bounced like a rubber ball. Someone stirred in my blood and emerged into the open, shooting out through my flesh. This presence tried hard to wrench my hand from the lever. It was like a tug o' war between us. Just when I thought I would fail, I saw the kerchief, and its deep red blinded me. I pulled the lever. The planks below moved away with a thunderous noise. Like the sky falling, Jatindranth's body fell straight in. My eyes were glued to the rope. One, two, three, four... Someone was counting inside my head. Twenty! The rope became still. My hand stayed on the lever. I felt nothing special. A man had died. The noose tightened on his neck. The vital blood vessel between the second and third vertebrae snapped and the blood flow to his brain ceased. His blood pressure rose dramatically. His heart stopped beating. The bones of his neck shattered in a way that made it impossible to stretch the spine...

I looked at the rope dangling from the gallows tree. Jatindranath's body had disappeared into the cellar. The rope was stretched fully; it looked more like an iron rod fixed to the ground. The sky had begun to turn a pallid white. A terrible silence pervaded the yard. The magistrate, the IG and the other employees - they were all like mannequins, silent and still. Suddenly, the six o'clock siren blared. Sound waves fled through the silent, wet, heavy air, shrieking like hunted and wounded birds. The morning bell inside the prison sprang to life. Like a town immobilised by an evil spell in a fairy tale suddenly coming to life, the jail woke up. The thud of a falling sandbag reverberated beneath my feet. The rope, which stood stretched so grandly, rose to the sky like a severed lizard's tail, and drooped, helpless, bereft of all pride. The drizzle began again. A policeman ran up from the cellar below. "Twenty seconds... Declared dead!" the magistrate announced loudly. My body was tense and overwrought, like a stretched rope. All the souls that were stuffed into my body began to fall away in ones and twos, like grains of sand from an old, torn sandbag. I felt hollow and light, like an empty sack. Raindrops and sweat mingled and flowed from my head to the ground. Everywhere I turned, I saw nothing but a deep red.