I felt as if I was being hanged with unending rope: Meera

Renowned Malayalam author K R Meera, whose novel 'Aarachar' is based on the life of a hangwoman, says the process of penning the story was harrowing.
The novel, published in Malayalam in 2012, has been translated to English by J Devika. It centres around India's first hangwoman Chetna Grddha Mullick, who shot to limelight with the execution of Dhananjay Chatterjee, convicted for rape and murder.
"Once I started writing the 'Hangwoman', I felt as if I was being hanged with that unending rope. It was just dragging me all along...To the gallows. I am glad I wrote it because that transformed me as a person. I got a clear insight into the process of writing," said Meera, speaking at Goa Writers and Readers Festival here on Monday.

The Kottayam-based writer also said that it would have been easier for someone living in Delhi to write this novel.
"Here (in Kerala) we have constraints regarding family and other commitments. I thought it would be easy but once I started writing I found I had doubts about each and every sentence; I had to read, crosscheck, verify and write again. It was difficult to write.
"I was writing about a very unfamiliar profession. I had to learn everything, starting from the rope and the noose," she said.
The novel talks of live telecast of the hanging. Meera said it is a dig at the commercialisation of media. "It was not a commercialisation of death that I wanted to demonstrate. As a journalist, I have gone through various instances where I felt that media can be the way out for many of the sufferings but they choose to market them.

"We live in an era of 24 hours news channel...They are not utilising their resources to help people. They are using it for marketing," she added.