Road to redemption

Arghya Ganguly tells the story of Nigel Akkara, a former convict who plays Valmiki, a thug turned saint himself, on stage.

Who are you — is the one question that you want to ask Nigel Akkara when you meet him, especially as there’s nothing in his 6-feet and 1-inch frame and cordial demeanour to betray any aspect of the gruesome acts you have been told he committed earlier.

You wonder: was he really a murderer, a gang-leader of contract killers, an extortionist and a kidnapper, who took his first steps in the underworld when he was just 16 ? Did he really lure a businessman, back in 2000, out of his house on the pretext of finding him a woman and kill him? Without “going into the exact statistics” because “there is no evidence against me and the court has acquitted me” of all 18 charges, the alumnus of St Xavier’s School in Kolkata says, “I was wrong but today I’m no more in the wrong. That’s why all I will tell you is how I felt… my emotions during those years that I’ve left far behind.”

 

“The last time I came to Mumbai was in 1997-98 during the Durga Puja festival,” says Akkara, 32, a few hours before his first performance in Mumbai as the dacoit Ratnakar in Tagore’s dance drama Valmiki Pratibha who transforms into the sage Valmiki. “I was in the 11th standard then. I had left my house, as I frequently had to because the cops often raided my house, especially during the Durga Puja festival or the panchayat elections. That year I escaped to Mumbai.”

Akkara, who was an above-average rugby player in St Xavier’s, dreamt of becoming an army officer like ex-army chief General Shankar Roy Choudhury, whose picture he had up on his wall. “Three things led me into the crime world: greed, the ambition to be superior, and aggression. I had them all. I used to watch rich students come to college and splurge on things I wanted to have. Those instincts drove me to become a criminal,” says Akkar, who was imprisoned at the Presidency Correctional Home for nine years.

After a four-month search by the police, Akkara, then 21, was arrested in connection with the kidnapping and murder of a Kolkata businessman and soon after handed a life sentence. During the first six years of incarceration, Akkara says, he missed everything from alcohol, girls and the boys in his gang, to being free. He was put in solitary confinement since he tried to escape. It was at this tempestuous hour in 2007, when everything and everyone incurred the wrath of Akkara, that noted dancer Alokananda Roy walked into the jail to introduce inmates to classical dance as a form of cultural therapy.

* * *

“At first Vicky (as Akkara is called) wouldn’t want to dance. He didn’t think it manly. Also he would observe me from the sidelines to see whether I was fake or genuine,” says Roy, 60, whom Akkara addresses as Ma, “This is the ultimate in the process of correction since the staff, the inmates and also the Inspector General are part of this team. We, in West Bengal, are trying hard to give them proper rehabilitation so that they don’t have to go back to doing anything wrong once they are out. We never talk about their past. It’s about their present and their future. I’m trying to reform them through the joys of rhythm and dance,” she adds.

Akkara was one of the first to be reformed — “180 degrees in terms of everything” — under Roy. Akkara realised this when he broke down while drawing the markings on the stage before his first public performance (he was out on parole then) in “Brotherhood beyond Boundaries”, a production by Roy. This was the first time Akkara had ever cried in his life. “From that day life has been different. The next time I cried was when she explained Valmiki Pratibha to me, a story related to my life,” says Akkara, smiling through his untrimmed beard.

Not just that. Akkara learnt to be careful with his words so as not to hurt his mother anymore whenever she came to see him in jail. Before his reformation, Akkara had had a stormy relationship with his mother. But as he started to spend more time with Roy, the more Akkara understood “how unfair he had been to his own mother”. Noticing her son was changing, Akkara’s mother started visiting him every week instead of the once-a-month routine she had followed for years. They spoke now for hours together with Akkara sometimes even bribing the jail authorities to let his mother stay longer.

Five days of temporary release were granted to the convicts for their “excellent performance” in Valmiki Pratibha in 2009. It was Easter weekend and Akkara was walking on the streets after nearly eight-and-half years. “Everything looked different including the vehicles. I felt the cars would come out of their line and bang into me,” says Akkara. Since Akkara was confused about where to go and what to do, he held his mother’s hand and asked her to take him wherever she pleased. His mother took him to his “Ma’s” house. On the fifth day of his parole, Akkara made it a point to reach the prison five minutes early since very few people expected him to be back, considering his past record of trying to abscond.

Three months later, due to lack of evidence, the High Court dropped the cases against Akkara. Akkara, though, was reluctant to leave jail. After purging his system of most of the violent complexes that had him captive, “my soul was free, so when I was told of my release, I told the authorities that ‘if you need me for Valmiki Pratibha I’m ready to stay’”. Eventually, Akkara was given carte blanche on July 2, 2009, after being assured that he could continue to play the role of the thug-turned-sage.

After his release, Akkara, a post-graduate in human rights, applied for a job in at least seven organisations but was rejected when he revealed details of his past. Fed up, he set up his own security agency called Kolkata Facilities Management for ex-convicts, especially those who are illiterate. Although he is getting plenty of acting offers owing to his growing popularity as Vamiki, Akkara plans to continue working diligently to make the agency the go-to place for reformed convicts.

In college, shortly before he was arrested, Akkara had fallen in love. His girlfriend would visit him in jail and he eagerly looked forward to it, until one day she told him that she had to take a decision about her marriage. With no hope of release then, Akkara had left it to her to take the decide. Years later, after Akkara was released, the girl, married by now, had come to meet him. Looking at Akkara’s face devoid of bitterness, she must have felt tempted to ask: “Who are you?”