Dark Silence Of The Hangmans World

OFF THE SHELF

This book starts appropriately enough with the death of the protagonist. For death was Janardhanan Pillai's stock in trade. Pillai was the last aratchar of the princely state of Travancore. In a 30-year career, he carried out 117 executions. Sometime before he died, he started keeping a journal at the behest of the author. After his death, seven notebooks were handed over by his family, according to his wishes. The author then translated from the Tamil and published this book.

Fact or fiction, it is an interesting premise _ the musings of someone who meted out death to strangers in cold blood. Warrier was actually fascinated by the possibility of doing a book on Pillai. But the old aratchar had passed on before this project started. So, he chose this unusual literary device to showcase his research but it is just that _ a literary device.

 

Did he get the mindset right? Is the aratchar of Hangman's Journal the man who pulled the rope so many times? Would the rambling stream of consciousness of this journal be recognisable in its meanderings to the kith and kin of Pillai? Would the warders and the priest at the Bhadrakali temple say, "Yes, this is the man we knew"? Difficult to judge and possibly irrelevant. Despite the faction format, this book is an unusual work of fiction. And, the Janardhanan Pillai who "wrote" this journal is one of the most fascinating creatures populating the pages of Indian writing.

Pillai is a mixture of aspirational value-systems and ice-cold peasant pragmatism. His father was a distant relative of the hereditary hangmen of the Travancore state. The father took on the task because it meant that his children would never go hungry. In good times, the little plot of land, which the state granted them kept them in comfort. In bad times, the rice gruel the Raja granted to his faithful servant kept them from starvation.

The aratchar always gets credit from the local moneylender. He is a man of universal respect. Yet he brings silence wherever he goes, for he is also something like a leper. No one wants to get close to him. When he enters the gates of the prison at Poojapura walking past the memorial to its designer, Raja Ravi Verma, a heavy silence falls. The warders faces may blur in the hangman's memory but everybody knows who he is. His only friend is his old school-teacher.

Janardhanan is a controlled man not given to impulses -- once a year he goes on pilgrimage to Saba-rimala. He dotes on his children and grandchildren and worries about how they will improve their station in life. He is happy that they have not followed in his footsteps.

After every hanging comes the dark. His wife knows that he will be silent for a few days after every journey to the jail. The dark will ease only after he has got blind drunk. Until them, he cannot sleep, he cannot eat and he can only whisper for the weight that is on his chest.

Almost inarticulate, Pillai does however know the measure of a man. He can look at a stranger and assess his height and weight with exactitude. He can recite the ratio of so much rope and so much drop for such and such a weight in English. This judgment is at the heart of his art. If he errs, the stranger would either choke to death or be decapitated. If he judges right, the neck will be broken with one quick, merciful jerk. And, he sacrifices a rooster for the soul of every stranger whom he sends onwards, at the temple of Bhadrakali.

As he writes, Pillai relives his dark rites. He sees the stained wood of the gallows with the deep grooves kicked by thousands of dying men. He remembers the rituals of judging the prisoner's weight, of testing the gallows and walking in his ceremonial robes at 4 am. He suffers Writers Block and wonders how he will face his god when the time comes. He wonders what ghosts condemned men see. A lot of readers will ask themselves the same questions. In not attempting to provide answers, Warrier has propelled himself up from the ranks of potboiler writers into a very special niche in Indian fiction.