I Am an Executioner by Rajesh Parameswaran Page B

symbols he is making are deeply meaningful to the Hindus of this region.”
    My new uncle-in-law, for his part, had grown quietly furious. He stared at R.’s display as if those lines spelled something of direct offense to his dignity and soul; he dripped and pulsed with sweaty indignation. He called out darkly in my ear, but I could not hear what he said, for on the other side, Dhanu had dissolved again into helpless, childlike tears—the boy seemed to have been pushed past his limit.
    I could not turn to face either of these people, but instead, adorned all in flower garlands, I stormed up to R. I screamed oaths and imprecations at the back of his head, demanding an explanation. But the man calmly continued writing as if he hadn’t heard me.
    Finally, I grabbed him by the shoulder and swung him round by force. He stared at me, calmly blinking. Did he recognize me at all? I grabbed the chalk from his hand and flung it into the tracks.
    “Get out of my sight!” I said. I am ashamed to say that I struck him across the face, in front of all of my guests. But this blow had the effect of finally bringing him back to reality.
    “Get away from here, you imbecile, you fool! Never come to this station again.”
    He seemed to understand what I had told him. He gathered up his vaishti and walked away.
    I turned aside in disgust, only to find standing before me and blocking my path a slick-haired photographer supporting his grotesque contraption. My in-laws had hired him all the wayfrom Madras, and he had only now disembarked from the train and found our company. “Let us have it over with,” my bride’s uncle instructed me. So, steaming and humiliated, I moved to the part of the station least sullied by R.’s offenses, wiped off his marks with my hand, and stood with any and all dignity I could muster—at any rate, I knew I looked smart, with a magnificent new shut-coat given me as part of my dowry. After several minutes of tedious immobility, while the frenzied crowd settled down to stare, the fellow finally uncloaked his head, the crowd hoorahed—hadn’t they enjoyed quite the show this afternoon!—the enginneer finally blew his whistle, and we continued our tense procession to the temple. (Would that I had imagined you then as I do now—I might have bashed that camera! There is something altogether too ticklish about your reanimating me and setting me in ink … even as I suppose there is something revealing in it. Nevertheless, carry on.)
    After this incident, my bride’s uncle was understandably concerned about my management of the station and my prospects in the Railway, and consequently, my suitability for his niece. My judgment and character were called into question. For a few anxious weeks, there was some uncertainty as to whether I would continue as Rombachinnapattinam’s stationmaster, and indeed, whether the wedding would still go forward. To have a wedding canceled for a scandal so public would have been disastrous to my family’s reputation, and to my personal prospects. In my secret heart, I had hoped for some reprieve from the wedding, but now it had come I saw the horror of it. Social death was not a price I could pay.
    I saw my whole life passing from the plain and legible world to that of ugly incoherence. Things were reversed: the wrong side was facing out. During these days, as my mind obsessively rehearsed the steps toward my predicament, trying to pinpoint its first warnings, and how it could have been avoided, I kept alighting on one scene: I sat smugly at my desk, relating an eloquentand well-considered letter, as R. scribbled dutifully; then R. quietly handed me back a piece of paper that bore no resemblance to what I had composed, that was not at all what I had expected to see.
    That letter began to seem filled with uncanny portent; those bizarre scrawls seemed the sign and analogue of my own inner turmoil, my emptiness, my lack of power. The indecipherable signs on that page spoke of some