As I post this, there’s just 2 more days for four of India’s most brutal rapists to meet their gallows. They apparently are saying they don’t want to die; it’s been harsh years for them in prison, but after a long drawn out judicial process, the hammer finally fell. Feb 1, these 4 will take a final walk.

There hasn’t been toooooo much national debate on the matter, if you were in India you’d have read up on this ghastly deliberate assault on a 23 year old physiotherapist by 5 (no, 6) ‘men’ on a moving empty bus. What was left of the girl was the shreds of a human being who barely survived to recount the horror; she died, but lives on as ‘The fearless one.” Nirbhaya.

This whole thing is a horror story, both the crime and the result of it. Nothing here is human, but stepping away from this story, am wondering what it feels like to face a sentence and for a crime like that? What are the convicts’ thoughts, what do they ask for in the last hours? Is there repentance, will these four men have soul redemption, do they care? From reports we’ve been reading, interviews…. their remorse has been zero. It is like something in there isn’t working. They’ve no clue what they did was cold blooded murder, I don’t get it. Justice seems cold, too: how else does society get the message, it’s an example to the rest, yes we know that.

I couldn’t sleep last night thinking how it must feel to know you have 2 sunrises left. 2 dusks….

what does it feel like to die… when the human spirit transpires… is that the word… expires… and goes from here to there…

..to that ‘Land‘ so much talked about, dissected, analysed, forbidden to analyze by some who disbelieve such possibilities….

gallows or no, it’s there for every single one of us, and I’m thinking of my great grandma who knew she was dying and when. She ordered her coffin, she bathed, wore a white sari and gave her last words. When she breathed her last, she was smiling with the word, “Jesus” on her lips.

Try and beat that one!

I’ve no clue how to end this post. It’s not a “to hang, or not to” post;

we are all inches away from some kind of wrong or the other. I’ve received forgiveness more than once, for which I’m so grateful. Oh it’s nice to rave about blessings when it is Death row for some. There are no solutions to that one. Have you looked in the eye of a murderer who did what he did and grinned about it later? Shudder, no comment. I believe even death is an easy way out, but it can put at least some amount of fear in a few, anyone trying to play repeats of crime story. Ofcourse there are doubts whether there will be further stay on this order, since one of them has appealed and will be listened to, tomorrow …!

That said, I still wonder about that Death Row, and the act of dying without knowing you’ve received eternal pardon, and that then there is so much more to look forward to than the temporal.

I’m super righteous glad I’m not Supreme court justice, nor a lawyer, nor the cell cleaner, or warden or cook, or doc, or worse still the hangman. Glad I’m not the gatekeeper anywhere near there or the driver of any particular necessary van, or the ropemaker. But we’re here and we share an earth, and I think it’s a good thing to try and look out for each other in buses and dark lanes and places I don’t know to say.

And I think it’s a good thing to think about After Life: it doesn’t just arrive in Death row prison cells…

what a dark post this is!