The Gallows at Port Blair

The smiles are what you notice first. It starts at the gate. Pouting, preening, beaming. Compulsive selfie-takers, delighted families. It continues all the way in and it's all over the place. Smiling faces behind iron bars and rusting doors and even at the gallows. A prominent sign requesting visitors to maintain solemnity befitting the memorial, stands snubbed and forlorn.

The Cellular Jail at Port Blair has gallows that when in use could hang three people at a time. A sign of cold British efficiency. There's a morbid fascination with the gallows. Its narrow entry crowded with the prurient wanting to get in and once satiated wanting to get out. I join the herd. A father ahead of me is patiently explaining to his daughter the purpose of the hanging nooses and how it worked.  The ropes once tightened around frightened, sweaty necks, kneeling on the wooden trapdoor floor. The spot where each freedomfighter knelt is marked by a white circle. I can imagine their shaking bodies straying outside the circle of white and being positioned back in place with bureaucratic efficiency. The trapdoors would open and...

The father then takes his daughter down a flight of stairs, making it sound like an adventure. That's when I withdraw. The picture in my mind is too morbid. I read somewhere that death is never pretty. The bladder relaxes and the colon empties. It would help the compulsive selfie-takers contorting their necks to get the nooses into the picture - all three of them - to remember that the men who sacrificed their lives here were fathers, sons, husbands, friends. Driven by a cause greater than themselves - freedom. It's said they went smiling to the gallows. In completely different circumstances, the selfie-obsessed  do the same.