I am feared, hidden, whispered about in hushed voices. I do not rest in temples, nor am I placed on sacred altars. I am not worshipped, yet I have shaped destinies. I have ended wars, silenced kings, and stolen breath from both the innocent and the guilty.
I am the Noose, the final judge, the silent executioner, the loop that tightens when fate commands it.
I begin as a simple rope, woven by hands unaware of the fate I am destined to be. Perhaps I was meant for something else like to bind, to hold, to pull weight across lands. But somewhere along the way, my purpose changed. I was twisted into a perfect circle, a loop with only one meaning. My existence is neither accidental nor ordinary because I was shaped with intention, the intention to end, to decide and to pass judgment where no words remain.
I have felt the trembling hands of a king, his breath uneven as his final decree is ignored. I have heard the cries of revolutionaries whose voices were stolen before they could change the world. I have tightened around the throats of the guilty who begged for mercy but received none. And yet, I have also embraced the innocent, those who were condemned by a justice that was never just.
I am not evil, nor am I righteous. I am merely the moment between life and death, the final pause before silence. I do not question, I only listen.
I am the last witness to stories that will never be told. When a young boy hangs in a dimly lit hostel room in Kota, crushed by the weight of a future he could not endure, I am there. When an exhausted aspirant in Delhi whispers an apology to her parents before stepping onto the chair, I hear it.
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They pray not for life, but for escape. They ask for forgiveness, not from the world, but from themselves. And in those final moments, as the chair tips, as the body surrenders, as hope dies, I hold them. I do what no one else did, I hold on to them.
But while I hear their stories, I also see the ones who should have been mine but never were.
The men who violated innocence, who stole lives but still walk freely, untouched by justice. The ones who laughed in the face of the law after Nirbhaya, after Hyderabad, after every woman who screamed for mercy and found none. The ones who sit in power, their hands stained, their sins masked by wealth and status. They are never brought to me.
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Instead, I hold the ones who should have lived, the dreamers, the broken, the defeated. I take the ones who deserved a second chance, while those who should have met me are given a lifetime of freedom.
If I could choose, if I could wrap myself around the necks of those who truly deserve me, would that finally give my existence meaning? Would it make my touch just? Would it make my circle less cruel?
But I do not choose. I only wait.
And where I end, I also begin. My fibers unravel, my loop is broken, and soon, I am woven into something new. Perhaps I return as a simple rope once again, probably tied to an ox pulling a plow, bound around wood for a sacred pyre, holding together the mast of a ship that sails toward new lands. I never know what I will become next, but I definitely know this:
I will always return. I will always find my way back to that perfect circle, where the beginning and the end are the same.
I am the Noose. I am fate’s hand and history’s witness. I am the end of one story and the start of another.
