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Chetna takes up her family's executioner's trade as the media celebrates her, while caste, male control and state killing constrain her choices.
A society can boast about a woman breaking into a man's job while the same people resent her for doing it. The pride is for the headline; the hostility is for the woman herself, and it shows up as questions about whether the work is moral or fit for her.
Journalism chasing attention treats an execution as a show to stage and promote, valuing whatever draws the most eyes. On that logic, the worse the man, the better the story, so cruelty becomes something to sell rather than something to question.
Taking on a man's office does not free a woman from men's control; fathers and relatives keep claiming her as theirs and ranking themselves above her. The work changes, but the order that says a man outranks a mere woman stays in place. She is told she must bend if she wants to stand straight.
When the person who carries out a killing has been wounded by the condemned, punishment can turn into personal revenge dressed as exact procedure. Her heartbreak becomes a vow to measure the rope perfectly, and her fantasies of pulling the lever become a way of finally possessing the man.
When the public hails a woman as a symbol of strength, the men around her can keep steering her while she wears the label. She is made to perform independence for the world but cannot go anywhere without her father or uncle beside her. The symbol grows bigger as her real room to choose stays small.
When the only door opened to a woman is the right to carry out executions, her claim to equality gets tangled up with the question of whether the state should kill at all. Supporting her place at the gallows means accepting the gallows, and the conflict is left unresolved.
A hereditary trade can be built into a family so early that it comes before almost anything else a child learns. When tying a noose is the first skill the hands acquire, the work stops being a choice and becomes who the family is.
A family can make a despised job bearable by telling a lineage stretching back centuries, casting its ancestors as witnesses to every great moment in history. Those stories lend dignity and meaning to killing, and they also pass the weight of that legacy to each new generation.
Public violence offers watchers a guilty pleasure, and power over life and death carries its own thrill and glamour. Someone handed that power along with fame is tempted to be seduced by both, rather than stay troubled by what the job really involves.