Hamid assured Babu Har Gopal that he really did have some important work to attend to in Pune where there was a man he had to meet. At last Babu Har Gopal relented and left to continue his carousing alone.
Hamid took a taxi to the bank where he withdrew some money. Then he went straight to Lata’s house. She was bathing, and the same man who had been there the day before was sitting in the front room. Hamid spoke to him for a while and then gave him a hundred-rupee note. Then Lata came. She looked even fresher than before. She pressed her hands together in her traditional greeting, and Hamid got up and told the man, ‘I’m going. Bring her down. I’ll get her back on time.’
He went down to the taxi. Lata came and sat next to him. When she touched him, Hamid felt all his tension flush from his body. He wanted to hold her, but Lata raised her hand, forbidding him to.
He dropped her off at seven thirty that evening and immediately lost all peace of mind. He was restless all night. Hamid was married and had two small children, and he knew he was being truly foolish. If his wife found out, there would be a scene. If he had seen Lata just once, that would have been one thing but it looked as though the affair wasn’t going to end anytime soon. He resolved never again to go to Shivaji Park, but by ten the next morning he was sleeping with Lata at a hotel.
Hamid went to Lata’s for fifteen straight days and in the process spent 2,000 rupees. On top of this, his absence had put his business in trouble. Hamid knew what was happening but Lata had taken possession of his heart and soul. Finally Hamid drew up his courage: he forced himself to go back to his business, stay busy, and forget Lata.
In the meantime Babu Har Gopal finished his research into filth and debauchery and went back to Lahore.
Four months passed, and Hamid kept his promises. But one day he happened to be going by Shivaji Park, and he spontaneously told the driver, ‘Stop here.’ The taxi stopped. Hamid thought, ‘No, this isn’t right. I should tell the driver to drive on.’ But he opened the door, exited the taxi and went up.
When Lata came out, Hamid saw she had put on weight. Her breasts were fuller, and her face had become chubby. Hamid handed over the hundred rupees and took her to a hotel. Once they were there she told him she was pregnant, and he lost all presence of mind. Stunned, he asked, ‘Who—who is the father?’
Lata didn’t understand what he was asking, and once he finally got through to her, she shook her head and said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t have any idea?’
‘No.’
Hamid cleared his throat. ‘So—it’s not mine?’
‘I don’t know.’
When Hamid questioned her in detail he found out that Lata’s keepers had tried to get her to abort the baby, but nothing had worked. No drug had any effect, other than the one that made her so sick that she had to spend a month in bed. Hamid thought things over, but only one thing made any sense, and that was that he needed to get a good doctor’s advice as soon as possible because they were planning to send her to her village.
Hamid dropped her off at her house and went to see a doctor friend who told him, ‘Look here, this is very dangerous, a matter of life and death.’
Hamid was at his wit’s end, ‘It’s a matter of life and death for me too! It’s got to be mine. I’ve calculated it carefully, and I’ve asked her too. For the love of God, think about what this means for me. What if it’s a girl? The thought makes me tremble. If you don’t help me, I’m going to go crazy thinking about this.’
The doctor gave him some medicine, and Hamid gave it to Lata. He was almost rabid in his expectation of good news, but the medicine did nothing. He managed to get a hold of another drug but that one didn’t work either. Now Lata’s pregnancy was showing. They wanted to send her to her village, but Hamid told them, ‘No, wait a little longer. I’m going to try something else.’
But he didn’t do anything. Hamid became paralysed from thinking too much. What should he do, what shouldn’t he do? He couldn’t figure anything out. He cursed Babu Har Gopal over and over, and he cursed himself too. If Lata had a girl, she too, would become a prostitute. He couldn’t bear this thought—it was reason enough to drown himself.
He began to hate Lata. Her beauty no longer stirred the emotions it once had, and if he happened to touch her, he felt as though he had thrust his hand into burning embers. He wanted her to die before giving birth to his baby. She had been sleeping with other guys—why the hell did she have to get pregnant with his kid?
Hamid wanted to stab her swollen stomach, or do something else to kill the child, and Lata too, was beside herself with worry. She had never wanted to have a baby. Moreover it was physically painful. In the beginning she was weak from throwing up, and now she had abdominal cramps. But Hamid imagined she didn’t care—if she didn’t care about her own situation, then at least she should look at what he was going through, feel some pity, and do away with the baby!
After the drugs failed, Hamid tried charms and quack remedies. But the baby was stubborn. Admitting defeat, Hamid gave permission to Lata to go back to her village, but he also went in secret to see where her house was. According to his reckoning, the baby was due in the first week of October. Hamid decided to get someone to kill the baby and so started hanging out with Dada Karim, the gangster. He wined and dined him, wasting a lot of money in order to prime him for his request.
Then Hamid told Dada Karim everything, and the price was set at 1,000 rupees. Hamid immediately handed over the money, and then Dada Karim said, ‘I don’t have it in me to kill such a young baby. I’ll bring it to you, and you can do whatever you like with it. Your secret will die with me—you don’t have to worry about that.’
Hamid agreed. He planned to put the child on the railroad tracks so a passing train would crush it—that or something else. He took Dada Karim to Lata’s village. Dada Karim learned that the child had been born fifteen days earlier, and suddenly Hamid felt the same joy rising in him that he had felt when his first boy had been born. But he immediately repressed this and said to Karim, ‘Look, let’s get it over with tonight.’
At midnight Hamid was waiting in an abandoned field; a strange storm was raging in his mind. With great difficulty, he had resolved to commit the murder at hand. The stone on the ground before him was large enough to kill the baby, and several times he had picked it up to measure its weight. At twelve thirty, Hamid heard footsteps. His heart began to beat so strongly that he thought it would burst from his chest. Dada Karim appeared from out of the darkness, and he was carrying a small bundle wrapped in cloth. He came up to Hamid, put the bundle in his trembling arms, and said, ‘My part’s done. I’m out of here.’ Then he left.
Hamid was shaking badly. The baby was squirming in the bundle. Hamid put it on the ground and tried to get his trembling under control. When he calmed down a little, he picked up the heavy stone. He felt over the bundle for the baby’s head and was about to bring the stone down when he thought he should look at least once at the baby. He put the stone aside and with his tremulous hands got out his box of matches and lit one. It burnt out in his fingers, as he couldn’t bring himself look at the baby. He thought for a moment. He gathered his courage, lit another match, and pulled back the cloth. After a quick glance, he looked back at the baby. The match fizzled out. Wait—who did the baby look like? He had seen this face somewhere, but when and where?
Hamid quickly lit another match and examined the baby’s face. Suddenly the face of a man came into focus, the man who lived with Lata at Shivaji Park. Hamid swore, ‘Well, fuck this! It’s his spitting image. Just like him!’
And bursting with laughter, he walked off into the night.
MUMMY
HER name was Mrs. Stella Jackson, but everyone called her Mummy. She was middle-aged and of average height. Her husband had been killed in the First World War, and she had been getting his pension for about ten years.
I don’t know how she got to Pune or for how long she had been living there. In fact I never tried
to figure out where she came from. She was so immediately interesting that you never thought to ask about her past, and you never worried whether she had any relatives because she was connected with everything that happened in Pune. It’s possible I’m exaggerating a little, but it seems like each and every one of my memories of Pune include her.
I met her nowhere else but in Pune. Let me tell you how it happened.
I am extremely lazy. There are a lot of things I would really like to see, but I never get past talking about them. I might go on about how I’m going to climb Kanchenjunga or some other impressive peak in the Himalayas, and while that’s theoretically possible, it’s also likely that if by some miracle I manage to get to the top, I’d be too lazy to come back down.
You can see how lazy I am by the fact that I had been living in Bombay for God knows how many years (wait—why don’t I count? I moved to Bombay with my wife and then our boy died four years ago—why don’t we say I was in Bombay for eight years) and yet I never once saw Victoria Gardens or went to any museum. I wouldn’t have thought of going even to Pune if I hadn’t got into an argument with the owner of the film company I was working for. Then I thought it would be good to get away for a while, and Pune was the best choice as it was close and I had friends there.
I had to get to Parbhat Nagar where one of my old film buddies lived. Outside the station we had already hired a tonga when I learned it was rather far away. Slow-moving things usually irritate me, but I had gone to Pune to unwind and so decided not to let the prospect of a long ride bother me. Unfortunately the tonga was just absurd—even more so than a horse-cart in Aligarh—and we were in constant danger of falling off. The horse was in front, the passengers in the back, and after we had rambled through one or two dust-covered bazaars, I felt sick. I asked my wife what we should do, considering the circumstances. She mentioned the heat, and how the other tongas she had seen were no different, and how it would clearly be more difficult if we got off and walked. I agreed; the sun was really hot.
We must have gone about an eighth of a mile when another broken-down tonga passed. I glanced at it, and then suddenly someone yelled out, ‘Hey, Manto, you ass!’
I was startled. It was Chaddah and a haggard white woman sitting thigh to thigh. My first reaction was one of great disappointment. What was Chaddah thinking? Why was he sitting next to such a trashy old hag? I couldn’t guess her exact age, but her gaudy layers of powder and rouge couldn’t cover up her wrinkles. All in all, it was a depressing sight.
I hadn’t seen Chaddah in a while. He was a close friend. I usually would have shouted some insult in return, but seeing that woman made me hesitate.
I stopped the tonga, and Chaddah also told his driver to stop. Then he turned to the woman and said in English, ‘Mummy, just a minute.’ He jumped from the tonga and with his hand raised in my direction yelled, ‘You—how did you get here?’ Then he abruptly grabbed the hand of my shy wife and said, ‘Bhabhi jan, great job! You finally plucked this precious rose and brought him here!’
‘So where are you off to?’ I asked.
‘I’m going somewhere on work,’ he said pretentiously. ‘Why don’t you go straight …’ Then he turned to my driver and said, ‘Look here, take this gentleman to my house. Don’t charge him anything.’ He turned again to me and in his bossy manner said, ‘Go on now. There’ll be a servant there. The rest you’ll have to manage on your own.’
He turned and jumped back into his tonga where he addressed the old woman beside him as ‘Mummy’. Hearing him call her that comforted me a little, and my earlier heavy-heartedness lightened considerably.
His tonga set off down the road. I didn’t say anything to my driver, but he started up and then after about a half mile, stopped near a building that looked like an old government resthouse. He got down. ‘Let’s go, Sahib.’
‘Where?’
‘This is Chaddah Sahib’s house.’
‘Oh’, I said and then looked questioningly at my wife. Her disapproving glance told me what she thought about his house, and in truth, she didn’t want to be anywhere in Pune—she was sure that under the excuse of needing to relax I would drink myself into oblivion with my drinking buddies. I got down from the tonga, picked up my small briefcase and instructed my wife to follow. She caught on that I was in no mood to be contradicted and so silently obeyed.
It was an ordinary house. It seemed that some military people had quickly built the small bungalow, used it for a little while and then left it for good. The plasterwork was poor and crumbling in places. Inside it looked like a bachelor lived there, perhaps a film star working for a company that paid him every third month and then only in instalments.
I knew my wife was sure to feel uncomfortable in that drab setting, but I imagined that once Chaddah came, we would all go to Parbhat Nagar to my old film buddy’s, and then my wife, poor thing, could spend two or three days there with his wife and children.
Chaddah’s servant didn’t make it any better. He was useless. When we got there, all the doors were open and he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. When he showed up, he didn’t pay any attention to us but treated us as though we had been sitting there for years and were content to sit there until eternity. He walked right by. At first I wondered whether he might be some aspiring actor living with Chaddah, but when I asked him about the servant, I found out that this fine gentleman was none other than the man in question.
Both my wife and I were thirsty, and when I asked for some water he set off in search of glasses. Quite a while later he came back to pull a broken mug from underneath the wardrobe and then mumbled, ‘Last night Sahib ordered a dozen glasses, but who knows where they are now.’
I pointed at the broken mug he was holding and asked, ‘So are you going to get some oil or not?’
‘To get some oil’ is a special Bombay idiom, and even though my wife didn’t understand it she laughed anyway. The servant was puzzled. He said, ‘No, Sahib. I … I … was thinking where a glass might be.’
My wife told him to forget the water, and he put the broken mug beneath the wardrobe as if that were its rightful place, and were he to put it anywhere else, the order of the whole house would be overturned. Then he turned up his nose and left.
I was sitting on a bed, probably Chaddah’s. On the other side of the room were two easy chairs, and my wife was sitting in one and fidgeting. We sat in silence. Then Chaddah arrived, but he didn’t behave as though he had guests. As soon as he came into the room, he said to me, ‘Wait is wait … it couldn’t be helped.’ Then with his sorry apology over, he continued, ‘So you’ve come, old boy. Let’s go to the studio for a bit. If I take you, it’ll be easy for me to get an advance. This evening …’ His glance fell on my wife and he stopped. Then he laughed, ‘Bhabhi jan, I hope you haven’t turned him into a maulvi yet!’ He laughed even louder. ‘Let all the maulvis go to hell! Let’s go, Manto! Let’s let bhabi jan sit for a while. We’ll be right back.’
My wife had been angry, but now she was seething. I went out with Chaddah, as I knew that she would fall asleep after fuming for a while.
The studio was nearby and once there, Chaddah badgered his boss into giving him 200 rupees. We returned in just under an hour to find my wife asleep in the easy chair, and since we didn’t want to bother her, we went into another room that functioned like a storage room—things broken to the point of uselessness were lying about in heaps, and everything was covered in dust, a virtue insomuch as it gave the room a bohemian feel.
Chaddah left abruptly to look for his servant. When he found him, he gave him a hundred-rupee note and said, ‘Prince of China! Get two bottles of the cheapest rum—I mean XXX rum—and a half dozen glasses.’ (Later I learned Chaddah called his servant not only the ‘Prince of China’ but also the prince of whatever country came to mind.) The Prince of China took the money, and snapping the note in his fingers he disappeared.
Chaddah sat down on a bed with broken springs and smacked his lips thinking about the upcom
ing XXX rum. Then he said, ‘Wait is wait … so you’ve finally found your way over here.’ Suddenly he became pensive, ‘But what should we do about your wife? She’s going to get pissed.’
Chaddah was unmarried but was always considerate of others’ wives. In fact he respected them so much that he decided never to marry. He always said, ‘My inferiority complex has denied me this reward. When the question of marriage comes up, I always feel like I’m ready for it, but afterwards I think I’m not worthy of a wife and so I gather up all my marriage plans and deep-six them.’
The rum came quickly and the glasses too. Chaddah had asked for six, but the Prince of China had brought only three because the other three had broken on the way. Chaddah didn’t seem to care about the broken glasses but thanked God that the alcohol was safe. Without wasting any time, he opened one bottle, poured the rum into the brand-new glasses and then said, ‘Welcome to Pune!’
We downed our drinks in one shot.
Chaddah poured another round and then got up and went to the other room. When he came back he said that my wife was still sleeping and he seemed concerned about this. He said, ‘I make so much noise that I bet I’ll wake her up. So let’s … no, wait … first I’ll order some tea.’ Then he took a sip of rum and called his servant, ‘Oh, Prince of Jamaica!’
The Prince of Jamaica came at once and Chaddah told him, ‘Look here, tell Mummy to make some first-class tea and send it over ASAP!’
The servant left. Chaddah finished his glass and poured himself a smaller shot. ‘I’m not going to drink a lot,’ he said. ‘The first four shots make me very emotional, and I have to help you take bhabi to Parbhat Nagar.’
Half an hour later, the tea arrived. The dishes were clean and arranged nicely on the tray. Chaddah took off the tea cosy, smelled the tea and exclaimed, ‘Mummy is a jewel!’ Then he suddenly started to curse at the Prince of Ethiopia, and he was yelling so loud that my ears began to throb. Then he picked up the tray and said to me, ‘Come on.’
Bombay Stories Page 13