If all he had wanted was to rid himself of Zeenat, well, that was easy enough. He could have accomplished it in a day. Since his intentions were pure, he tried every which way to secure her future. He went so far as to entertain several phony film directors in the hopes that they would find her a role in some movie. He even had a telephone installed at his place. But nothing worked.
Muhammad Shafiq Tusi kept coming for a month and a half, even spent a few nights with Zeenat, but he was not the kind of man to provide any woman with stability.
‘Shafiq Sahib turned out to be such a hollow gentleman,’ Babu Gopinath exclaimed one day with sorrow and regret. ‘Just look at his nerve, he swindled poor Zeenat out of four bed sheets, six pillowcases and two hundred rupees in cash. I hear he’s carrying on with some girl called Almas these days.’
It was true. Almas was the youngest daughter of Nazir Jan of Patiala. She was the last to be drafted into Shafiq’s service. Her three older sisters had been his mistresses before. I know for a fact that the two hundred rupees he bamboozled out of Zeenat were spent on Almas, who subsequently had a terrible brawl with her sisters and took poison.
After Tusi stopped visiting, Zeenat rang me up several times asking me to find him and bring him to her. I tried to locate him but not a soul knew his whereabouts. Then one day, quite by chance, I ran into him at the radio station. He seemed quite agitated. When I told him that Zeenat wanted to see him, he said nonchalantly, ‘I’ve already received this message from several others. I’m sorry, I don’t have the time. She’s a fine woman but, regrettably, far too prudish for my taste—I’ve no interest in women who act like wives.’
Disappointed, Zeenat resumed her outings to Apollo Bunder with Sardar. After fifteen days of sweating and umpteen gallons of petrol, Sardar managed to bag two men. Babu Gopinath interpreted this as a promising sign, for one of the men, the owner of a textile mill that manufactured silk fabrics, had promised Zeenat that he would marry her. An entire month passed and he never showed up again.
One day, I was at Hornby Road for some work when I saw Zeenat’s car parked by the sidewalk. Muhammad Yasin, who owned the Nageena Hotel, was sitting in the rear. I asked him, ‘Where did you get this car?’
He smiled. ‘You know the owner?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Then you can figure out the rest. But, yaar, she’s a hell of a piece!’ He winked at me roguishly. I smiled.
Four days later, Babu Gopinath came to my office in a taxi. He told me how Zeenat had met Yasin. One day, Sardar and Zeenat had picked up some men from Apollo Bunder and gone to the Nageena Hotel. There, they had a tiff about something and the men left in a huff, but somehow they struck up an acquaintance with Yasin.
Babu Gopinath was feeling quite optimistic. In a relationship only a fortnight old, Yasin had bought Zeenat six exquisite and very expensive saris. Babu Gopinath was now waiting for the affair to deepen so that he might eventually return to Lahore. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen.
A Christian woman took a room in the Nageena Hotel and Yasin lost his head over her young daughter Muriel. While poor Zeenat languished alone at the hotel, Yasin took Muriel out for rides everywhere in Zeenat’s car. Babu Gopinath was deeply hurt when he learned about it. ‘Manto Sahib, what kind of people are they!’ he said to me. ‘If he’s tired of her, why doesn’t he tell her clearly? And this Zeenat, she’s really very strange. She knows what’s going on, but will she ever open her mouth to say, “Well, sir, if you want to carry on with this Kristan girlie, get your own car, why use mine?” What shall I do, Manto Sahib? She happens to be an exceedingly fine, noble-hearted woman. I’m totally lost. I wish she would at least try to be a tad bit smarter.’
Zeenat didn’t take the end of her affair with Yasin badly.
Nothing of significance transpired for quite a while. When I rang up one day, I was informed that Babu Gopinath had gone to Lahore with Ghulam Ali and Ghaffar Sain to arrange for money because the fifty thousand he had brought with him had run out. He had told Zeenat that he might have to stay there longer because he would have to sell some of his property.
Sardar needed her morphine shots, Sando his Polson’s butter. So they joined forces and managed to find two or three customers for Zeenat every day. They told her plainly that Babu Gopinath wasn’t coming back and that she should fend for herself. They bagged a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five rupees a day, half of which went to Zeenat and the remainder they appropriated for themselves.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked Zeenat one day.
‘Bhaijan, I have no idea what they do,’ she replied naively. ‘I just do whatever they say.’
I was assailed by the powerful urge to reason with her. Tell her that what she was doing was a mistake, that Sando and Sardar were looking out for only their own interests and wouldn’t think twice about selling her off. But I didn’t say anything. Zeenat, let’s face it, was a tiringly dull-witted, listless and unambitious person. The unfortunate woman didn’t even know the value of her own life. She sold her body, but without the style and panache so needed for her profession. Honestly, she was very annoying. She showed no interest in anything, whether it was smoking cigarettes, eating, drinking, telephoning or even the couch on which she often reclined.
Babu Gopinath returned after a month—he had left Ghulam Ali and Ghaffar Sain behind in Lahore—and found someone else living in Zeenat’s old place. At Sando and Sardar’s behest, Zeenat had moved into the upper storey of a bungalow in Bandra. He came to me and I gave him the new address. When he asked about Zeenat, I told him what I knew, though not that Sando and Sardar had pushed her into prostitution. The taxi was waiting downstairs. He insisted that I come along.
We reached Bandra after an hour’s drive. As the taxi was climbing Pali Hill, we spotted Sando up ahead on the narrow road. Babu Gopinath yelled, ‘Sando!’
The instant Sando saw Babu Gopinath all he could say was, ‘Dharan takhta.’
Babu Gopinath invited him to ride with us, but he said, ‘Ask the driver to pull over to the side; I want to talk to you in private.’
The taxi parked along the edge of the road. Babu Gopinath got out and the two of them walked together for some distance, talking all the while. A little later Babu Gopinath returned to the taxi alone and instructed the driver, ‘Turn around, we’re going back.’
He suddenly seemed happy. When we reached Dadar, he said, ‘Manto Sahib, Zeenat is going to be married soon.’
Astonished, I asked, ‘To whom?’
‘To a big landowner from Haidarabad Sind. May they have a happy life together. It’s good that I’ve arrived in time. With the money I have brought back I can give her a decent dowry. What do you think?’
What could I think? My mind was totally blank. I was only wondering who that wealthy landowner from Hyderabad Sind could be. Or was this some scheme that Sando and Sardar had hatched together? Eventually, though, it was confirmed that the man was in fact who he was claimed to be. He had met Zeenat through a music teacher from Hyderabad who was trying in vain to teach her to sing. One day the teacher brought along his patron Ghulam Husain (the wealthy landowner from Hyderabad). Zeenat showed him great hospitality. At Ghulam Husain’s earnest request she sang Ghalib’s ghazal which begins with the line ‘Nukta-cheen hai gham-e dil usko suna’e na bane’. He was smitten with her. The music teacher confided in her about Ghulam Husain’s admiration and feelings. Sardar and Sando sprang into action and settled the marriage immediately.
Babu Gopinath was happy. He went to see Zeenat once, as a friend of Sando. He also met Ghulam Husain, which doubled his happiness. He said to me, ‘Manto Sahib, he’s a very handsome and able young man. Before leaving Lahore I had visited the shrine of Data Gang Bakhsh and prayed for her. Looks as though my prayer has been answered. May Bhagwan keep them both happy!’
Babu Gopinath made the arrangements for Zeenat’s wedding with great sincerity and dedication. He gave her jewellery worth two thousand rupees, a trousseau worth an equivalent
amount and five thousand rupees in cash. Muhammad Shafiq Tusi, Muhammad Yasin, the proprietor of the Nageena Hotel, Sando, the music teacher, Babu Gopinath and I were present at the wedding. Sando represented the bride.
When the ceremony of acceptance took place, Sando exclaimed in a hushed voice, ‘Dharan takhta!’
Ghulam Husain was looking very smart in his suit of blue serge, gracefully receiving congratulations from the attendees. He was tall and well built. Next to him, Babu Gopinath looked like a small partridge.
He had provided the customary food and drinks for the wedding banquet. After the meal, he himself was pouring the water to help the guests wash their hands. When I came to wash mine, he said to me with the exhilaration of a child, ‘Manto Sahib, just go inside and see how breathtakingly beautiful Zeeno looks in her bridal dress.’
I lifted the curtain and stepped inside. She was clad in a shalwar-kameez of red brocade woven with gold thread and a matching dupatta with a gold-thread border. Her make-up was very light, and although I detest lipstick, it looked quite becoming on her lips. She looked very lovely when she blushed and greeted me with aadaab. My eyes caught sight of the flower-bedecked, canopied bed in one corner, and I couldn’t resist laughing. ‘What is this joke?’
Zeenat looked at me with the utter innocence of a little kabutri and said, ‘Bhaijan, you make fun of me.’ Her eyes welled up.
I hadn’t yet realized my clumsy slip-up when Babu Gopinath entered. He lovingly wiped the tears off her cheeks with his kerchief and said to me in a voice saturated with grief, ‘Manto Sahib, I have always considered you a wise and intelligent man . . . You should have at least thought a little before you said such words.’
I could clearly sense in his tone the crushed remnants of the deep reverence he had nurtured for me all along.
Before I could apologize to him, he lovingly patted Zeenat’s head and exclaimed with heartfelt sincerity, ‘May God bless you and keep you happy!’
He looked at me with bedewed eyes filled with reproach, a painful, anguished reproach, and walked out of the room.
Yazeed
The tumultuous events of 1947 came and flitted away like a few bad days appearing unexpectedly in an otherwise pleasant season.
Karim Dad hadn’t simply attributed the upheavals to Providence, sat back complacently and done nothing; rather, he had faced the storm valiantly, like a man. He sparred with the enemy forces quite a few times, not so much to bring them to their knees, but only to offer vigorous resistance. He knew the enemy was far too powerful, but he also knew that to lay down his arms would be an insult not just to himself but to every man. This, at any rate, was how others thought of him, those who had seen him fighting with those brutes and willingly putting his life in harm’s way. But if you asked Karim Dad whether he considered putting down his weapons before the enemy an insult, he would think long and hard, as though pondering a difficult mathematical question.
He didn’t know how to add or subtract, any more than how to multiply or divide. After the riots of ’47 were over, people sat down to take stock of the losses, both human and material. Karim Dad didn’t involve himself in this computation. All he knew was that the war had claimed the life of his father Rahim Dad, whose corpse he had carried on his shoulders and laid to rest in the grave he had dug by a well with his own hands.
There had been more incidents like this in the village. Hundreds of young and old men had been butchered; several girls abducted, some brutally raped. Those who had suffered these wounds were crying as much over their own ill fate as over the exceptional ruthlessness of the enemy. But not a single tear was ever spotted in Karim Dad’s eyes. He was proud of his father’s gallantry. Exhausted from fighting against a pack of rioters armed with dozens of lances and hatchets, the old man’s strength had given out and he had fallen. When the news of his death was brought to Karim Dad, he merely addressed his father’s spirit thus: ‘Look, yaar, this isn’t a nice thing to do. Didn’t I tell you to carry some weapon on you at all times!’
He then dug a pit by the well and interred his father’s dead body. Standing by the grave, he uttered a few words by way of the Fatiha: ‘Only God knows best about sins and recompense. But let me just wish you Paradise!’
The rioters had dispatched Rahim Dad—who had been not just a father but also a great friend to Karim Dad—with such fiendish cruelty, that any time people recalled his savage murder, they never failed to hurl obscenities at the murderers. At such times Karim Dad never spoke a word. Several of his flourishing grain fields had been completely laid to waste and two houses reduced to ashes, yet Karim Dad didn’t spare his losses a second thought. Now and then, though, one did hear him utter this much: ‘Whatever happened was due to our own failings.’ When asked what those failings were, he chose to remain silent.
While the village folks were still lamenting over their dead, Karim Dad got himself married to the same blossoming Jaina he’d had his eyes on for some time. Jaina was grieving. Her brother, a strapping youth, had been killed in the riots. He had been the only person left whom she could count on for support since the death of their parents. That she also loved Karim Dad dearly was beyond doubt, but the pain of losing her brother had cast a pall over that love somewhat. Her eyes, lively and smiling before, now never seemed free of tears.
Karim Dad couldn’t stand wailing and crying at all. The sight of a doleful Jaina annoyed him, but he chose not to mention it to her, thinking that, tender-hearted woman that she was, his words might hurt her feelings even more. However, one day he couldn’t hold back any more. He caught up with her in the field and gave her a piece of his mind. ‘Look, it’s been a whole year since the dead were shrouded and buried. Even they are probably tired of all this keening and wailing over them. Let go of it, my dear. Who knows how many more deaths we’re fated to see in this life. Save some tears for the future.’
Jaina took umbrage at his words, but what could she do? She was deeply in love with the man. During long bouts of solitude, she tried her best to conjure up some meaning in his words and, eventually, convinced herself that what he had said wasn’t all that unreasonable after all.
The elders opposed their marriage when the proposal was run past them; however, their opposition turned out to be quite weak. Excessive mourning had sapped their energies so completely that they couldn’t even hold on to oppositions that had every chance of success. And so Karim Dad got married. With the customary wedding fanfare and music, and after every ceremony was duly performed, Karim Dad brought his beloved Jaina home as his bride.
Since the rioting a year ago, the whole village had assumed something of the depressing air of a cemetery. Thus, when Karim Dad’s marriage arrangements got under way with a lot of hullabaloo and excitement, a vague feeling of trepidation swept over some people. They cringed and felt as though it wasn’t Karim Dad’s but some bhoot–pret’s* wedding procession that was unfolding before them. Some friends informed Karim Dad about this reaction and he laughed his head off. One day, jokingly, he mentioned it to his new bride, who instantly began quaking with alarm.
‘Well,’ he said to Jaina, taking hold of her wrist with its beautiful, bright bracelet, ‘you can’t escape. You’re stuck with this bhoot for the rest of your life. Even Rahman Sain’s hocus-pocus can’t rid you of him.’
Jaina stuck her hennaed finger between her teeth, blushed a little, and got out only this much, ‘Kaimay, nothing seems to frighten you!’
Karim Dad ran the tip of his tongue over his reddish-brown moustache and smiled broadly. ‘What is there to frighten anyone? Fear doesn’t exist.’
By now, Jaina’s grief had subsided quite a bit. She was soon to be a mother. To see her in the fullness of her blossoming youth made Karim Dad enormously happy. He would say to her, ‘You were never so stunningly beautiful before, Jaina, I swear. If all this beauty is only for the sake of the baby who’s coming, I’ll have to fight with that little rascal, I’m telling you.’
Jaina would blush and quickly cov
er her big, bulging belly with her chador, which made him laugh and tease her even more. ‘Why are you hiding that thief? Don’t I know that all this dolling up is just for that little swine?’
At that Jaina would become serious. ‘Why are you swearing at the baby? After all it’s your own.’
‘And Karim Dad is the biggest swine of them all,’ he would say, his reddish-brown moustache quivering from the rumble of his laughter.
The ‘Little’ Eid came along, followed a couple of months later by the ‘Big’ Eid. Karim Dad celebrated both with equal fanfare and great fuss. The rioters had attacked his village twelve days before the Big Eid and his father Rahim Dad and Jaina’s brother Fazl Ilahi had both been murdered in that attack. Jaina cried a lot as she remembered their killings but, realizing how Karim Dad was predisposed to put any tragedy behind him, she couldn’t grieve as much as her own temperament called for.
Sometimes when she thought about it, she wondered how she could have begun to forget the most tragic incident of her life so imperceptibly. She had absolutely no memory of how her parents had died. Fazl Ilahi was six years older than her. He wasn’t just a brother; he had been both father and mother to her. She was absolutely sure that it was for her sake alone that he hadn’t married. And it was to save her honour that he had lost his life fighting the enemy—a fact known to the whole village. His death was truly the greatest catastrophe of her life, a veritable hell suddenly let loose upon her just twelve days before the Big Eid. Whenever she thought about that calamity now, the realization that she was drifting further away from its effects never failed to surprise her.
As the month of Muharram approached, for the first time Jaina expressed her desire to Karim Dad. She was very interested in seeing the decorated horse and the taziyas of Muharram. She had heard a lot about them from her girlfriends. She asked Karim Dad, ‘If I’m feeling up to it, will you take me to see the Muharram horse?’
My Name Is Radha Page 18