My Name Is Radha

by Saadat Hasan Manto

  After twenty-one days Tirpathi began appearing to him in a completely new light. Now everything about the man repulsed him. His crooked eye was now just a crooked eye. His long, lush, raven-black hair no longer seemed quite as soft and silky; his inordinately long beard an unforgivable stupidity.

  After twenty-five days a strange condition swept over Joginder Singh: he began to think he himself was a stranger. Surely he had known a Joginder Singh once, but not any more. And his wife—after Tirpathi left and everything finally returned to normal, he would marry her all over again. His old life, which these people had been using like a tatty old rag, would be restored to him and he would be able to sleep with his wife, and . . . and . . .

  Thinking beyond this point brought tears to the man’s eyes and something bitter caught in his throat. The desire to rush to Amrit Kaur, who used to be his wife in the good old days, to take her into his arms and start crying would overwhelm him, but he lacked the courage to do it because he was a progressive writer.

  Now and then a crazy thought bubbled up inside of him like milk come to a boil: why not tear off this mantle of progressivism he’d wrapped around himself and start screaming, ‘To hell with Tirpathi! Damn progressivism! You and your folk songs are all phoney! I want my wife back! All your desires have shrivelled up in your folk songs, but I’m still young. Have pity on me. Just think about it: I, who couldn’t stay away from his wife for even a minute before, have had to sleep with you under a common quilt for the last twenty-five days! If this isn’t tyranny, what is?’

  But no matter how much he raged inside, he never could utter those words. Come evening, impervious to his miserable condition, Tirpathi would unload a fresh story without fail and then slip under the same quilt with him. After a whole month had passed, Joginder Singh had about had it. Finding an opportunity, he met his wife in the bathroom. His heart throbbing violently, afraid Tirpathi’s wife might interrupt, he planted a hasty kiss on her lips like he was franking an envelope at the post office and said, ‘Stay awake tonight. I’ll tell Tirpathi that I have to go out and won’t be back before two-thirty, but I’ll come back early, say, around midnight. Open the door when you hear a soft rap. And then . . . The deorhi is somewhat secluded, but do lock the door that opens towards the bathroom.’

  After firmly instructing his wife he went to Tirpathi and took his leave.

  Twelve o’clock was four dark, chilly hours away. He spent two of them pedalling around aimlessly on his bike and didn’t feel cold at all. The thought of the coming intimacy kept him warm. Then he decided to spend the rest of the time sitting in the open area across from his house. There, he felt himself becoming romantic. The hushed silence of the cold evening seemed familiar. Stars shone overhead in the frosty sky, like heavy droplets of water congealed into pearls. The occasional scream of a locomotive tore through the quiet, prompting his writer’s mind to think of the silence as a massive chunk of ice and the sound of the whistle as a nail being driven through its heart.

  For quite a while he let this unprecedented feeling of romance spread through his mind and heart and meditated on the darkened beauties of the night. Suddenly he was jolted out of his reverie. He quickly looked at his watch; only two minutes before midnight. He promptly got up, went to the door and knocked softly. Five seconds went by. The door didn’t open. He knocked a second time.

  The door opened and he whispered, ‘Amrit . . .’ But when he raised his eyes, whom did he see but Tirpathi. Joginder Singh was overwhelmed by the feeling that the man’s beard had grown so long it seemed to touch the ground. Then he heard Tirpathi say, ‘Wonderful! Couldn’t have asked for more. I’ve just finished writing a new story. Come, let me read it to you.’

  Pleasure of Losing

  People take pleasure in winning. But he, well, it was losing that gave him the greater thrill, especially when it came in the wake of winning. Winning was easy enough; it was losing that made him sweat. Earlier, when he used to work in a bank, he too had thought about making piles of money. His relatives and friends had pooh-poohed the idea though. Soon afterwards he left for Bombay and, before long, he was sending wads of money to relatives and friends to help them financially.

  Bombay was teeming with possibilities. He chose to go into films as they promised both money and fame. He could make a bundle in this world, and lose it just as easily. He’s still marching on in that world. He made thousands, crores even, and squandered all of it. Making it took no time at all, losing it did. He wrote the lyrics for a film and earned one lakh rupees, but it took a long time to lose this stupendous sum—in prostitutes’ balconies, their pimps’ assemblies, in races and gambling dens.

  One of his films yielded a tidy profit of ten lakh. The big question then was how to squander this windfall. So he wittingly bumbled every step along the way. He bought not one but three cars, one brand new and two shabby old ones that he was absolutely sure were worthless. He left them outside the house to rot away, locking the new one in his garage on the pretext that petrol was hard to come by. So a taxi was the answer. You hailed one in the morning and had the driver stop a mile or so down the way near one gambling place or another, emerging the next day after burning two or two-and-a-half thousand rupees. You took another taxi and went home, purposely forgetting to pay the fare so that when you stepped out in the evening the taxi would still be standing at the door. You yelled at the driver, ‘Wretched man, you’re still here. All right, let’s go to my office . . . I’ll have them pay the fare.’ But arriving at the office, you once again forget to pay, and . . .

  Two or three of his films back to back turned out to be terrific hits and broke all records. He was swimming in money and his popularity soared sky-high, which greatly annoyed him. So he deliberately made a couple of films that failed miserably, indeed, so miserably that the failures became proverbial. In ruining himself, he had taken a few others along. But he wasn’t one to give up. He put some zing into the sagging spirits of those he’d wrecked and made another film that proved to be a gold mine.

  His relations with women followed the same pattern of loss and gain. He would pick up a prostitute from some song-and-dance soiree or some kotha, spend lavishly on doing her up, and catapult her to the height of fame. Then, after he’d sucked every ounce of womanhood out of her, he would deftly set up opportunities for her to leave him for the embrace of some other man.

  He would take on the awfully rich and many handsome, amorous young men in a deathly struggle to win some beauty’s favour, and always come out ahead. He would plunge his hand into the thorniest bramble and pluck the blossom of his choice. He would stick that blossom on his lapel, only to gladly let his rival snatch it away.

  Back when he was visiting a Faras Road gambling den every day for ten days in a row, he was obsessed with losing, despite the fact that he had just recently lost a very beautiful actress and kissed goodbye to a sum of ten lakh on a film. But his thirst for losing still wasn’t quenched as both losses had come much too suddenly. This time around his calculations had obviously misfired. Perhaps this was the reason he was now cautiously losing a fixed amount every day in the Faras Road gambling establishment.

  He would set out for Pawan Pul in the evening with two hundred rupees in his pocket. The taxi would course past the line of prostitutes’ display windows, which had iron bars running horizontally across them, and halt some distance away by a utility pole. He would get out of the taxi, adjust his heavy eyeglasses and arrange the front fold of his dhoti, and then, glancing to his right at the terribly ugly woman behind the iron bars busily applying her make-up in front of a broken mirror, he would climb up to the baithak.

  He had been visiting this gambling den at Faras Road regularly for the last ten days, determined to lose two hundred rupees on every visit. Sometimes it took only a few hands, sometimes it took until the wee hours of the morning.

  After the taxi pulled up beside the utility pole on the eleventh day, he got out, fixed the heavy glasses on his nose and the front fold of his
dhoti, and looked to his right. Suddenly he had this strange feeling about the fact that he had been looking at this ugly woman for the past ten days. As usual, she was seated on a wooden takht, busily applying her make-up in front of the broken mirror.

  Coming abreast of the iron bars, he peered at the middle-aged woman: swarthy complexion, oily skin, cheeks and chin tattooed with blue circles more or less blending in with her terribly dark skin. Her teeth were awful and her gums were practically melting away from chewing paan and tobacco regularly. What kind of man would go to her, he wondered.

  When he took another step towards the bars, the ugly woman smiled at him, put her mirror off to one side and said to him awkwardly, ‘Well, Seth, want to come in?’

  He inspected the woman, who regardless of her attributes and age still hoped for customers, even more closely. Greatly surprised, he asked her, ‘Bai, how old might you be?’

  This hurt her feelings. She made a face and perhaps swore at him in Marathi. He quickly realized his mistake and apologized sincerely. ‘Bai, please forgive me. I just asked. That’s all. But I do find it quite surprising that you sit here day after day all decked out. Do people visit you?’

  The woman didn’t answer. He again realized his mistake and asked her in a matter-of-fact voice free of curiosity, ‘What’s your name?’

  The woman was about to lift the curtain to go inside but stopped short and said, ‘Gangu Bai,’

  ‘Tell me, Gangu Bai, how much do you make in a day?’

  The woman felt a note of compassion in his voice and came over to the window bars. ‘Six, sometimes seven rupees . . . sometimes nothing.’

  As he repeated Gangu Bai’s words—‘Six, sometimes seven rupees . . . sometimes nothing’—he thought of the two hundred rupees in his pocket that he’d brought along to burn. An idea suddenly flashed across his mind. ‘Look, Gangu Bai, you make six or seven rupees a day. What if I gave you ten?’

  ‘For the work?’

  ‘No, not for the work. But you could think of it as for the work.’ He quickly pulled out a ten-rupee note from his pocket and pushed it across the bars. ‘Here, take it.’

  Gangu Bai took the banknote, but she was gawking at him wonderingly.

  ‘Look, Gangu Bai, I’ll give you ten rupees every evening at about this time, but on one condition.’

  ‘Condition? What condition?’

  ‘That after you get your ten rupees, you’ll have your meal and go inside to sleep. I don’t want to see your lights on.’

  A strange smile splashed across Gangu Bai’s lips.

  ‘Don’t laugh. I mean it. I never go back on my word.’

  Then he headed for the gambling den. As he was climbing the stairs he thought, ‘I came here to blow two hundred anyway, so what if it’s one ninety now.’

  Several days passed. The taxi stopped by the electric pole each evening. He got out, fixed the glasses on his nose, looked to his right at Gangu Bai ensconced on the takht behind the grillwork, arranged the front fold of his dhoti, pulled out a ten-rupee note and handed it to her. She touched it to her forehead, thanked him with a salaam, and he went upstairs to drop hundred and ninety rupees in card games. A couple of times on his way out, about eleven in the evening or two or three in the morning, he found Gangu Bai’s shop closed.

  One evening after giving her ten rupees he went up to the den and finished early, by ten o’clock. He’d ended up with such unlucky cards on every hand that he’d lost that day’s quota within a few hours. He came down from the kotha and was getting into the taxi when his eyes fell on Gangu Bai’s shop. He was astonished to see that it was open and she was sitting on the takht behind the grillwork. It looked as if she was waiting for customers. He got out of the taxi and approached her. She panicked when she saw him, but by then he was already in front of her.

  ‘What’s this, Gangu Bai?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘What a pity that you didn’t live up to your promise. Didn’t I say I wanted your lights off in the evening? And here you sit like . . .’

  His voice was filled with disappointment and sadness. Gangu Bai became thoughtful.

  ‘You’re bad,’ he said and started walking away.

  ‘Don’t go, Seth, stop,’ she called after him.

  He stopped. Gangu Bai started with slow deliberation, measuring every word carefully. ‘Yes, I’m bad, very bad. But who is good here? Seth, you pay ten rupees to keep one light off, but look around you, how many more lights are still on.’

  He looked through his thick lenses, first at the light bulb glaring right above Gangu Bai’s head and then at her tawny face. He bent his head and said, ‘No, Gangu Bai, no.’ He got into the taxi with a heart with no pleasure in it.

  God–Man

  Chaudhry Maujo was sitting on a cot of coarse string-matting under the shady banyan and leisurely puffing away at his hookah. Wispy balls of smoke rose from his mouth and dissipated slowly in the stagnant air of the scorching afternoon.

  Ploughing his little patch of land all morning had left him totally exhausted. The sun was unbearably hot, but there was nothing like the cool smoke of the hookah to suck away all the fatigue within seconds.

  The sweat on his body had dried, and although the stagnant air was hardly any comfort for his overheated body, the cool and delicious smoke of the hookah was spiralling up to his head in indescribable waves of exhilaration.

  It was nearing the time when Jaina, his daughter, would bring his repast of bread and lassi from home. She was very punctual about it, even though she didn’t have a soul to help her in her work. She’d had her mother, but Maujo had divorced her two years ago following a lengthy and particularly nasty argument.

  Young Jaina was a very dutiful girl. She took good care of her father. She was diligent in finishing her work so there would be time to card cotton and prepare it for spinning, or to chat with the few girlfriends she had.

  Maujo didn’t own much land, but it was enough to provide for his needs. His was a very small village, tucked away in a far-flung spot with no access to the railway. There was just a dirt road that connected it to a large village quite some distance away. Twice a month Chaudhry Maujo mounted his mare and rode there to buy necessities at a couple of shops.

  He used to be a happy man, blissfully free of worries, except for the thought that sometimes assailed him: He had no male offspring. At such times he contented himself by thinking that he should be happy with whatever God had willed for him. But, after his wife had gone back to her parents, his life was no longer the same. It had become unspeakably cheerless and drab. It was as if she had carried all its delicious coolness and exuberance away with her.

  Maujo was a religious man, but he knew only a few fundamentals of his faith: God is One and must be worshipped; Muhammad is His Prophet and it is incumbent to follow his teaching; and the Qur’an is the word of God which was revealed to Muhammad. That’s about it.

  Ritual daily prayers and the Ramzan fast—well, these he had dispensed with. The village was far too small to afford a mosque; there were only a dozen or so houses, situated far apart. People did repeat ‘Allah! Allah!’ often enough in their speech and carried His fear in their hearts, but that was the extent of their devotion. Nearly every household had a copy of the Qur’an, but no one knew how to recite it. Everyone had placed it high up on a shelf, reverentially wrapped in its velvet sheath. It was only brought down from its sanctum when it was needed for someone to swear by it or take an oath to do something.

  The maulvi was called in only when a boy or girl needed to be married. The village folk took care of the funeral prayer themselves, that too in their own tongue, not Arabic.

  Chaudhry Maujo came in especially handy on such occasions. He had a way with words. They never failed to affect the listener deeply. No one could equal his manner of eulogizing the deceased and praying for his deliverance. Just last year when the strapping son of his friend Deeno died and was laid to rest in his grave, Maujo eulogized him thus:

 
; ‘Oh, what a handsome young man he was! When he spat, the spittle landed twenty yards away. No one, and I mean no one, in any villages far or near could match the sturdy projectile of his piss. And what an accomplished wrestler he was! He could wriggle out of an opponent’s hold as easily as unbuttoning a shirt.

  ‘Deeno, yaar, this is the worst day of your life! This terrible blow will affect you for the rest of your life. Was this the time for such a robust young man to die . . . such a handsome young man? How the goldsmith’s lovely and headstrong daughter Neti had cast magic spells on him to win his love, but, bravo, your boy, Deeno, remained steadfast. He never gave in to her wiles. May God present him with the loveliest houri in Heaven, and may your boy never be tempted by her. And may God shower him with his mercy and blessings! Amen!’

  Several people, Deeno included, were so affected by this oratory that they started crying inconsolably, and even Maujo couldn’t stop his tears from bubbling out.

  Maujo didn’t feel the need to send for the maulvi when the idea of divorcing his wife got hold of his mind. He’d heard from elders that repeating the word ‘talaq’ three times over ended the matter then and there. So he ended the matter accordingly. Next day, though, he felt very sorry and ashamed that he had committed such a heinous blunder. Such squabbles were, after all, common among husbands and wives. They didn’t always end in divorce. He should have been more forgiving.