Those same days of rain. The peepal’s leaves clattered outside the window. The Marathi girl’s soaked clothes lay in a squalid heap on the floor; and she clung to Randhir. The warmth of her naked and dirty body produced the same sensation in him as that of bathing in bitter winter in a barber’s grimy, but warm hamam.
All night she clung to Randhir. The two became fused to one another. No more than two words passed between them, but everything that needed to be said was communicated through their lips, breath and hands. All night, Randhir’s hands ran as lightly as air over the Marathi girl’s breasts. Her tiny nipples and the fat bumps that were spread in a black circle round them would awaken with the sensation, producing in her body such a frisson that Randhir himself was left trembling.
He had known this trembling many times before; he was well-acquainted with its pleasure. He had passed nights like this before, pressing his chest against the soft and firm breasts of many girls. He had slept with girls who were totally unversed and wrapped themselves around him, telling him everything about their homes that should never be told to a stranger. He’d had sexual relations with girls who would do all the hard work themselves and never give him an ounce of trouble. But this Marathi girl who had stood drenched under the tamarind tree, and to whom he had gestured to come upstairs, was different.
Randhir inhaled a strange smell coming from her body all night; it was at once foul and sweet-smelling, and he drank it in. From her armpits, her breasts, her hair, her back—from everywhere; it became part of every breath Randhir took. All night he thought, this Marathi girl despite being so close to me would not be nearly so close if it were not for this smell coming from her naked body. It had trickled into each groove of his mind, inhabiting his old and new thoughts.
The smell soldered Randhir and this girl together for that night. They both entered each other. They descended to great depths, became one, pure pinnacle of human bliss, a bliss that despite being temporary is permanent, despite being airborne is immobile and immovable. The two had become like a bird that after soaring into the blues of the sky comes to seem motionless.
Randhir understood the smell that came from every pore of this Marathi girl, but he was unable to compare it to anything, like with the smell that comes from water sprinkled on mud. But no, that smell was different; in this, there was nothing of the falsity of lavender and attar; it was utterly real, like the unifying relations between men and women, real and immemorial.
Randhir detested the smell of sweat. After bathing, he usually put scented powder in his armpits and other areas; or some other concoction that suppressed the smell of sweat. What surprised him now was that he felt no revulsion at kissing this Marathi girl’s hairy armpits; instead he felt a strange kind of pleasure. Her soft armpit hair had become moist with sweat. The smell that came from them, though comprehensible on so many levels, was in the end incomprehensible. Randhir felt he knew it, recognised it, even understood its meaning, but couldn’t make anyone else understand.
Those same days of rain. He looked out of the same window to see the clattering peepal’s leaves washed in the rain. Their sound, and the rustle of the wind, seemed to coalesce. It was dark, but light lay buried in the darkness as though a bit of starlight had made its way down with the raindrops. Those days of rain, when in Randhir’s room, there had been only a single teak bed. Now there was another one next to it; and in the corner, a new dressing table. Those same days of rain, that same season, a little starlight making its way down with the raindrops. But the air now was infused with scent of henna.
The other bed was empty. In the bed on which Randhir lay sideways, watching the play of raindrops on the peepal leaves outside, a fair-skinned woman, after trying vainly to conceal her naked upper body with her arms, had fallen asleep. Her red silk salwar lay on the other bed; one tassel from its deep red drawstring hung down. Her other clothes also lay on the bed; her bra, her underpants, her kameez with its gold flowers, her dupatta—all red, astonishingly red. They were imbued with the powerful scent of henna. Little flecks of glitter collected like dust in the girl’s hair. On her face, glitter, rouge and lipstick had come together to produce a strange colour, faded and lifeless. Her bra strap had left stains on her white chest.
Her breasts were milky white, but with a hint of blue. Her armpits were shaved, making them seem dusted with kohl. Randhir had looked at this girl many times and thought, ‘Isn’t it as if I’ve just torn open a wooden carton and taken her out, like a stack of books or china dishes. She even has marks and scratches like those on books and china.’
Randhir had opened her bra’s tight, close-fitting straps; its impression could be seen in the soft flesh on her back and chest. There was also a stain on her waist from her tightly tied drawstring. Her heavy necklace, with its sharp points, had left indentations on her chest, as if nails had dug forcefully at it. Those same days of rain. The raindrops falling on the peepal’s smooth, soft leaves, making the same sound Randhir had heard throughout that night. The weather was perfect; a cool breeze blew; but the powerful scent of henna flowers was mixed into it.
Randhir’s hands ran like air over this pale, fair-skinned girl’s milky white breasts. His fingers set loose a shiver through her soft body. When he pressed his chest against hers, he could hear the sound of every chord that had been struck in this girl. But where was that cry, the cry that he had inhaled in the smell of that Marathi girl, the cry that was infinitely more comprehensible than that of a child thirsty for milk, the cry that after exceeding the limits of the voice (from which it broke), became inaudible?
Randhir was looking out of the window grilles. The peepal’s leaves clattered very near him, but he was trying to look much further than that, to where a strange dim light was visible through murky clouds, a light like the one he had seen in the Marathi girl’s breasts, a light, which like the contents of a secret was both hidden and evident.
In Randhir’s arms, lay a fair-skinned girl whose body was soft like dough mixed with milk and butter; from her sleeping body came the now tired scent of henna; to Randhir, it was as unpleasant as a man’s last breath, and sour, like a belch. Discoloured. Sad. Joyless.
Randhir looked at the girl who lay in his arms as one looks at curdled milk, with its lifeless white lumps afloat in pallid water. In the same way, this girl’s womanliness left him cold. His mind and body were still consumed by the smell that came naturally from the Marathi girl; the smell that was many times more subtle and pleasurable than that of henna; that he had not been afraid to inhale, that had entered him of its own accord and realised its true purpose.
Randhir made one last effort to touch this girl’s milky white body. But he felt no trembling. His brand new wife who was the daughter of a first class magistrate, who had attained a BA, who was the heartthrob of so many boys in her college did not quicken his pulse. In the deathly scent of henna, he searched for that smell that in those same days of rain, when in an open window the peepal’s leaves were washed, he had inhaled from the dirty body of a Marathi girl.
* A style of draping a sari—common among the Brahmin women especially in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu—so that the sari’s center is placed neatly at the back of the waist and the ends are tied securely in the front, with two ends wrapped around the legs.
A note on the author
Saadat Hasan Manto has been called the greatest short story writer of the Indian subcontinent. He was born in 1912 in Punjab and went on to become a radio and film scriptwriter, journalist and short story writer. His stories were highly controversial and he was tried for obscenity six times during his career. After Partition, Manto moved to Lahore with his wife and three daughters. He died there in 1955.
A note on the translator
Aatish Taseer was born in 1980 and educated at Amherst College. He has worked as a reporter for Time magazine and is the author of Stranger to History, which will be published next year. He divides his time between London and Delhi.
Saadat Hasan Manto, Manto
Manto Page 14