Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

ASGHARI ( startled ): Yes.

AMJAD: Could there be a way to expel this vision from my thoughts?

ASGHARI: Every problem carries its solution within it.

AMJAD: Then we must look for the solution. But. . but why do I feel so diffident?

ASGHARI: I don’t know. This is your problem. Certainly there would be no shame if you were to look for the solution yourself.

AMJAD: I know. I know. . I’m well aware of all the base desires that inflame this passion. But this matter will be decided tonight.

ASGHARI: What matter?

AMJAD: Come in front of me. ( She does so. ) Go and lie on the bed!

ASGHARI ( hesitates ): Amjad Mian? I don’t have the youthful beauty that puts the world’s choicest silks to shame. My poor youth — all it needs is a piece of coarse burlap.

AMJAD: Go lie on the bed, Asghari!

ASGHARI ( tears streaming down her eyes ): No, Amjad Mian, it’ll be unkind to the bed. . it’s become used to Dulhan Begum’s soft, delicate body.

AMJAD: That’s an order!

ASGHARI ( lowering her head in submission ): You’re the master. ( Lies down on the bed, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. )

AMJAD: Do you know what night this is? . . This is the night when a crushed, warped, and worthless youth is about to become whole. This is the night of resurrection, of annihilation. Under its dark cloak Existence will melt in the fires of Non-Existence to assume a new, immortal form. . No other night will follow this night. Its blind eyes will come wearing such collyrium that its blindness will be transformed into interminable, clear vision. This is the night when the last drops of Life itself will trickle out, terrified, from the mangled udders of Death. The night when grand palaces, their turrets reaching to the heavens, will rise from the womb of destruction and the waters of Zamzam and crawl back into the farthest reaches of the earth, replaced by clouds of dust with which the pure souls will cleanse themselves; and the Author of Fate will overturn His inkpot and wistfully weep in some lonely corner of the sky. Tonight Amjad divorces, in an irrevocable divorce, all the Beauty of this world and marries in its place Ugliness ( suddenly screams ), Asghari. . Asghari. .!

( In the meantime ASGHARI has risen from the bed, gone over to the window and opened it. She is poised on the windowsill, looking down intently into the depths below. )

AMJAD ( screaming ): What are you doing, Asghari?

ASGHARI ( turns around on the windowsill and looks at AMJAD): Proposal and consent are necessary. . my master. ( Flings herself out. )

AMJAD ( covering his eyes with both hands ): Asghari! ( Removes his hands and stares for a few moments at the open window that yawns like a dark wound on the green wall. ) Proposal and consent ( murmurs ) proposal and consent — yes, indeed! ( Pushes his wheelchair forward with both of his hands and manages to reach the window with great effort. ) I knew. . I knew this was the way to solve my problem. . but perhaps I needed someone to hold my hand. ( Grasps the windowsill and with great difficulty heaves his crippled body on to it and lets it hang over the other side. ) My hills! My dear hills! My dear Asghari! ( His body slips over and then instantly his entire being is lost in the darkness. )

( Curtain )

Co-translated with Wayne R. Husted and Azam Dadi

[Translator’s Note: The magistrate who appears in the second part of this piece was Mehdi Ali Siddiqi. In a social meeting, which took place in a coffee house the day after the trial, Manto asked him why he had fined him if he admired him and considered him a great writer, to which Mr Siddiqi replied, ‘I’ll give you my answer after a year.’ He did give his answer in a piece, ‘Mantō aur Maiñ’ (Manto and I), which appeared a few months after the writer’s death. At the time, Mr Siddiqi did not know that Manto had already written the second part of ‘The Fifth Trial’ as it did not appear in print until two years after the publication of his own piece. The two accounts of their meeting are somewhat, perhaps even significantly, different and vividly portray some aspects of Manto’s personality.] One

I have been dragged into court four times concerning my short stories and now, recently, a fifth time. I want to talk about what transpired during this last trial.

My first four stories to be tried were ‘Kālī Shalwār’ [The Black Shalwar], ‘Dhuvāñ’ [Smoke], ‘Bū’ [Smell], and ‘Thandā Gosht’ [Cold Meat]. The fifth one was ‘Ūpar, Nīche, aur Darmiyān’ [Upper, Lower, and Middle].

I was acquitted on the first three stories. I had to travel two or three times to Lahore from Delhi to be present at the hearing for ‘Kālī Shalwār’. However, ‘Dhuvāñ’ and ‘Bū’ turned out to be a real pain because I had to come all the way from Bombay.

But it was the court case on ‘Thandā Gosht’ that proved to be the most vexing. It really left me completely exhausted.

Although the proceedings of the case took place right here in Pakistan, they involved such convolutions that a person with my sensitive disposition could hardly withstand it. Here, you’re subjected to every kind of indignity and humiliation. May you never have to go to the weird place called ‘court’, the likes of which I’ve never seen anywhere.

I hate the police, for they’ve always accorded me the treatment reserved only for the meanest criminals.

Recently, when the Karachi periodical Payām-e Mashriq reprinted without permission my short story ‘Ūpar, Nīche, aur Darmiyān’ from the Lahore-based newspaper Ehsān , the Karachi administration lost no time in issuing a warrant for my arrest.

Two sub-inspectors of police, along with four constables, came to my house and surrounded it. I was not at home. My wife told them so, adding that, if they wanted, she could send for me. But they insisted that I was hiding inside and she was lying.

Actually, at the time I was at Chaudhry Nazeer Ahmad’s publishing establishment Nayā Idāra, which also doubled as the office of the literary journal Saverā , writing a short story. I had barely written a dozen lines or so when Chaudhry Nazeer Ahmad’s brother Chaudhry Rashid Ahmad, the owner of the Maktaba-e Jadīd publishing house, walked in. After a few minutes silence he asked, ‘What are you writing?’

‘A short story. . a rather long one.’

‘I’ve come to give you some very bad news,’ he said in a terribly anxious tone.

You can well imagine how I reacted to that. What could the bad news be? I wondered for a few moments. Many possibilities came to mind. I wavered among them but couldn’t figure it out. Finally I asked Chaudhry Rashid, ‘Brother, what’s the matter?’

‘The police have surrounded your house. They’re adamant that you’re hiding inside and they’re trying to break in.’

Hearing this, Ahmad Rahi and Hameed Akhtar, who were sitting beside me, became very upset. They decided to accompany me. We hopped into a tonga and headed for my home. When we got there, we saw the police standing outside the door of my flat. My sister’s son (Hamid Jalal) and my brother-in-law (Zaheeruddin) were standing by their cars, busily talking to the policemen. ‘You’re welcome to search the house if you want, but believe us, Manto is not inside.’

Just then Ahmad Rahi, Hameed Akhtar and I arrived. We had already instructed Chaudhry Rashid Sahib to phone the newspapers so that they would publish an account of whatever happened to me in the next day’s issue.

We also saw Abdullah Malik engrossed in talking to the police officers outside the door. Abdullah Malik is a communist and whatever he writes is unabashedly and quite overtly ‘red’, but, strangely, I’ve never spotted a trace of true ‘redness’ in him.