Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

As you’ve probably read in the first part of this article, it is an account of my fifth trial.

So my friend Naseer Anwar and I arrived at the railway station. Tufail Sahib had already bought our tickets. Our problem now was how to find room in a carriage. Then again, we had carried a supply of beer bottles, and there was no room to be found for them either. Suddenly I remembered that one of my classmates, Yaqub Taufeeq, was assistant stationmaster at the Lahore station. By chance, he was on duty at the time. I talked to him and he quickly arranged seats for us. And so we set out for Karachi.

A maulvi sahib was also travelling in the same carriage. He was rolling his prayer beads on his fingers. Darn it, what a fiasco, I said to myself. Then I thought of a way. ‘Come on, open a bottle,’ I said to Naseer Anwar. He quickly pulled out a beer from under our seats, uncapped it, and handed it to me. The maulvi sahib exited the carriage at the next station, his fingers still rolling the beads.

I remember another amusing anecdote. A man entered our carriage at Lahore with his wife in tow. We could have put up with the man somehow, but his wife, that was impossible — well, actually, it was she who could not have put up with us. So when the couple got in, I told the man plainly, ‘Look, sir, we’re both hard drinkers and we’re carrying some fifteen bottles of beer. When we’re drunk, we have no control over what comes out of our mouths. You’re a respectable gentleman and travelling, perhaps, with your wife. It would be better if you found room in some other carriage.’

As I’m writing this piece, Tufail Sahib tells me that this man who was with his burqa-clad wife went straight to the stationmaster and complained that two rogues were ensconced in such and such carriage where they had been allotted seats. The stationmaster showed great surprise and said, ‘Oh, but it’s Saadat Hasan Manto, a thorough gentleman, who’s travelling in that carriage.’ The man wouldn’t buy it and insisted, ‘No, he himself told me that he’s one hell of a drunkard.’

Anyway, they were finally off our backs. They were assigned seats in a different carriage and we felt relieved.

The trip to Karachi was absolutely ghastly. Even the second-class carriage was miserably full of dust. But, thanks to the beer, we somehow overcame the discomfort of the journey. At Karachi I wanted to stay in a hotel but couldn’t afford it. Finally I decided to stay at Khwaja Naseeruddin’s, but only because my wife had insisted, ‘Look, you must stay with my brother. .’ One can ignore the whole world, but not the brother of one’s wife — no, sir! So I put the whole world aside and went to stay with my brother-in-law, who is a thorough gentleman. He has a good job, makes a decent salary, and lives in a spacious flat. He took excellent care of us. By chance, the flat next to his was unoccupied, and he got it for us. I felt no desire to prolong my stay in Karachi. The city failed to excite me, a bummer, especially after my fifteen years in Bombay.

The next day we appeared before the Additional Magistrate Sahib. His office was in a small room in a very unexceptional building. As I had been through several lawsuits at Lahore, I was quite familiar with the manners of its court; familiar, that is, with a place that was singularly devoid of manners. I stood before the Magistrate Sahib, transmogrified into the perfect image of submission. He looked at me and asked, ‘What do you want?’ The polite tone of his voice took me by surprise. I submitted, ‘Sir, my name is Saadat Hasan Manto. You’ve summoned me under Section 292 of the Obscenity Law concerning my piece “Ūpar, Nīche, aur Darmiyān”.’ He looked at me closely and then said, ‘Please sit down.’

I thought he was asking someone else to sit down as such courtesy was alien to the Lahore courts with which I was familiar. So I remained standing.

Finding me still standing, he said again, ‘Please sit down, Manto Sahib.’

I took a seat on the bench close to his desk. After some time he turned to me. ‘Why did you take so long to come?’

‘Sir, I was ill.’

‘You should have sent a medical certificate.’

‘I was too ill to even think about sending it,’ I lied.

He heard my lie, remained silent, and then said, ‘What do you want?’

What do I want? I began to wonder. I only wanted to be out of this mess, and I wanted to be out of it pretty damn quick. The thought of Tufail Sahib repeatedly drifted into my mind. He had bailed me out and, being well acquainted with my devil-may-care nature, had later even come to my home early in the morning with two second-class tickets to ensure I made it to Karachi. I thought for a while and said to the Magistrate Sahib, ‘Please wrap up my case; I want to return home as soon as possible.’

‘Not so fast. I’m afraid it will take some time. I still haven’t read your story. God willing, I’ll read it today and give my decision tomorrow.’

Both Naseer Anwar and I bid him goodbye, piled into an autorickshaw and went looking for a bar to drink a few beers in. I found the autorickshaw quite fascinating. It speeds along making phut-phut sounds, traversing long distances in a matter of minutes, and doesn’t cost much to ride.

The next day when we showed up at the court the Magistrate Sahib returned my salaam and asked me to sit down. I did. He pulled out a small piece of paper and said, ‘I’ve written out my judgement.’ He then looked at the reader and asked, ‘What’s the date today?’ The man promptly replied, ‘The twenty-fifth.’

I’m a bit hard of hearing. It’s been some time that my ears don’t hear well. I thought he had fined me twenty-five rupees. ‘Sir, a fine of twenty-five rupees?’ I asked.

A twenty-five-rupee fine foreclosed any possibility of appeal, and my sentence would have remained. The Magistrate had probably decided on a fine of five hundred rupees, but when he heard me say twenty-five, he smiled, picked up his pen, struck out the original amount and changed it to twenty-five.

Naseer Anwar quickly took twenty-five rupees from his pocket and paid the fine, saying to me, ‘You got out of it with a negligible fine. You didn’t want to get into the headache of appeals and constant knocking about the courts, did you? Don’t you remember what all happened during the trial for “Thandā Gosht”?’

I remembered it and shuddered.

I thanked God for getting me out of this mess so quickly.

I was about to say goodbye to the Magistrate and leave when he asked me, ‘When are you going back to Lahore?’

‘Today, if I can.’

‘Please don’t go today. I want to chat with you.’

I was hugely surprised. Why did he want to meet me? I wondered. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll put it off until tomorrow.’

‘Where can I see you tomorrow at four in the afternoon?’

I rattled off to him all the bars I had been to for beer. He was a pious man. So we finally settled on a coffee house.

Although the time that had been decided for the meeting was four o’clock, we arrived fifteen minutes late. He was already there. After we talked formally for a while, he said, ‘Manto Sahib, I consider you a great short story writer of our time. The reason I wanted to meet with you was that I didn’t wish you to go back thinking that I am not an admirer.’

I was flabbergasted. ‘If you’re an admirer, sir, then why did you fine me?’

He smiled. ‘Why? I’ll give you my answer after a year.’

Several months have gone by. Only a few remain. Let’s see what kind of rabbit the Magistrate Sahib, who looked like someone who keeps his word, pulls out of his sleeve.

It was the beginning of 1953.