Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

Ramlal, who worked as a pimp in different quarters of Bombay for some one hundred and twenty girls who could be had for anywhere from ten to a hundred rupees, went on to give Saugandhi a piece of his mind. ‘Stupid woman, don’t fritter away your money. You just watch, one day he’ll snatch the very clothes off your body. I’m telling you, he will —that damned lover of your goddam mother! Listen to me; dig a hole under one of the bedposts and stash all your earnings in it. When he shows up, say: “By your life, Madho, I haven’t seen even a paisa since morning. Come on, send for a cup of tea and some Aflatoon biscuits from the café downstairs. I’m so ravenously hungry and starved that my stomach is rumbling.” Understand! These are critical times, my dear. The damned Congress has slapped this accursed ban on alcohol and ruined our business. You, at least, get something to drink, one way or another. Do you know how I feel when I see an empty bottle in your room and the smell of booze wafts up my nostrils — by God, I feel like migrating inside your skin.’

Saugandhi was particularly fond of her breasts. One time Jamuna had advised her: ‘Keep those watermelons of yours in good shape. Use a bra and they’ll stay firm.’

Saugandhi laughed and said, ‘Jamuna, you think everyone is like you. People come and ride roughshod all over your body for a measly ten rupees a pass and you think this is what happens to everyone else. Let anyone so much as touch me in places I don’t want them to and. . Which reminds me to tell you about yesterday. Ramlal brought this guy, a Punjabi, at two in the morning. We settled on thirty rupees for the night. Anyway, when we slipped into bed I turned off the light. Would you believe it, the guy panicked! Did you hear me? All his swagger, that macho bravado — it vanished in the dark, just like that! He took such a fright. I said, “Get on with it, man, why are you wasting time. It’s nearly three and it will be daybreak soon.” “ Roshni ,” he begged, “roshni, please.” “Roshni,” I said, “what’s that?” “The light! The light! Please turn on the light.” His choking voice made me laugh. “No, I’m not going to,” I said, and pinched his fleshy thigh. He jumped up and immediately switched on the light. I quickly pulled the sheet over my body and said, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, lout?” When he climbed back into bed I got up and turned the light off once more with a quick movement of my hand. He began to feel nervous all over again. I swear by your life, Jamuna, the night was totally out of this world! So enjoyable — now dark, now light, off again, on again. As soon as the rumble of the first tram was heard, he hurriedly slipped on his pants and took off. The son-of-a-bitch must have made the thirty rupees playing the stock market. He just threw them away without getting anything for them. . You really are terribly naive, Jamuna. But me, I know a lot of tricks for dealing with them.’

The fact is, Saugandhi did know many tricks and even shared them freely with her friends in the profession. ‘If the fellow turns out to be a gentleman, not given to talking much, play tricks with him and keep talking endlessly. Tease him, tickle him, and play with him. If he has a beard, run your fingers through it, pulling out a hair or two now and then. If he has a big fat belly, pat it. Never ever give him a moment to do what he wants. But these quiet types — they’re the worst. They’ll crush your bones if they have their way.’

Saugandhi wasn’t quite as clever as she let on. She had very few clients. Being overly sentimental, she allowed all her wiles to slip from her mind and straight down into her belly, which having once given birth to a child was now lined with stretch marks. When she first saw those marks, she thought her mangy dog had clawed her there. Every time a bitch passed by him indifferently, he traced similar lines in the dust, as if to hide his smallness, his sense of shame at being ignored so heartlessly.

For the most part Saugandhi lived inside her own mind. Still, when someone spoke to her with kindness, or said just a gentle word, she melted on the spot and let it work its magic throughout her body. Although her mind considered sexual intimacy patently absurd, every other part of her body longed for it. Every limb yearned to be worked over, to exhaustion, until fatigue settled in and eased her into a state of delightful sleep — the wondrous sleep that comes after the body has been crushed, the torpor that follows when the body has been roughed up badly, when every limb aches and the joints loosen and relax, and a sleepy languor takes over. At times you feel you’re very much there and then you’re not, and sometimes in this middling state of being and non-being you feel as if you’re suspended very high in the air, with nothing around you — above, below, to the right or left — but air. Even the sensation of choking in this air has a pleasure all its own.

Even as a little girl, when Saugandhi hid in her mother’s big trunk during a game of hide-and-seek, she had felt the same suffocating pleasure when her heartbeat quickened from the lack of oxygen in the closed space and the fear of being caught.

She desperately wanted to spend her whole life hiding inside a trunk just like that one, with her seekers going round and round looking for her; she wanted them to find her sometimes, so that she might try to find them in turn. Wasn’t this life she’d been living the past five years like a game of hide-and-seek, after all? Sometimes she sought someone out, sometimes someone searched for her. This is how her life bumped along. She was happy, because she had to be. Every night there was a man by her side in her large teakwood bed and Saugandhi, who knew umpteen tricks to thwart their attempts to get fresh with her, who had firmly resolved not to succumb to their unreasonable demands, and would treat them with a forbidding coldness, was always swept away by her emotions and remained only a woman craving love.

Every evening her companion, someone new or a regular, would profess, ‘Saugandhi, I love you,’ and she, knowing only too well that he was lying, would melt away, believing he truly did love her. Love — could any word be sweeter! The desire to melt it and rub it all over her body until it penetrated every pore overwhelmed her. Or, if not that, then perhaps if she could somehow crawl completely inside it and lower the lid, as though it were some sort of box. Sometimes, when the desire to love and be loved became dire, she felt like gathering the man lying beside her into her lap and rock him to sleep, singing lullabies.

Her ability to love was so profound that she could love and remain true to any man who visited her. Wasn’t she, after all, harbouring her love to this day for the four men whose pictures hung on the wall facing her! The feeling of being a good woman — indeed a very good woman — never left her. Why, oh why, were men so bereft of goodness? Once, contemplating herself in the mirror, the words ‘Saugandhi, the world hasn’t treated you well’ involuntarily escaped from her lips.

The past five years, every night and day of them, were inextricably woven into every fibre of her being. And even though she hadn’t been quite as happy during this time as she had wished to be, she nonetheless longed for her days to continue along the same course. Why lust after money — after all she wasn’t planning to become rich. Her going rate was ten rupees, out of which Ramlal took two and a half as his commission. The balance was quite adequate for her needs. In fact, when Madho came down from Puna—‘to storm her’, as Ramlal put it — she had saved enough to even offer him ten or fifteen rupees by way of tribute. Tribute for what? Let’s just say she had special feelings for him. Ramlal was absolutely right. The man had something about him that Saugandhi fell for. No point hiding it. Might as well let it out. During their first encounter Madho had told her flat out: ‘Have some shame! You’re wrangling over your price? Don’t you know what you’re dickering over and what it is I’ve come for? For heaven’s sake! A mere ten rupees, out of which Ramlal takes a quarter. That leaves seven and a half, doesn’t it? And for this measly sum you promise to give me what you have no power to give, and I come to take what I really can’t take. I need a woman. But do you need a man, right now, this minute? For me, any woman would do. How about you, do you fancy me? Nothing tangible binds us together. . nothing except these ten rupees, out of which a quarter will go as commission and the rest you’ll spend as you will. You hear their jingle, so do I. Your mind is on one thing, mine on another. Why not talk about something totally different: like you need me and I need you. Look, I’m a havildar in Puna. I’ll visit you once a month, for, say, three or four days. Give up this business. I’ll pay your expenses. Well now, how much rent must you dish out for this kholi?’