Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

That’s precisely what I’ve done in my ‘Kālī Shalwār’: shown the face of just such a corpse. Have a look.

A warehouse stretched from one corner to the other on that side of the street. To the right, huge bales and piles of different goods lay under a metal roof. To the left was an open space with innumerable intersecting railway tracks. Whenever the iron tracks flashed in the sun, Sultana’s eyes fell on her hands where the protruding blue veins looked very much like those tracks. Engines and carriages were moving all the time in the open space, this way and that, creating a veritable din with their chug-chug and clatter. On the days when Sultana woke up early in the morning and went out to the balcony, a strange sight greeted her: engines in the misty dawn spewing out thick smoke that climbed slowly towards the murky sky like plump, beefy men. Clouds of steam rose noisily from the tracks and quickly dissolved in the air. Now and then the sight of a shunted carriage left to run on its own along a track reminded her of herself: She too had been pushed out to run on her own along the track of her life. Others simply changed the switches and she kept moving forward — to God knew where; one day, when the momentum had slowly spent itself, she would come to a halt, at some place unknown to her.

Could there be more revealing hints than these for an intelligent reader? Here I’ve made a successful attempt to present the true conditions of Sultāna’s life. When the Delhi municipal authorities were setting up a special, separate area for prostitutes they could not have imagined how tellingly the warehouse would come to represent Sultāna’s life. The juxtaposition of those special housing units and the warehouse would provoke the sagacious to write several stories like ‘Kālī Shalwār’.

I have pulled away the shroud from over the corpse’s face in yet another story. I begin my famous story ‘Hatak’ [Spurned] thus:

Drained from the day’s gruelling work, Saugandhi had fallen asleep almost as soon as she hit the bed. Minutes ago, the city’s sanitary inspector — she called him ‘Seth’—had gone home to his wife, dead drunk, after a prolonged session of stormy sex which had left even her bones aching. He would have stayed for the night but for the regard he had for his wife who loved him dearly.

The money that she had received from the inspector for her services was still stuffed in her tight-fitting bra, now stained with the man’s drool. Ever so often the silver coins clinked a bit with the rise and fall of her breathing, the sound blending with the irregular rhythm of her heart. It was as if the molten silver of the coins was dripping into her bloodstream. Her chest was on fire, partly from the half-bottle of brandy the inspector had brought along and partly from the raw country liquor they had downed with plain water when the soda ran out.

She was lying face down on the large teakwood bed, her bare arms splayed out like the bow-shaped rib of a kite that has come loose from its dew-drenched paper. The grainy flesh visible in her right armpit had acquired a bluish tint from frequent shaving and looked like a graft from the skin of a freshly plucked chicken.

This then is the portrait of Saugandhi, a sister of Sultāna. I end the story thus:

When the dog returned, wagging his stumpy tail, and sat at her feet flapping his ears, Saugandhi was startled. She felt a terrifying stillness around her, a stillness she had never experienced before. A strange emptiness engulfed everything, and she couldn’t help thinking of a train standing all alone in its metal shed after disgorging every last one of its passengers. This feeling of emptiness which had suddenly arisen weighed heavily on her. She made repeated attempts to fill the void but failed. She was trying to stuff her brain with countless thoughts all at once, but it was like a sieve. As fast as she filled it, everything filtered out.

She sat in the chair for the longest time. When she couldn’t find anything to distract her mind with even after a long and desperate search, she picked up her mangy dog, put him down beside her in the spacious teakwood bed, and went to sleep.

If you read ‘Kālī Shalwār’ closely, you will conclude the following:

1. Sultāna is an ordinary prostitute. She ran her business at first in Ambala and later moved to Delhi at her lover Khuda Bakhsh’s suggestion.

2. Khuda Bakhsh was a man who had put his trust in God and believed in the saintly graces— karāmāt —of fakirs.

3. Sultāna was consumed by despair when her business failed to pick up in Delhi. Her despair progressively grew worse when Khuda Bakhsh started chasing after fakirs and holy men.

4. Muharram was just around the corner. Sultāna’s girlfriends had already got their black outfits made; Sultāna couldn’t, because she had no money.

5. Just at that point Shankar drops in from the blue. A footloose and fancy-free man, he too has nothing other than his sharp intelligence, quick wit and eloquence. In exchange for these assets he demands from her the commodity she sells for a given price. Sultāna doesn’t accept this deal.

6. The second time, it is not Shankar who comes up to her; it is she who beckons to him, accepting him merely as a casual event in the stagnant waters of her life. She cheers up on seeing him, but can’t get the thought out of her mind that she doesn’t have a black shalwar to commemorate Muharram. She tells him: ‘Muharram is coming and I don’t have enough money for a black shalwar. You’ve already heard from me all about my woes. I’ve given my shirt and dupatta to be dyed just this morning.’

7. On the first of Muharram Shankar returns to her with a black shalwar. . Khuda Bakhsh’s God and his belief in holy men don’t help much. What does help is Shankar’s sharp intelligence. If this is the impression you get after reading the story, well then, it is not a story that offends one’s sense of morality. If that is the case, it is certainly not a song that people might sing, and sing repeatedly, to titillate themselves. No gramophone company would put it on a record because it is bereft of stirring dadras and thumris.

8. Stories like ‘Kālī Shalwār’ are not written for amusement. Upon reading them you don’t start drooling with a surfeit of sensual passion. I haven’t committed an immoral act by writing it. In fact, I’m proud that I wrote it, and thank God that I didn’t write a masnavī with such lines as these in it:

Out of breath while scuffling

Covering while taking liberties

Your forcing your lips against mine

Your pushing your tongue against mine

Your taking me in your love’s embrace

Your clinging to me in your passion

Your calling out my name in moans

Your gently swatting me with sagging hands

Your faltering whispers while supine

Your watching me with glazed eyes

Your asking me to let you be in God’s name

That you are tired and sleepy; to not shake you

Your helpless body becoming languid all at once

Then rising suddenly and your calling out, ‘Enough!’

All desire is now spent.

Like the day night’s dark has spent.

Will your lust ever reach its climax?

Or will this go on the whole night?

There is nothing left in me of desire.

And it is now morn, no longer is it night.

Enough or I might now hit you,

Or call out to someone to help

When every limb has been knocked out of shape,

Pray, why wouldn’t one scream.

If you remained unbent still

None would hold up with you in this game.

(Extract from the Masnavī of Mīr Dard) *

And thanks also that I haven’t written such blazing poetry as this to slake my thirst and inflame my starving sensual desires: