Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

‘He didn’t like you,’ she heard her pimp say. ‘Okay, I should move along. Two hours wasted.’

When she heard this, Saugandhi’s legs, arms, hands, indeed her entire body was overcome by the violent urge to spring into action. Where was that car? That damned seth? He didn’t like her — is that what the ‘Oh no!’ meant? A curse word rose from the pit of her stomach but stopped at the tip of her tongue. Whom would she aim it at? The car had already taken off, its tail lights fading before her in the gathering darkness of the bazaar. It felt as though the ‘Oh no!’ was driving deeper into her breast like the red-hot bit of an auger. She felt like screaming her lungs out: ‘O Seth, stop, wait just a minute.’ But the seth, God curse him, was long gone.

She stood in the desolate bazaar alone. Her floral sari, worn only on special occasions, was fluttering in the gentle breeze of the late night hour. Suddenly, she found she detested it and the velvety rustle it made with every fibre of her being. The desire to shred it to bits seized her; its every flutter seemed to mimic that unforgiving ‘Oh no!’ She had dabbed her cheeks with powder and painted her lips red. All this to look desirable — the very thought evoked feelings of shame and she began to perspire from a surge of regret. She made up a slew of excuses to shake off that crushing feeling of humiliation: ‘I didn’t do it to show myself off to that potbelly. I always use make-up. Why, everyone does. But. . but at two in the morning? And Ramlal the pimp, this bazaar, that car. . and the glare of the torch. .’ The thought of it made her head swirl and an infinity of bright spots began to stream past her as far as her eyes could see. The snarl of the car’s engine was audible in every gust of wind.

Because of the perspiration, the make-up over the balm on her forehead started to run and her forehead felt like someone else’s, not her own. When a puff of air brushed over it, she felt as though someone had pasted a patch of cerotin there. The racking headache was still there, though a plethora of noisy thoughts had subdued it temporarily. Many times she tried to help the headache rise above the surface of her thoughts but failed. She desperately wished for her body — her head, her legs, her stomach, her arms, everywhere — to ache all over, so severely that she would be aware only of the pain and oblivious of everything else. Suddenly something happened to her heart in the midst of her thoughts. Was it pain? Her heart contracted for a moment and then relaxed. What was that? Curses! It was that same ‘Oh no!’ causing her heart to contract and expand by turns.

She had just started to walk back home when her feet froze. ‘Does Ramlal think the man didn’t like my looks?’ she wondered. ‘Well no. He didn’t say anything about my looks. All he said was, “He didn’t like you.” And even if he didn’t like my looks, so what? I also don’t like the looks of many men. The guy, the one who came on the night of the new moon, what a grotesque face he had! Didn’t I turn my nose up at him in disgust? Didn’t I find him revolting when he got into bed with me? Didn’t I feel like throwing up? That may well be, Saugandhi, but at least you didn’t turn him away, or spurn him. But the seth, who came riding in his fancy car, he flat out spat in your face: “Oh no!” What else could that “Oh no!” have meant? Except, huh, A muskrat rubbing jasmine oil in its smelly head! — as the saying goes — or My, my, such high hopes with a face like this! “Oh, Ramlal, is this the girl you were praising to high heaven? — This girl. . for a full ten rupees! Why not a donkey. .”’

She was deeply immersed in her thoughts while ferocious flames were leaping from her big toe to the top of her head. By turns she felt angry with herself and then Ramlal, who had caused her so much misery at two in the morning. The next moment she felt that neither of them deserved any blame; instead, her thoughts focused on the seth. And with that, her eyes, ears, arms and legs, in fact every inch of her body instinctively turned around trying to find him somewhere. The desire to see the earlier scene play out again, just once, gripped her: she moves slowly towards the car, a hand pulls out the torch and points the beam at her, she hears that ‘Oh no!’ again and, straight away, she pounces on him like a wild cat and starts scratching his face mercilessly with her fingernails, grown long according to the current fashion. She should yank him out of the car by his hair, pummel him with her fists and. . break into sobs, exhausted.

The thought of crying surfaced only because a few big fat teardrops had collected in her eyes from an excess of fury and despondency. All of a sudden she confronted her eyes: Why are you weeping? Why are you shedding these tears? The answer floated for a few moments in the droplets hesitating on the edge of her lashes. For the longest time Saugandhi kept looking through the liquid screen of her tears off into the space where the seth’s car had vanished.

Thump-thump-thump. . What was this sound? Where was it coming from? With a start, she scanned the whole area. She couldn’t see anyone around her anywhere. Ah, it was the sound of her own heart, which she had taken for the sputter of a car’s engine. What was the matter with her heart — running so smoothly and then suddenly this thump-thump-thump? Like a needle stuck on a worn-out record that keeps regurgitating the single word ‘stars. . stars. .’ at the end of the line ‘I spent the night counting stars’.

The sky was filled with stars. She looked at them and exclaimed, ‘How pretty they look!’ She wanted to think about something else, but as soon as she uttered the word ‘pretty’ a new thought leapt into her mind: ‘Yes, sure, the stars are pretty. But you’re not. You’re ugly. Hideously ugly! Have you forgotten that you were spurned just now?’

Saugandhi, you’re not ugly! And with this thought every one of the countless images of herself that she had contemplated in front of the mirror over the last five years flitted before her eyes. Of course, she didn’t look quite as fresh and vibrant as she had five years ago when she lived with her parents, unencumbered by any cares whatsoever. But she hadn’t exactly become ugly either. She looked like any other woman who always attracted the amorous glances of the men who passed her by. She had all the essential qualities that she thought anyone wanting to spend a few nights with a woman would want to see in her. She was young. She had a shapely figure. When her eyes sometimes fell on her thighs while bathing, she admired their round firmness. She was affable and genial. Hardly any man had come away from her place feeling dissatisfied in these five years. She was friendly and full of compassion. Last Christmas, when she was living in Golpetha, a young man had spent the night with her. In the morning he went into the other room to put on his jacket and found his wallet missing. The poor boy was terribly upset. (Saugandhi’s maid had swiped it.) He had come from Hyderabad to vacation in Bombay. Now he had no money to pay for the return trip. Saugandhi had taken pity on the lad and returned his ten rupees to him.

‘What’s wrong with me?’ she asked every single object that was in front of her: the dimmed gas lamps, the iron lamp posts, the square cobblestones of the sidewalk, and the dislodged gravel from the road. She looked at each of them in turn and then raised her eyes to the sky hanging low overhead. But none returned an answer.

The answer was there inside of her. There was nothing wrong with her, and she knew that. She was, in fact, good. Yet she wanted to hear someone praise her. Have someone, anyone, put his hand on her shoulder right now and just say, ‘Who says you’re bad, Saugandhi? If anyone calls you bad, they must be bad themselves.’ All of this wasn’t even necessary. Just ‘Saugandhi, you’re very good!’ would have sufficed.