Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

She turned around. ‘Oh, you.’ She looked at my photo and said quite casually, ‘Saadat Sahib, it was such a long journey. At Bombay, after I got off of the Frontier Mail, the atrocious wait for this train drained everything out of me. I really am totally worn out.’

‘Your luggage?’ I asked.

‘I’ll bring it out,’ she said. Stepping back into the carriage, she brought out two suitcases and a bedroll.

I hailed a coolie.

Outside the station she said, ‘I’ll stay in a hotel.’

I got her a room in the hotel right across the road from the station. She needed to take a bath, change and get some rest, so I gave her my address, asked her to come to see me at ten in the morning, and left.

At half-past ten the following day she arrived at my place in Prabhat Nagar; I was staying in a friend’s small, newly built flat. Janki had got delayed because it took her quite a while to find the place. My friend was out. I’d woken up late as I was working on my film script well into the night. After my bath, I was having tea when, all of a sudden, she walked in.

Despite the fatigue of the trip, she had appeared quite sprightly on the platform and, later, at the hotel. Now, though, as she stepped into the room where I sat in my pyjamas and undershirt, she looked terribly haggard and in bad shape.

She had been bubbling with life on the platform; not so when she came to see me in Flat No. 11, Prabhat Nagar. It seemed as though she’d either just donated a pint of blood or had an abortion.

As I mentioned, I was staying at my friend’s to finish my script. There was no one else in the flat, except for an idiotic servant. The house was quite desolate, and Majeed was the kind of servant whose presence only heightened the sense of desolation.

I poured out some tea in a cup and offered it to Janki. ‘You must have had your breakfast at the hotel,’ I said. ‘All the same, have some tea.’

She bit her lips nervously, picked up the teacup and started sipping from it, all the while shaking her right leg. Her quivering lips gave the impression that she wanted to say something to me but was feeling hesitant for some reason. Maybe some traveller at the hotel had tried to get fresh with her, I thought.

‘You didn’t have any problems at the hotel, did you?’ I asked.

‘Oh no. None.’

Her brief answer left nothing to go on so I kept quiet. But after we had finished tea, I thought I should say something. ‘How is Aziz Sahib?’

She returned the cup to the teapoy without answering and quickly got up. ‘Manto Sahib, do you know a good doctor?’ she said hurriedly.

‘Not in Puna, I don’t.’

‘Oh!’

‘Why, are you sick or something?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

She sat back down in a chair.

‘What’s the problem?’

Her full lips, which contracted automatically, or perhaps wittingly, when she smiled, opened. She tried to say something but couldn’t. She got up again, picked up my cigarette tin, took one out and lit it, and said, ‘Please forgive me, I smoke.’

Only later did I discover that she didn’t just smoke; she smoked with a zest and gusto usually seen only in men. She held the cigarette between her fingers like they did, took deep long drags like they did, and blew the smoke out of some seventy-five cigarettes in a day.

‘Why don’t you say what’s wrong?’

Annoyed, she stomped her foot petulantly, like a young girl.

‘Hai Allah! How can I tell you. .’ She smiled, the arch of her curved lips revealing a line of exceptionally clean and sparkling white teeth. She sat down again and, making every effort not to let her tremulous eyes look straight into mine, said, ‘It’s like this: I’m late by fifteen days and I’m afraid that. .’

At first, I didn’t get her drift. But when she stopped abruptly, I had a vague feeling that I knew what she was alluding to.

‘Well, such a thing often happens.’

She took a deep drag, blew out the smoke forcefully like men, and said, ‘No. This time it feels different. I’m afraid I am pregnant.’

‘Oh!’

She took a final drag of the cigarette and crushed it in the saucer. ‘And if that’s what’s happened, I’ve got a big problem. Something like this happened in Peshawar once. But fortunately Aziz Sahib got me such potent medicine from a hakim friend of his that it aborted in no time at all.’

‘Don’t you like kids?’ I asked.

She smiled. ‘I do. . but the hassle of raising them.’

‘You do know that killing unborn babies is a crime, don’t you?’

She quickly sobered up. . and then said in a tone full of amazement, ‘Aziz Sahib said the same thing. But really, Saadat Sahib, why is it a crime? After all, it’s a personal matter. Besides, those who make laws, they must know how painful an abortion can be. Crime, huh!’

I couldn’t help laughing. ‘You really are a strange woman, Janki.’

She also laughed. ‘Aziz Sahib says so too.’

In the midst of her laughter tears appeared in her eyes. I’ve noticed that when sincere people laugh, their eyes invariably well up. She took out a handkerchief from her bag, wiped her tears, and asked with a child’s innocence, ‘Tell me, Saadat Sahib, do you find what I say interesting?’

‘Very,’ I said.

‘That’s a lie!’

‘And what’s your proof?’

She lit up again. ‘Oh, maybe it is so. All I know is that I’m a little dumb-headed. I eat a lot, chatter a lot, laugh a lot. You can see for yourself how badly my stomach has puffed up from eating too much. Aziz Sahib keeps admonishing me not to overeat, but I never listen. The thing is, Saadat Sahib, if I eat less, I feel as if there’s something I wanted to tell someone but forgot.’

She started to laugh again. I joined her. It was strange, this laugh of hers. It sounded like the tinkling of ankle bells.

Just as she was about to resume talking about abortions, the friend with whom I was staying returned. I introduced Janki and said that she wanted to work in films. My friend took her to his studio. He was confident that the director for whom he worked as a secretary would select her for a particular role in his new film.

I tried to find work for her in all the film studios in Puna and pulled whatever strings I could. She was voice-tested in one place, camera-tested in another, and in a third they assessed her in different outfits, but nothing worked out. She was already quite upset about missing her period, and the week she had to spend in vain in the cheerless, depressing atmosphere of different film studios made things even worse. On top of that, the twenty green quinine pills she was popping every day to abort were making her even more sluggish. How Aziz Sahib was faring in her absence back in Peshawar was yet another cause of her constant worries. She had fired off a wire immediately after arriving in Puna and a letter a day thereafter, urging in each that he not neglect his health and take his medicine regularly.

What illness Aziz Sahib suffered from, I don’t know; nonetheless, I did gather from Janki that he loved her and immediately did whatever she asked him to do. Many times his wife quarrelled with him about being lax in taking his medicine, but when Janki made the same request, he didn’t so much as make a peep.

At first I thought her concern for Aziz Sahib was just for show. Slowly, though, her unpretentious talk convinced me that she really did care for him a lot. Whenever he wrote to her, tears would gather in her eyes while she read his letter.

Our repeated trips to film companies produced no result. And then one day she became overjoyed to learn that her fears were unfounded. Surely she had missed her period, but pregnant she was not.

Twenty days had passed since her arrival in Puna. During this time she had continued sending Aziz letter after letter. He also wrote pretty lengthy love letters to her. In one he suggested that if no job was forthcoming in Puna, I should try in Bombay. It was teeming with studios. It was a reasonable suggestion. However, as I was far too busy writing the script at the moment, it was difficult for me to accompany her there, so I phoned my friend Saeed who was playing the part of the hero in a film. By chance, he wasn’t at the studio, but Narain was. When Narain found out that I was on the phone, he took the call, shouting loudly, ‘Hello, Manto. . Narain speaking. Tell me, what do you want? Saeed isn’t here. He’s sitting at home. . settling accounts with Razia.’