Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

Her forehead started to perspire. I let out a resounding laugh.

‘Why are you laughing?’ she screamed.

‘Oh, at his silliness,’ I said and stopped laughing.

After fulminating against Narain for a while, she started talking about Aziz in a tone full of concern. For days now there hadn’t been a letter from him. All kinds of misgivings were crowding her brain: Has he caught a head cold again? Some bike accident? He rides so recklessly. Maybe he’s on his way to Puna because, when he was sending her off, he’d told her that he would sneak up to see her one of these days.

Reciting her concerns calmed her frayed nerves a little and she launched into praises of Aziz. He takes good care of his kids at home. He puts them through an exercise routine every morning, bathes them, and takes them to school. His wife is so gauche, so lacking in social graces that he has to show proper courtesies to relatives himself. When Janki came down with typhoid once, he looked after her continually for twenty days like a dutiful nurse. And so on and so forth.

The next day, after thanking me in appropriately warm words, she left for Bombay where the gates of a bright new life had been flung open to embrace her.

It took me another two months to finish my film script. I collected my payment and proceeded to Bombay where I was to receive another contract. At about five in the morning, I arrived in Andheri where Saeed and Narain were sharing a bungalow that was not much to speak of. I walked on to the veranda and found the front door locked. ‘Perhaps they’re sleeping,’ I thought. ‘Best not to bother them.’ There was a back door which was often left open for the servants. I entered through it. The kitchen and adjacent dining room were, as usual, terribly untidy and grimy. The room across from them was reserved for guests. I opened the door and went in. There were two beds. Saeed and someone were sleeping together in one of them, covered with a quilt.

I was feeling very sleepy and didn’t bother to change. I stretched out on the other bed and threw the blanket lying at the foot of the mattress over my legs. I was about to fall asleep when a bangle-clad forearm shot up from behind Saeed and reached towards the chair standing nearby, on which hung a white muslin shalwar.

I sat up with a start, only to see Janki in bed with Saeed. I picked up the shalwar and tossed it to her.

I went to Narain’s room and woke him up. He’d been out on a film shoot until two in the morning. I felt sorry for waking the poor man up, but found him quite eager to chat, though not on any particular subject. My sudden appearance had apparently provoked him into talking a bit of nonsense with me so we indulged in such talk till nine o’clock. The subject of Janki cropped up several times during our gossip session.

When I told him about the bra incident, he laughed his head off, and mentioned, ‘The juiciest part is yet to come: When I stuck my mouth to her ear and whispered, “What size is your bra?” she told me straight away, “Twenty-four.” Sometime later, she suddenly realized the strangeness of my question and started cursing me. She’s just like a little girl. Whenever we run into each other, she quickly pulls her dupatta over her breast. But, Manto, let me tell you, she’s really a very faithful woman.’

‘Just how do you know that?’ I asked.

‘How?’ He smiled. ‘A woman who gives the size of her bra to a total stranger could never dupe anyone.’

Strange logic, that! But Narain bent over backwards to convince me that Janki was, in fact, a very sincere woman. ‘Manto,’ he said, ‘you have no idea how devoted she is to Saeed. It’s no picnic looking after someone as indifferent as him. I see how well she’s acquitting herself of this difficult but self-imposed responsibility. She’s not just a woman, she’s also a diligent and honest ayah. She spends a good half an hour every morning waking that donkey up. She makes him brush his teeth, helps him dress, feeds him breakfast, and, at night, when he goes to bed after a shot of rum, she closes the door and settles in beside him. If she runs into someone at the studio, she only talks about Saeed. “Saeed Sahib is such a nice man. Saeed Sahib sings so well. Saeed Sahib has put on weight. Saeed Sahib’s pullover is ready. I’ve sent for a pair of Potohari sandals from Peshawar for Saeed Sahib. Saeed Sahib has a slight headache, I’m going to get some Aspro for him. Saeed Sahib wrote a she‘r for me today.” But whenever she bumps into me, she invariably frowns remembering the incident about the bra.’

I stayed with Saeed and Narain for nearly ten days, but Saeed didn’t once talk to me about Janki, perhaps because their affair had become an old story by that time. But Janki and I talked quite a bit. She was very happy with Saeed, though she complained a lot about his devil-may-care attitude. ‘Saadat Sahib,’ she would say, ‘he doesn’t give a damn about his health. He’s so careless. He’s always immersed in his own thoughts and pays no attention to anything. What! You’re laughing? Would you believe it, I even have to ask him every day whether or not he’s been to the toilet.’

Everything Narain had told me about Janki was absolutely correct. I always found her fretting over Saeed. During my ten-day stay at Andheri, I found Janki’s selfless dedication to Saeed very impressive, but I also kept thinking about Aziz. ‘Janki had worried about him no less.’ I wondered, ‘Has she entirely forgotten him now that she’s met Saeed?’

Had I stayed longer, I would certainly have asked Janki about it. However, I got into an argument over something with the owner of the film company that wanted to negotiate a contract with me, and to ease my anxiety I immediately took off for Puna. Barely two days passed before I received Aziz’s telegram — he was in Bombay, on his way to Puna. Six hours later he was with me.

And early the next morning Janki was knocking at the door.

Aziz and Janki met, but they didn’t show the ardour or the impatience of lovers meeting after a long separation — perhaps because my relations with Aziz had been quite formal and reserved right from the start of our friendship and they didn’t want to appear impetuous in my presence.

Aziz thought that he might stay in a hotel. However, the friend with whom I was staying was in Kolhapur on an outdoor shooting assignment so I let Aziz and Janki stay with me. The flat had three rooms; Janki and Aziz could sleep in separate rooms. I suppose I ought to have put both in one room, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t that informal with Aziz. Besides, at no point had he ever even vaguely hinted at his affair with Janki.

In the evening, the two of them went out to see a movie. I stayed home as I wanted to get started on a new film script. I was awake until two in the morning and then fell asleep. I’d already given the spare key to Aziz, so there was no reason to worry about letting them in.

Regardless of how late I work, I always wake up once between three-thirty and four o’clock to have a drink of water. Out of habit, I woke up that night too. It just so happened that Aziz was occupying the room in which I had set up my bed, and where my water pitcher was kept.

I would never have bothered Aziz had I not been so awfully thirsty. My throat was completely parched from the large amount of whisky I had guzzled. I knocked. Some time elapsed before the door opened. Rubbing her dopey eyes, Janki said, ‘Saeed Sahib!’ But when she saw me, a soft ‘Oh’ escaped from her lips.

Inside Aziz was sleeping on the bed. I smiled spontaneously. Janki smiled too, her lips twisted to one side. I picked up the pitcher and left.

I woke up in the morning to a smoke cloud in my room. I rushed to the kitchen, only to find Janki burning piles of paper to heat water for Aziz’s bath. Tears, from the smoke, were streaming down her cheeks. When she saw me, she smiled and blew into the brazier. ‘Aziz Sahib catches a cold if he takes a cold bath,’ she explained. ‘He was sick the whole month I wasn’t in Peshawar to look after him. And why wouldn’t he be sick! He’d stopped taking his medicine! Did you notice how much weight he’s lost?’