Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

After his bath Aziz went out to take care of some business and Janki asked me to send a telegram to Saeed. ‘I really should have informed him yesterday, right after I arrived here. Oh, what a terrible mistake! He must be worried sick.’

She had me write out the text. She informed him of her safe arrival in Puna, but she seemed more concerned about how he was doing and whether he was taking his shots regularly.

Four days went by, during which Janki sent Saeed five telegrams. He didn’t write back. As she made plans to return to Bombay, suddenly, towards evening, Aziz came down with something. Janki asked me to send Saeed another telegram. She spent the whole night ministering to Aziz. It was just an ordinary fever, but Janki was exceedingly worried. I think there was also a measure of anxiety over Saeed’s silence. ‘I’m convinced,’ she said, ‘Saeed Sahib is ill, otherwise he would surely have written back.’

On the fifth day, Saeed’s telegram arrived in the evening. Aziz was present at the time. ‘I’m very sick,’ Saeed had written and instructed her to ‘return forthwith’. Just before the telegram arrived, Janki was laughing her head off over something I’d said, but the minute she heard about Saeed’s illness she fell silent. Aziz took her silence very badly and when he addressed her, I could sense the bitterness in his tone. I got up and went out.

When I returned in the evening I found the two sitting apart as though they’d had a prolonged quarrel. There were dried tear stains on Janki’s cheeks. After some small talk, she picked up her handbag and said to Aziz, ‘I’m going, but I’ll return soon,’ and then to me, ‘Saadat Sahib, please watch over him; his fever still hasn’t broken.’

I accompanied her to the station, bought her a ticket on the black market and left after seating her in her carriage.

Back at the flat, Aziz had a light fever. We talked a long time, without any mention of Janki.

Three days later, around five-thirty in the morning, I heard the sound of someone opening the front door. Janki entered. She was asking Aziz in convoluted words about his health and whether he had taken his medicine regularly while she was away. I didn’t hear what Aziz said, but half an hour later, just as my eyes were closing under the onslaught of sleep, I heard the muted sound of Aziz’s angry voice. I couldn’t make out anything clearly except that he was giving her a piece of his mind.

At ten, he took a cold bath, leaving the water Janki had heated for him untouched. When I reported this to her, tears welled up in her eyes.

After the bath, Aziz got dressed and went out. Janki stayed in bed. About three in the afternoon I approached her, only to find that she was running a very high temperature. I went out to get a doctor and saw that Aziz was having his stuff loaded on to a tonga.

‘Where are you headed?’ I asked.

He shook my hand and said, ‘Bombay. God willing, we’ll meet again.’

He hopped on to the carriage and left before I could tell him about Janki’s raging fever.

The doctor examined her carefully and diagnosed bronchitis. If proper care were not taken, it was likely that it would turn into pneumonia. He wrote out a prescription and walked out. Janki asked me about Aziz. My first thought was to suppress the information, but there was no point in hiding it. I told her he had left. She was shocked. She buried her head in the pillow and cried for a long time.

The next morning, her fever had gone down one degree and she was feeling slightly better when Saeed’s telegram arrived from Bombay, around eleven. In very harsh words he reproached her, ‘Remember, you didn’t keep your promise.’

I tried as hard as I could but wasn’t able to stop her from leaving at once. She boarded the Puna Express in her precarious condition and left.

Five or six days later, Narain sent me a telegram. ‘An urgent matter has come up; come at once.’

I thought he had negotiated a contract for me with some producer. This was not the case. When I reached Bombay, he told me that Janki’s condition was very grave. Her bronchitis had in fact turned into pneumonia. And that, after arriving in Bombay, she had fallen while attempting to board a moving train bound for Andheri and hurt both of her thighs badly.

Janki bore her bodily pain bravely, but when she came to Andheri and Saeed pointed to her baggage and said, ‘Please leave,’ her spirit broke. Narain told me, ‘Saeed’s cold words left her stunned for a moment. I’m sure she must have thought of throwing herself under a train and dying. Saadat, regardless of what you may say about Saeed, his conduct with women is atrocious, downright unmanly. The poor thing! She was running a high fever and she’d fallen from a moving train, all of that just to get to this donkey as soon as possible. But he couldn’t care less! He repeated “Please leave!” without even a wisp of emotion, so coldly, just like a line of newsprint spilling out of a linotype machine. It hurt me a lot. I got up and left. When I returned in the evening, Janki was nowhere; Saeed was sitting on the bed writing a poem with a glass of rum in front of him. I didn’t say a word to him and went to my room. The next day I found out at the studio that Janki was lying critically ill at the house of one of the girls who work as extras. I talked to the owner of the studio and had her admitted to a hospital. She’s been there since yesterday. Tell me what else I can do. She hates me, so I can’t visit her. You go and check on her condition.’

I went to the hospital. The first thing she asked was how Aziz and Saeed were doing. I must say, I was deeply touched by her concern for the two even after how shabbily they had treated her.

Her condition was critical. The doctors told me that she had inflammation in both lungs and her life was in danger. What floored me, though, was that Janki was weathering her condition with fortitude.

When I returned to the studio and looked for Narain, I was told that he had been gone since morning. In the evening, when he came back, he showed me three small vials, their mouths tightly sealed with rubber caps, and asked, ‘Know what these are?’

‘No. They look like some kind of shots.’

He smiled. ‘Yes, shots. Penicillin shots.’

I was astounded. Penicillin, in those days, was being produced in very small quantities in America and England, and all of it was earmarked strictly for military hospitals. ‘Penicillin is a rare commodity. How did you get hold of it?’ I asked.

He smiled and said, ‘When I was a boy I was quite the expert at breaking into our family safe to steal money. Well, I did that again today. I sneaked into the military hospital and swiped these three vials from the refrigerator. Let’s move Janki to a hotel. Come on, hurry up.’

I took a taxi to the hospital and brought her to the hotel where Narain had already booked two rooms.

In an exceedingly feeble voice, she asked over and over again why I had brought her here, and every time I replied that she would know soon. When she did learn, that is, when Narain entered the room with a syringe in hand, she turned her face away in dismay and said to me, ‘Saadat Sahib, tell him to go away.’

Narain smiled. ‘Darling, spit out your anger. Your life is at stake.’

Janki became furious. In spite of her weak condition, she sat up in the bed and said, ‘Saadat Sahib, either you throw this bastard out or I’m leaving.’

Narain pressed her back on the bed and said smiling, ‘This bastard won’t budge without giving you the shot. I’m warning you, don’t even try to resist.’

He gave the syringe to me, grabbed her arm with one hand, rubbed her upper arm with a cotton ball doused in alcohol, handed the cotton to me, took the syringe and plunged the needle into the muscle. She screamed, but the penicillin had entered her body.