Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

That was the last straw. ‘Shut up!’ he screamed.

She burst into laughter and flung her fuzz-covered arms around his neck. Turning a bit she said, ‘All right, darling, as you wish. Go, don your pagri. I’ll wait for you downstairs in the bazaar.’

She started to go down but Trilochan stopped her. ‘Aren’t you going to change your clothes?’

She shook her head. ‘This will work fine.’

And she went down clip-clopping in her clogs. He could hear them all the way down to the lowest steps of the stairs. He gathered his hair at the back of his head and went to his flat to quickly change his clothes. The turban was already furled so he fixed it on his head neatly, locked the door behind him and went downstairs.

He found Mozel standing on the pavement, her feet wide apart, smoking a cigarette, just like a man. When he neared her, she filled her mouth with the smoke and released it on his face mischievously.

‘You’re really very mean,’ he blurted out in anger.

‘That’s nothing new.’ She smiled. ‘Haven’t I heard that many times before? She looked at his turban. ‘Nice job! It does give the impression that you have kes.’

The bazaar was deathly still; there was not a soul anywhere. The only sound was the breeze, which blew softly as if it too was afraid of the curfew. The lights were on, but they gave off a sickly glow. Usually trams started running by this hour and one could see a lot of activity with people moving about in the street. But now it seemed as though no one had ever walked here nor ever would.

Mozel walked ahead of him, her clogs clicking on the pavement, shattering the pervading silence with their sharp noise. Trilochan damned her silently for not putting on something better than these godforsaken clogs. He felt like telling her to get rid of them and walk barefoot, but he knew she would never listen to him. Better not stir up a fuss.

He was deathly afraid — even the slightest rustle of a leaf made his heart skip a beat. She, on the other hand, walked along fearlessly, leisurely blowing smoke as if she was taking the air along a garden promenade.

As the two of them approached an intersection, a policeman hailed them, ‘Hey, you — where are you going?’

Trilochan cringed, but she walked over to the cop, fluffed up her hair a little, and said, ‘Oh, it’s you! Don’t you recognize me. . Mozel.’ Then pointing to an alley, ‘That way. My sister lives there. She’s ill. I’m taking the doctor to see her.’

The cop was still struggling to recognize her when she pulled out a pack of cigarettes from God knows where. ‘Here, have a cigarette.’

The cop took one. ‘Light?’ She held out the cigarette still smouldering between her lips.

The cop took a long drag on his cigarette. She winked at him with her right eye and at Trilochan with her left and then clip-clopped towards the alley leading to Kirpal Kaur’s mohalla.

Trilochan was silent. He could sense the strange joy Mozel was feeling in defying the curfew. She had always liked to play dangerously. Every time they visited the Juhu beach, she would fight her way through the humongous waves, swimming quite far into the sea, and leaving him petrified with the fear that she might drown. When she returned her body was always full of cuts and bruises, but she didn’t seem to care.

Every now and then Trilochan looked around furtively, afraid that some knife-swinging fellow might materialize from somewhere. Mozel halted. When he caught up with her, she tried to reason with him. ‘Triloch dear, don’t panic. If you do, something awful will surely happen. Believe me, I know.’

He kept quiet.

A few steps into the alley leading up to Kirpal Kaur’s mohalla, Mozel stopped abruptly. Up ahead a Marwari’s shop was being pillaged piece by piece. She studied the situation for a second and said calmly, ‘It’s all right. Let’s keep going.’

They started moving. Suddenly a man with a big platter on his head bumped into Trilochan, knocking the platter to the ground. He looked at Trilochan closely. That he was a Sikh was written all over him. The man quickly reached for the knife tucked into his waistband, but Mozel came tripping over as if dead drunk and pushed him away. ‘Hey, are you crazy? Killing your own brother? I’m going to marry this man.’ She then turned to Trilochan, ‘Karim, pick up the platter and put it back on his head.’

The man quickly withdrew his hand from his waistband, looked lustily at Mozel and touched her boobs with his elbow. ‘Go on, saali, have fun!’ He moved on, balancing the platter on his head.

‘Bastard, what an atrocious thing to do,’ Trilochan mumbled in disgust.

She touched her breasts. ‘Atrocious — not at all. It works. Let’s go!’

She started walking briskly. Trilochan tried to keep pace. They came to the end of the alley and entered Kirpal Kaur’s mohalla.

‘Which street?’ she asked.

‘The third. That building on the corner,’ he said in a hushed voice.

She turned in that direction. Despite being densely populated, the whole area was enveloped in an eerie silence; not even the sound of a child crying could be heard anywhere.

When they came closer, they saw signs of some surreptitious movement. A man darted out of one building and ran into another. Minutes later, three men came out of one building, looked around and dashed into the next. Mozel stopped short. She gestured to Trilochan to get into the cover of the darkness and whispered, ‘Triloch, dear, take off your turban.’

‘Never!’ he answered resolutely. ‘I won’t, no matter what.’

She was annoyed. ‘As you wish. But don’t you see what’s going on?’

Something awful and very mysterious was indeed going on and both of them could sense it. When two men emerged from the building on the right with gunnysacks on their backs, Mozel’s whole body shuddered for a moment. Something resembling a viscous fluid was dripping from the gunnysacks. Mozel chewed her lips nervously. Perhaps she was thinking of some plan. When the two men disappeared at the end of the street she turned to Trilochan. ‘Look, here’s what we’ll do: I’ll run to the corner building and you come after me, fast, like you’re chasing me. Got it? But all this has to be done in a split second.’

Without waiting for his answer, she took off towards the building, her clogs clip-clopping noisily on the cobblestones. Trilochan ran after her, fast. Within a few seconds they were inside the building, at the foot of the stairs. Trilochan was out of breath, but she seemed fine. ‘Which floor?’ she asked.

‘Second,’ he replied, wetting his parched lips.

‘Come on, let’s go.’ She started to climb up the stairs. Trilochan followed her. The steps were stained with big splotches of blood and gore. He blanched.

Trilochan walked part way down the corridor on the second floor until he came to a door. He knocked softly while Mozel stood some distance away, by the staircase.

He tapped on the door again, stuck his face up to it and called, ‘Maha Singhji! Maha Singhji!’

‘Who is it?’ someone asked in a feeble voice.

‘It’s Trilochan.’

Slowly the door opened. Trilochan beckoned to Mozel and they went inside. Mozel saw a wisp of a girl standing to the side, petrified, and only had a few moments to look at her closely. The girl had delicate features and a beautifully crafted nose, now red from a cold. Mozel hugged the girl to her enormous bosom and wiped her own runny nose with the hem of her loose-fitting tunic.

Trilochan’s face flushed.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said to the girl lovingly. ‘Trilochan has come to take you out of here.’

Kirpal Kaur disengaged herself from Mozel’s arms and looked at Trilochan with frightened eyes.