Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

‘Please ask Sardar Sahib to get ready fast, and your mother too. . quickly.’

Just then screams and the sound of scuffles erupted on the floor above them.

‘They got him!’ A muffled scream escaped from Kirpal Kaur’s throat.

‘Who?’ Trilochan asked.

Before Kirpal Kaur could answer, Mozel grabbed her arm and pushed her into a corner. ‘Good, they got him. Now take off these clothes.’

Kirpal Kaur barely had time to react before Mozel quickly stripped her of her shirt. A terrified Kirpal Kaur tried to cover her nakedness with her arms. Trilochan turned his face away. Mozel removed her loose tunic and slipped it over Kirpal Kaur’s body. Now she herself was stark naked. Quickly loosening the waist cord, she pulled the girl’s shalwar down and ordered Trilochan, ‘Go! Get her out of here. . Wait. .’ She hurriedly untied the girl’s hair, and said, ‘Now go, get out of here as fast as you can, both of you!’

‘Come on,’ Trilochan gestured to the girl. Halfway to the door he suddenly stopped, turned around, and looked back at the stark-naked Mozel. The soft fuzz on her arms was standing upright in the cold.

‘Why don’t you leave?’ she shrieked, obviously irritated.

‘What about her parents?’ he said, softly.

‘They can go to hell. You take her and get out of here!’

‘And you?’

‘I’m coming.’

All of a sudden the stairs rang out with the sound of hastily descending feet. Several men banged on the door so violently it seemed they would knock it down.

Kirpal Kaur’s blind mother and handicapped father were moaning in the other room.

Mozel reflected for a moment, jerked her hair slightly, and said to Trilochan, ‘Listen, I can only think of one thing now: I’m going to open the door.’

Kirpal Kaur stifled a scream in her dry throat. ‘The door!’

‘I’ll open the door and run up the stairs. You follow me. These people will forget everything and come after us. .’

‘And then?’ he asked.

‘This will give your, what’s her name, a chance to escape. No one will bother her in this tunic.’

Trilochan quickly explained the situation to Kirpal Kaur.

Mozel raised a frightening scream, threw open the door and rushed out, tripping over the men outside who had no time to react and made way for her. She righted herself and ran up the stairs, with Trilochan close on her heels.

Mozel was climbing the stairs blindly, still in her clogs. The men who’d been trying to break down the door ran after the two of them. Suddenly her foot slipped and she tumbled down the stairs all the way to the stone landing, her body knocking against the steps and the wrought-iron balustrade.

Trilochan rushed down the stairs only to find her lying there, blood oozing out of her nose, mouth, even her ears. The men who had stormed the door quickly gathered around. Someone asked what happened. They were looking silently at her fair-skinned, naked body covered with bruises.

Trilochan shook her arm and called out, ‘Mozel! Mozel!’

She opened her large Jewish eyes, now blood red, and smiled.

Trilochan quickly removed his turban, undid it, and spread it out over her naked body. She smiled again and winked at him. Spewing tiny red bubbles from her mouth, she said, ‘Go. . see whether my underwear is still there. . I mean. .’

Trilochan got her drift, but he didn’t want to leave her. Which angered her. ‘Damn it, you’re a Sikh after all. Go and see.’

He rose and went to Kirpal Kaur’s flat. Through her dimmed eyes Mozel looked at the men gathered around her and said, ‘He’s a miyan bhai. . so crazy that I always call him a Sikh. .’

Meanwhile, Trilochan returned. He let her know with his eyes that Kirpal Kaur had made her escape. She sighed in relief, but more blood bubbled out of her mouth from the effort. ‘Damn it,’ she said, wiping it on her arm. Then she said to Trilochan, ‘All right, darling, bye-bye!’

He wanted to say something, but choked on his words.

Mozel pushed his turban cloth off her body. ‘Take this with you. . this scrap of your religion,’ she said, as her arm fell limp over her plump, round breasts.

Before moving to Delhi she had lived in Ambala Cantonment where she’d had several goras among her clients. Through them she had learned to speak a smattering of English, which she didn’t use in ordinary conversation. When her business failed to pick up in Delhi, she said to her neighbour Tamancha Jan one day, ‘This lef —very bad.’ Meaning, this is a bad life, you can’t even earn enough to make ends meet.

She’d done quite well for herself in Ambala. The cantonment goras came to her drunk. She would be done with eight or ten of them in three or four hours and make twenty to thirty rupees. They treated her much better than her own countrymen did. True, they spoke in a language Sultana couldn’t understand, but this ignorance only worked to her advantage. If they tried to bargain for a lower rate, she just shook her head uncomprehendingly and said, ‘Sahib, I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ And if they tried to get fresh with her, she broke into a round of profanities in her own language. When they gawked at her nonplussed, she’d say to them, ‘Sahib, you’re a bloody fool, a bastard. . understand?’ She didn’t utter these words brusquely, but in a tone full of affection and geniality. The goras would laugh, and when they laughed they did look like bloody fools to her.

Here in Delhi, though, not a single gora had visited her since her arrival. She had now been here for three months, in this city of Hindustan where, she had heard, the Big Lord Sahib lived, who customarily spent his summers in Simla. So far only six people had visited her, only six — that is, two a month — and she could swear by God she had made a total of eighteen and a half rupees from them. None of them wanted to pay more than three rupees. Sultana had quoted her rate as ten rupees to five of them but, strangely, every one of them said, ‘Not more than three.’ God knows why they thought she was worth only three rupees. So when the sixth one came along, she herself said, ‘Look, I charge three rupees for each taim . I won’t accept anything less. Stay or leave.’ There was no haggling; he stayed. When they went into the other room and he started taking off his coat, Sultana said, ‘And a rupee for milk.’ He didn’t give her one rupee though; instead, he took out a shiny eight anna bit with the head of the new king from his pocket and offered it to her. She took it quietly, thinking, ‘At least it’s better than nothing.’

Eighteen and a half rupees in three months! Just the rent for her kotha , which her landlord referred to by the English word ‘flat’, was twenty a month. This flat had a toilet with an overhead chain. When the chain was pulled, water gushed out noisily and carried all the waste to an underground drain. Initially, the noise of the torrential water had scared the daylights out of her. On her first day in the flat when she had gone to the toilet, her back was hurting badly. As she was getting up from the toilet seat she grabbed the chain for support. The sight of the chain had made her think that since the flats were built especially for important people, the chains were provided for their convenience. But the instant she grabbed the chain to rise, she heard a clanking sound and suddenly water was released with such force that she shrieked, frightened out of her wits.

Khuda Bakhsh was in the other room busy with his photographic material and pouring hydroquinone into a bottle. When he heard Sultana scream, he stepped out of the room and asked her, ‘What’s the matter? Was that you screaming?’