Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

He was quiet for a while. Then he removed the cigarette tucked behind his ear, lit it, and, expelling twin jets of smoke from his nostrils, said only, ‘I don’t want her to go.’

I had the uncanny feeling that I was finally on to something. ‘Are you in love with her?’ I asked.

This had a strange effect on him. ‘What kind of talk is that, Manto Sahib?’ He touched both his ears, and said, ‘I swear by the Qur’an, I wouldn’t even dream of such a filthy thought. I just. .’ he hesitated, ‘just. . kind of like her.’

‘Why?’

I guess I had asked him the right question for Dhondo also gave the right answer: ‘Because. . because she isn’t like other girls. They crave money! What wouldn’t they do to grab it — those bitches! But this one, she’s something else. When I bring her out to a passenger, she gives the impression that she’s willing, so the deal is struck and she hops into the taxi or the victoria. Now, Manto Sahib, the passenger is out to have a good time, he wants some action, it’s why he’s spending so much money after all. So he tries to feel her with his hand, or just touch her. And that’s when all hell breaks loose. She creates a ruckus and resorts to fisticuffs. Now, if the man is a gentleman, he takes to his heels, but if he’s drunk or a rake, a storm erupts. Every time something like this happens I’m dragged into it and put on the spot. I have to return the money and get on my knees to calm down the enraged client. All for the sake of Siraj, I swear by the Qur’an. . and, Manto Sahib, that saali has wrecked my business, it’s down by half — honestly.’

I would rather not talk about the backstory my mind had woven for Siraj, except to say that it didn’t match whatever Dhondo had told me about her.

The thought that I could meet her without Dhondo’s knowledge crossed my mind one day. She lived near Byculla Railway Station in an atrociously dingy area surrounded by great piles of garbage and refuse. The corporation had put up numerous metal housing units for the poor there. I don’t want to discuss the plush high-rise buildings that loomed just a short distance away from this slimy filth; they have nothing to do with this story. Where is there a world bereft of highs and lows?

Dhondo had once told me about her place. I went there, doing my best not to let my respectable appearance stand out in this ramshackle milieu, but here, of course, it is not I who am the subject.

Anyway, I went there. A she-goat was tethered outside her shack. It bleated the moment it saw me. An old hag came out tapping her walking stick, looking like a witch who had stepped straight out of some moth-eaten pages of ancient dastaan s. I was about to turn back when I spotted two inordinately large eyes behind the tattered gunnysack curtain hanging over the entrance, gaping as wide as the holes in the curtain. And then I saw Siraj’s oval face. Anger at those eyes that had so brazenly appropriated most of that face swelled inside me. She saw me. God only knows what she was doing inside the shack. Whatever it was, she stopped and came out immediately. ‘What brings you here?’ she asked, ignoring the old crone.

‘I wanted to see you.’ I gave a brief answer.

‘Come in,’ she said, with equal brevity.

‘No, you come with me.’

‘It will be ten rupees,’ the dastaanesque old witch said in a brusque, businesslike manner.

I pulled out a ten-rupee note from my wallet and gave it to the old hag. ‘Come,’ I said to Siraj.

The penetrating intensity of her unusually large eyes subsided just a little for me to look into hers unhindered for the briefest moment. I again concluded that she was beautiful. A shrivelled, embalmed beauty, preserved and buried for centuries in an underground vault. For a moment I felt I was in Egypt, digging up ancient tombs. I don’t want to go into greater detail.

Siraj and I went to a restaurant. She sat across from me in her filthy clothes, her eyes crowding her oval face, and not just her face but her entire being, so mercilessly that I couldn’t discern even an atom of her being.

I had already handed over the ten rupees the old hag had quoted to me. I now gave Siraj forty more. I wanted her to quarrel with me, just as she did with the others, with the same vehemence. That’s why I didn’t say anything that might have seemed loving or sincere in the least. I was also apprehensive about her big eyes — big enough to see not just me but the whole world around me as well.

She was absolutely silent. To touch her in a provocative manner required that I feel aroused not just in my body but also in my thoughts, so I downed four pegs of whisky and groped her like any old passenger. She didn’t resist. Then I did something totally atrocious, which I thought would be the spark needed to ignite the explosives collecting inside of her for ages. Instead — I noticed with not a little amazement — she became much calmer. She got up and, assessing me with her large eyes, said, ‘Get me a joint.’

‘Have some liquor instead.’

‘No. I want pot.’

I ordered a joint. She took a drag in the peculiar manner of seasoned users and looked at me, her eyes having relinquished their relentless possession of her face, though not ungrudgingly. Her face now took on the desolation of an overrun kingdom, a land laid to waste. Its every feature merely traced a line of utter bleakness, of stark despair. What was this desolation. . and why? Often it is the inhabited settlements that cause their own ruination. Was she a habitation that had been stifled in its growth by some invader, leaving its walls, barely a metre high, in ruins?

I was extremely muddled, but I don’t want to drag you into this confusion. What I was thinking and what conclusion I drew is not your business.

Whether or not Siraj was a virgin was not something I wanted to know. But in the curling smoke of the joint I did observe a gleam in her blank, melancholy eyes which even I can’t adequately describe.

I wanted her to talk to me, but she had no interest. I wanted her to argue and squabble with me; here too she disappointed me.

Finally I took her back to her place.

Dhondo was quite offended when he found out about my secret meeting with Siraj. Both his friendly and business feelings were adversely affected. He didn’t let me explain myself and said only, ‘Manto Sahib, I didn’t expect this from you.’ He spoke his mind, stepped away from his lamp-post anchor, and left.

Strangely, I didn’t see him at his haunt at his regular time the next evening, which made me think he might be sick. But he didn’t show up the following day either.

A week went by. I passed this spot every morning and evening. The sight of the lamp post never failed to remind me of Dhondo. I even went to that unspeakably squalid slum near Byculla Station to find out if Siraj was still there, but I only found the crumbly old witch. ‘She left,’ she said when I asked her about Siraj. Then, evoking sexual desires that had lain dormant for aeons in her toothless smile, she added, ‘There are others. . Shall I send for someone?’

‘What does this mean — both of them gone?’ I wondered. ‘And that too in the wake of my secret meeting?’ While I wasn’t at all concerned about my secret meeting — here again I don’t wish to reveal my thoughts — I was quite amazed at their simultaneous disappearance. Nothing like what passes for ‘love’ existed between the two. Dhondo was above such things. He had a wife and children whom he loved dearly. Then what was behind their disappearance?

I thought it likely that Dhondo had suddenly decided it would be best for Siraj to return to her native Punjab. He might have been undecided about it earlier, but then he must have quickly made up his mind.