Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

Sardar needed her morphine shots, Sando his Polson’s butter. So they joined forces and managed to find two or three customers for Zeenat every day. They told her plainly that Babu Gopinath wasn’t coming back and that she should fend for herself. They bagged a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five rupees a day, half of which went to Zeenat and the remainder they appropriated for themselves.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked Zeenat one day.

‘Bhaijan, I have no idea what they do,’ she replied naively. ‘I just do whatever they say.’

I was assailed by the powerful urge to reason with her. Tell her that what she was doing was a mistake, that Sando and Sardar were looking out for only their own interests and wouldn’t think twice about selling her off. But I didn’t say anything. Zeenat, let’s face it, was a tiringly dull-witted, listless and unambitious person. The unfortunate woman didn’t even know the value of her own life. She sold her body, but without the style and panache so needed for her profession. Honestly, she was very annoying. She showed no interest in anything, whether it was smoking cigarettes, eating, drinking, telephoning or even the couch on which she often reclined.

Babu Gopinath returned after a month — he had left Ghulam Ali and Ghaffar Sain behind in Lahore — and found someone else living in Zeenat’s old place. At Sando and Sardar’s behest, Zeenat had moved into the upper storey of a bungalow in Bandra. He came to me and I gave him the new address. When he asked about Zeenat, I told him what I knew, though not that Sando and Sardar had pushed her into prostitution. The taxi was waiting downstairs. He insisted that I come along.

We reached Bandra after an hour’s drive. As the taxi was climbing Pali Hill, we spotted Sando up ahead on the narrow road. Babu Gopinath yelled, ‘Sando!’

The instant Sando saw Babu Gopinath all he could say was, ‘ Dharan takhta .’

Babu Gopinath invited him to ride with us, but he said, ‘Ask the driver to pull over to the side; I want to talk to you in private.’

The taxi parked along the edge of the road. Babu Gopinath got out and the two of them walked together for some distance, talking all the while. A little later Babu Gopinath returned to the taxi alone and instructed the driver, ‘Turn around, we’re going back.’

He suddenly seemed happy. When we reached Dadar, he said, ‘Manto Sahib, Zeenat is going to be married soon.’

Astonished, I asked, ‘To whom?’

‘To a big landowner from Haidarabad Sind. May they have a happy life together. It’s good that I’ve arrived in time. With the money I have brought back I can give her a decent dowry. What do you think?’

What could I think? My mind was totally blank. I was only wondering who that wealthy landowner from Hyderabad Sind could be. Or was this some scheme that Sando and Sardar had hatched together? Eventually, though, it was confirmed that the man was in fact who he was claimed to be. He had met Zeenat through a music teacher from Hyderabad who was trying in vain to teach her to sing. One day the teacher brought along his patron Ghulam Husain (the wealthy landowner from Hyderabad). Zeenat showed him great hospitality. At Ghulam Husain’s earnest request she sang Ghalib’s ghazal which begins with the line ‘ Nukta-cheen hai gham-e dil usko suna’e na bane ’. He was smitten with her. The music teacher confided in her about Ghulam Husain’s admiration and feelings. Sardar and Sando sprang into action and settled the marriage immediately.

Babu Gopinath was happy. He went to see Zeenat once, as a friend of Sando. He also met Ghulam Husain, which doubled his happiness. He said to me, ‘Manto Sahib, he’s a very handsome and able young man. Before leaving Lahore I had visited the shrine of Data Gang Bakhsh and prayed for her. Looks as though my prayer has been answered. May Bhagwan keep them both happy!’

Babu Gopinath made the arrangements for Zeenat’s wedding with great sincerity and dedication. He gave her jewellery worth two thousand rupees, a trousseau worth an equivalent amount and five thousand rupees in cash. Muhammad Shafiq Tusi, Muhammad Yasin, the proprietor of the Nageena Hotel, Sando, the music teacher, Babu Gopinath and I were present at the wedding. Sando represented the bride.

When the ceremony of acceptance took place, Sando exclaimed in a hushed voice, ‘ Dharan takhta! ’

Ghulam Husain was looking very smart in his suit of blue serge, gracefully receiving congratulations from the attendees. He was tall and well built. Next to him, Babu Gopinath looked like a small partridge.

He had provided the customary food and drinks for the wedding banquet. After the meal, he himself was pouring the water to help the guests wash their hands. When I came to wash mine, he said to me with the exhilaration of a child, ‘Manto Sahib, just go inside and see how breathtakingly beautiful Zeeno looks in her bridal dress.’

I lifted the curtain and stepped inside. She was clad in a shalwar-kameez of red brocade woven with gold thread and a matching dupatta with a gold-thread border. Her make-up was very light, and although I detest lipstick, it looked quite becoming on her lips. She looked very lovely when she blushed and greeted me with aadaab. My eyes caught sight of the flower-bedecked, canopied bed in one corner, and I couldn’t resist laughing. ‘What is this joke?’

Zeenat looked at me with the utter innocence of a little kabutri and said, ‘Bhaijan, you make fun of me.’ Her eyes welled up.

I hadn’t yet realized my clumsy slip-up when Babu Gopinath entered. He lovingly wiped the tears off her cheeks with his kerchief and said to me in a voice saturated with grief, ‘Manto Sahib, I have always considered you a wise and intelligent man. . You should have at least thought a little before you said such words.’

I could clearly sense in his tone the crushed remnants of the deep reverence he had nurtured for me all along.

Before I could apologize to him, he lovingly patted Zeenat’s head and exclaimed with heartfelt sincerity, ‘May God bless you and keep you happy!’

He looked at me with bedewed eyes filled with reproach, a painful, anguished reproach, and walked out of the room.

The tumultuous events of 1947 came and flitted away like a few bad days appearing unexpectedly in an otherwise pleasant season.

Karim Dad hadn’t simply attributed the upheavals to Providence, sat back complacently and done nothing; rather, he had faced the storm valiantly, like a man. He sparred with the enemy forces quite a few times, not so much to bring them to their knees, but only to offer vigorous resistance. He knew the enemy was far too powerful, but he also knew that to lay down his arms would be an insult not just to himself but to every man. This, at any rate, was how others thought of him, those who had seen him fighting with those brutes and willingly putting his life in harm’s way. But if you asked Karim Dad whether he considered putting down his weapons before the enemy an insult, he would think long and hard, as though pondering a difficult mathematical question.

He didn’t know how to add or subtract, any more than how to multiply or divide. After the riots of ’47 were over, people sat down to take stock of the losses, both human and material. Karim Dad didn’t involve himself in this computation. All he knew was that the war had claimed the life of his father Rahim Dad, whose corpse he had carried on his shoulders and laid to rest in the grave he had dug by a well with his own hands.

There had been more incidents like this in the village. Hundreds of young and old men had been butchered; several girls abducted, some brutally raped. Those who had suffered these wounds were crying as much over their own ill fate as over the exceptional ruthlessness of the enemy. But not a single tear was ever spotted in Karim Dad’s eyes. He was proud of his father’s gallantry. Exhausted from fighting against a pack of rioters armed with dozens of lances and hatchets, the old man’s strength had given out and he had fallen. When the news of his death was brought to Karim Dad, he merely addressed his father’s spirit thus: ‘Look, yaar, this isn’t a nice thing to do. Didn’t I tell you to carry some weapon on you at all times!’