Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

Nigar, Shahzada Ghulam Ali and I sat somewhat off to one side; I was frozen like an idiot, equally flustered by Babaji’s imposing personality and the unblemished beauty of the young Kashmiri woman. The glossy tiles also had an effect on me, indeed quite an effect. Would the pandit girl let me kiss her eyes, just once? The thought pulsated through my body, and my mind immediately darted off to my maidservant, for whom I’d begun to feel something lately. I felt like leaving the assembly and heading directly home — perhaps I would succeed in stealthily luring her upstairs to the bathroom. I just might. But the second my glance fell on Babaji and the passionate strains of the nationalistic song filled my ears, a different thought began to course through my body: If I could just get hold of a handgun, I’d rush to the Civil Lines area and make short work of the English.

And next to this idiot sat Nigar and Ghulam Ali, a pair of hearts in love, somewhat tired of their long and uneventful throbbing, ready to melt into each other’s embrace and find those other shades of love. In other words, they’d come to ask Babaji, their uncontested political leader, for permission to marry. Obviously it was not the song of the nation that resonated in their ears at that moment. It was their own song, beautiful, but as yet unsung.

The song ended. With a hand gesture Babaji gave his blessing to the panditani and then turned, smiling, to Nigar and Ghulam Ali, again managing a small glance at me as well.

Ghulam Ali was perhaps about to introduce himself and Nigar but Babaji — goodness, his memory! — quickly said to him in his sweet voice, ‘Prince, you haven’t been arrested yet?’

‘No, not yet,’ Ghulam Ali replied, his hands folded in respect.

Babaji picked out a pencil from a box and toyed with it as he said, ‘But you are —I think.’

The remark went over Ghulam Ali’s head. So Babaji looked at the panditani and said, pointing at Nigar, ‘Nigar has captured our Prince.’

Nigar blushed. Ghulam Ali’s mouth fell open. And the panditani’s light brown complexion flushed with good wishes. She gave the pair a look that seemed to say, ‘How wonderful!’

Babaji looked at the panditani once again. ‘These children,’ he said to her, ‘have come to ask for my permission. How about you, Kamal, when are you going to get married?’

So she was called Kamal! The abrupt question caught her off guard, and she turned red in the face. ‘Me?’ she said in a trembling voice. ‘I’ve decided to join your ashram.’

She said this with a trace of regret, which Babaji’s perceptive mind registered instantly. He gave her a smile, the soft smile of a yogi, and then turned to Ghulam Ali and Nigar and asked, ‘So have the two of you made up your minds?’

‘Yes,’ they answered softly in unison.

Babaji scanned them with his politician’s eyes. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘one is obliged to change the decisions one has made.’

For the first time in Babaji’s lofty presence, Ghulam Ali unleashed the boldness of his coltish youth, saying, ‘Even if our decision is put off for some reason, it will never change!’

Babaji closed his eyes and proceeded to question him in the manner of a lawyer. ‘Why?’

Surprisingly, Ghulam Ali didn’t lose his nerve at all. His ardent love for Nigar made him say, ‘Circumstances may force us to put it off, but our decision to free India is irrevocable. Absolutely!’

Looking back, I now feel that Babaji hadn’t thought it worthwhile to query him further on the subject and just smiled — a smile which everyone present must have interpreted in his or her own way. And if asked, Babaji would have given it a radically different meaning. Of that I’m sure.

Anyway, stretching the smile which evoked a thousand different meanings, he said, ‘Nigar, come join our ashram! It is only a matter of days before Prince is sent to jail.’

‘All right, I will,’ she answered softly.

Babaji changed the subject and asked about the revolutionary activities in the Jallianwala Bagh camp. Ghulam Ali, Nigar and Kamal filled him in for what seemed like a long time about various arrests, releases, and even about milk, lassi and vegetables. During this time I sat there like a bumpkin, wondering why Babaji was dilly-dallying so much in giving his blessing to Ghulam Ali and Nigar. Did he have doubts about their love for each other? About Ghulam Ali’s sincerity? Had he invited Nigar to the ashram just to help her get over the pain she’d feel upon her husband’s incarceration? But then, why had Kamal responded to Babaji’s question, ‘Kamal, when are you going to get married?’ with ‘I’ve decided to join your ashram’? Didn’t men and women marry at the ashram? These kinds of questions kept raging inside my head as the four of them speculated on whether the number of lady volunteers was enough to deliver chapattis for five hundred militants on time. How many stoves were there? How large were the griddles? Couldn’t one get a griddle big enough for six women to bake chapattis on all at once?

This pandit girl, Kamal, would she just chant national songs and religious bhajans for Babaji’s edification once she was admitted to the ashram, I wondered. I had seen the male volunteers of the ashram. True enough, they all took their ritual bath and brushed their teeth every morning, spent most of their time out in the open air and chanted bhajans in accordance with the rules of the ashram, but their clothing still reeked of perspiration, didn’t it? Quite a few had bad breath to boot. And I never saw on anyone even a trace of the good nature and freshness one associates with outdoor living. Instead, they looked stooped and repressed, their faces pallid, eyes sunken and bodies ravaged — as blanched and lifeless as the udders of a cow from which even the last drop of milk has been squeezed out.

I’d seen these ashram-wallahs on numerous occasions in Jallianwala Bagh. I couldn’t imagine Kamal, who was moulded in her entirety out of milk, honey and saffron, being subjected to the gaze of these men with nothing but filth in their eyes. Would she — a being swathed all over in the scent of lobaan —have to listen to these men with their mouths smelling worse than the stench of rotting mulch? Perhaps, I thought, the independence of India was above all this.

But this ‘perhaps’ was not something I could understand, what with my patriotism and passion for the country’s freedom. I thought of Nigar, who was sitting very close to me and telling Babaji that turnips usually took quite a long time to cook. For heaven’s sake, what had turnips got to do with marriage? She and Ghulam Ali had come for Babaji’s blessing to get married, hadn’t they?

My thoughts wandered off to Nigar and the ashram, which I had never visited. Ashrams, vidyalaya s , jamat-khana s, takiya s and darsgah s, all such places inspire only the deepest revulsion in me. I don’t know why. I’ve often seen boys and the caretakers of orphanages and schools for the blind walking in a row along streets asking for handouts. I have also seen jamat-khanas and darsgahs: Boys in shar‘i pyjamas worn well above their ankles, their foreheads marked with calluses despite their tender age, the slightly older boys sporting thick bushy beards, the younger ones with a revolting growth of sparse bristles on their cheeks and chins — all absorbed in prayer, but their faces reflecting pure beastliness.

Nigar was a woman, not a Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Christian, just a woman. No, she was more than that, a woman’s prayer intended for her lover, or for one whom she herself loved with all her heart. I couldn’t imagine her — she who was herself a prayer — raising her hands in supplication every morning as required by the rules of Babaji’s ashram.