Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

All the singles I’ve mentioned so far are, without exception, fond of empty bottles and cans to one degree or another. Whenever my kinsman, the one who distils pure ghee from cream, spots an empty bottle anywhere in the house, he washes it thoroughly and puts it in his cupboard, thinking that it might come in handy some day. The high court reader, who only smells foul odours everywhere, all the time, collects only bottles and cans that he has made absolutely sure will never smell bad. The fellow who is ready to pray anywhere and any time keeps dozens of bottles to wash himself after going to the toilet and tin cans to use for ablutions. He thinks that these items are both inexpensive and clean. The major, who is given to stockpiling hookahs, collects empty bottles and cans for the sole purpose of selling them to scrap merchants. The retired colonel is only fond of collecting empty bottles of whisky. If you happen to visit him, you will see these whisky bottles neatly arranged inside several glass cabinets in a small, tidy room. No matter how antiquated the brand, you can be sure to find it in his rare collection. Just as some people are fond of collecting stamps and coins, he has a passion — or rather obsession — for collecting empty whisky bottles and displaying them.

The Colonel Sahib has no relatives. If he does have anyone, I’m certainly not aware of it. Even though he’s all alone in the world, he doesn’t suffer from loneliness at all. He’s happy with his dozen or so dogs and he cares as much for them as an affectionate father for his children. He spends his entire day with his pets, and whatever free time he has is spent rearranging his darling bottles in their cabinets.

Now, you might say, well, all right, empty bottles make sense, but why have you tacked on empty cans along with them? Why in the world should it be necessary for a bachelor to be interested not just in empty bottles but also in empty cans? And whether bottles or cans — why should they be empty? Why not full?

Haven’t I already told you that I wonder about that too? This and similar questions often assail my mind. Yet I’m unable to come up with an answer, no matter how hard I try.

Empty bottles and cans represent a void. The only logical connection between them and celibate men is perhaps that the latter’s life is characterized by a gaping emptiness. This doesn’t help, for it begs the question: Do such men try to fill one void with another? A person can at least say that dogs, cats, rabbits and monkeys fill the emptiness of a man’s life to some degree. They can amuse with their funny antics and airs, and even respond to love. But what possible enjoyment can empty bottles and cans afford?

It’s possible that the following might offer you an answer to these questions.

Ten years ago, when I went to Bombay, a film produced by a famous studio had been running for twenty weeks. The heroine was an experienced actress, but the hero was a complete novice and looked very young in the advertisements. After reading great things about his acting skills in the newspapers, I decided to go see the film. It was quite all right. The story was interesting enough and, considering that the hero was appearing before the camera for the first time in his life, his acting was okay.

It is generally difficult to guess the true age of an actor or actress on the screen. Thanks to the wonders of make-up, a young man can look years older, an old man like a strapping youth. But this newcomer was in fact quite young, vibrant and very agile, like a college student. Although not exactly handsome, every limb on his firm body was well proportioned and finely shaped.

In the years that followed I saw many more films with the same actor. He had become more mature in his work. The raw, boyish softness of his features had gelled into the firmness that comes with age and experience. He was now among the finest film stars in Bombay.

Scandals are nothing new in the film world. Every day brings the news that some actor has become amorously involved with some actress or other, or that actress X has ditched her lover for director Y. No actor or actress is immune from a romantic affair at some time or other. However, the life of this new actor was entirely free of any such entanglements. This fact, though, was not talked about much in the newspapers. No one ever mentioned, even in passing, that Ram Saroop’s life was absolutely free of any kind of gossip in spite of his close involvement with the film world.

To tell you the truth, I’d never given much thought to these matters because I had absolutely no interest in the personal lives of film people. Watch a film, form a good or bad opinion of it, that was the extent of my involvement. However, when I met Ram Saroop, I learned many interesting things about him. This meeting took place nearly eight years after I saw his first film.

During his early days in the film industry he lived in a village quite far from Bombay. With his increasing involvement in motion pictures, he was obliged to move into a modest flat in the Shivaji Park neighbourhood near the sea. This flat was where I met him. It had four rooms, including the kitchen.

The family that lived here comprised eight members: Ram Saroop himself, his servant who doubled as the cook, three dogs, two monkeys and one cat. Ram Saroop and the servant were both bachelors; the dogs and the cat were also without mates of the opposite sex; the monkeys were the exception, but they stayed in their separate wire mesh cages most of the time.

Ram Saroop loved his six animals dearly. He also treated his servant kindly, which had little, if anything, to do with emotion. He had a set routine, and performed tasks at fixed times with the cold regularity of a machine, as if automatically. It almost seemed as though Ram Saroop had jotted down the set of rules and regulations governing his life and handed them over to his servant, who had then memorized them.

If Ram Saroop took off his clothes and slipped into a pair of shorts, the servant immediately placed a few bottles of soda and some flasks of ice on the glass-topped teapoy. This meant that the sahib would now drink rum and play with his dogs. If the phone rang in the meantime, he was supposed to say that the sahib was not home.

An empty bottle of rum or can of cigarettes was never to be trashed or sold. It was put away carefully in the sahib’s room, which was already crowded with piles of empty bottles and cans.

If a woman came to the door, she would be turned away with the excuse that the sahib had spent the night shooting for a film and was asleep. If she showed up in the evening she was told that the sahib was out on a shoot.

The ambience of Ram Saroop’s place wasn’t very different from that of any bachelor who lives alone. It lacked the decor and tidiness beholden to a woman’s delicate touch. Yes, it was neat and clean, but in a coarse sort of way. The first time I entered, the feeling that I’d stepped into the part of a zoo where tigers and cheetahs and such are kept overwhelmed me; it exuded the same animal odour.

One of the rooms was a bedroom, another a sitting room, and the third was where the empty bottles and cans were kept — all the rum bottles and cigarette cans that Ram Saroop had emptied himself. They were just sitting around haphazardly without any particular order, bottles and cans, one on top of the other, face up or face down. Some stood in a line in one corner, while others were just heaped up in another, coated with dust, giving off the pungent odours of stale tobacco and equally stale rum blended together.

I must say I was bowled over when I first saw this room, crowded as it was with numberless bottles and cans — all empty.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked Ram Saroop.

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘I mean this junk?’