Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

‘It just kind of piled up,’ was all he could say.

‘It would take seven or eight years to collect so much junk’—I thought out loud.

I was mistaken. As I later found out, it had taken ten. When he moved over to Shivaji Park he had hauled along all the bottles and cans that had accumulated in his old house. Once, I asked him, ‘Saroop, why don’t you sell these. In the first place, they shouldn’t have been allowed to get out of hand, but now that they have, and you can get a good price on account of the war, you’d better get rid of this junk.’

His only answer: ‘Drop it, yaar! It’s just too much bother.’

This sort of gave the impression that he really had no interest in empty bottles and cans, but his servant let me in on the fact that Ram Saroop raised hell if even a single bottle or can was moved from its place.

Ram Saroop had no interest in women. We had become close friends. Several times I asked him casually, ‘So my friend, when are you getting married?’ and each time I was given the same type of answer: ‘Whatever for?’

‘Yes, indeed, whatever for — really?’ I thought. ‘Will he shut her up in his junk room? Or play with her in his shorts as he sipped his rum?’ While I did bring up the subject of marriage with him now and then, try as hard as I could, in my imagination I couldn’t picture him with a woman.

Our association was now several years old. During this time the rumour went round several times that he had fallen in love with some actress named Sheela. I absolutely didn’t believe in the veracity of the story. For one thing, it wasn’t something one could expect from Ram Saroop; for another, Sheela wasn’t quite the woman any sane young man would lose his heart to. She always looked lifeless, as though she was suffering from tuberculosis. She did look tolerable in her first few movies, but eventually lost whatever panache she might have had, morphing into a totally insipid, bland character, now consigned to appear only in third-class movies.

I asked him just once about this Sheela woman. He replied with a smile, ‘Do you think she’s the only woman left for me?’ About this time his dearest dog Stalin caught pneumonia. Ram Saroop had it treated in the best way he knew, but the poor animal’s days were numbered. Its death pained him deeply. His eyes remained teary for quite some time. Then one day he gave away his other dogs to a friend. I thought it was due to the terrible shock of Stalin’s death, otherwise he would never have parted with them. However, it surprised me a bit when, not long afterwards, he also got rid of the monkeys. Must be because he didn’t want to go through another harrowing experience in the future, I concluded. Now he only played with his cat Nargis, as usual, in his shorts while sipping rum. The cat loved him equally in return because she had no competition; she alone was the recipient of his affections.

Soon, his living quarters no longer smelled of tigers and cheetahs and reflected a noticeable order and taste in their decor. His face, too, now assumed a slightly fresher look. However, all this happened so slowly that it was difficult to determine the exact time of the onset of the change.

Time rolled on. His new film was released. I observed a marked freshness in his acting. When I congratulated him, he smiled and said, ‘Come, have some whisky?’

‘Whisky?’ I asked, surprised. Didn’t he always drink rum. . only rum?

His earlier smile shrank somewhat on his lips as he answered, ‘I’m tired of drinking rum.’

No further questioning was necessary.

A week later when I went to see him, he was drinking as usual, not rum but whisky, not in his shorts but in a kurta — pyjama. We played cards and drank for a long time. After a while I noticed his tongue and palate were having difficulty accepting the taste of the new drink, for with every sip he made a face as if he was drinking something foreign. I said to him, ‘Looks as if you haven’t got used to whisky yet, have you?’

‘Oh, I will. Give it some time,’ he said smiling.

Ram Saroop’s flat was on the second floor. As I was passing by one day I saw great big piles of empty bottles and cans near the garage being loaded on to a couple of rickety carts by a few junk dealers. I was aghast; this treasure could only have belonged to Ram Saroop. I felt a tinge of indescribable pain to see it being hauled away. I ran up to his flat and rang the bell. The door opened, but when I tried to step inside his servant uncharacteristically stopped me, saying, ‘Sahib was out on a shoot last night; he’s sleeping now.’

I left in surprise and anger, muttering something under my breath.

That very evening Ram Saroop came to my house with Sheela in tow, draped in a new crisp Banarasi sari. ‘Meet my wife,’ Ram Saroop said, pointing at Sheela.

Had I not already downed four pegs of whisky I would certainly have been knocked out.

Both of them sat for a short while and then left. For a long time afterwards I kept ruminating: What did Sheela remind me of? A papery, beige sari over a sparse, thin body, puffed out here, shrunk there? Suddenly the image of an empty bottle floated before my eyes, an empty bottle wrapped in paper.

Sheela was a woman — totally empty, but it was possible that one void had filled another.

When Joginder Singh’s short stories became popular it occurred to him that he could throw a party for famous prose writers and poets. He thought this would probably widen the scope of his popularity and acceptance.

Joginder Singh was nothing if not astute. After inviting the renowned litterateurs to his home and offering them great hospitality, he finally sat down with his wife Amrit Kaur and allowed himself to forget, at least for a moment, that he was just a clerk at the local post office where his real job was sorting mail. After he had relieved his head of the burden of carrying a three-metre-long, Patiala-style, coloured turban and put it aside, he invariably felt that the smallish head hiding under his long, jet-black hair was utterly filled with progressive literature. This feeling filled both his heart and mind with a strange elan. He believed the entire tribe of the world’s short story writers and novelists was connected to him in a subtle relationship.

What Amrit Kaur had a hard time understanding, though, was why, every time her husband invited these people, he never failed to say to her, ‘Amrit, these people who are coming for tea today, well, they’re India’s top-notch poets. Do you understand? Now don’t you go cutting corners in showing them proper hospitality, okay?’

Sometimes it was India’s top-notch poet, sometimes its greatest short story writer. Anyone less than that just didn’t cut it. Then there was all that raucous conversation that went on at the party, every word of it went over her head. Progressivism was talked about with great gusto and Amrit Kaur was unable to understand any of it.

One time, after Joginder Singh finished entertaining a very great short story writer and came to sit in the kitchen area, Amrit Kaur asked, ‘This blasted progressivism — what is it?’

With his turban still mounted, Joginder Singh shook his head slightly and said, ‘You can’t understand what it means just like that. A “Progressive” is someone who promotes “progress”. It’s a Persian word. In English such a person is called a “radical”. Afsana-nigar s — meaning short story writers — who seek “progress” in story writing are called taraqqi-pasand . *In all of India today there are only three or four progressive short story writers and I’m counted among them.’

Joginder Singh liked to express himself using English words and phrases and it had become second nature over time. So now, without the least bit of hesitation he thought in an English that was made up of the choicest and most pithy phrases taken from the writings of some famous English novelists. In about fifty per cent of ordinary conversation he used words and phrases culled from English books. He always called Aflatun, Plato and Arastu, Aristotle. He threw Freud, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche into every one of his important conversations for good measure, though in ordinary speech he never mentioned these philosophers, and when talking to his wife he took special care not to allow English words or these philosophers to come anywhere near.