Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

After bathing and changing, Joginder Singh walked into the kitchen and sat with his wife for a long time. They took their tea quite late, thinking that Tirpathi might arrive soon. But when he didn’t, they put the cake and other food back into the cupboard and just drank tea while they waited for the guest.

Eventually, Joginder Singh got up and went into the other room. He was standing in front of the mirror sticking hairpins into his beard to keep it neatly pressed down when there was a knock at the door. He left his beard half-finished and dashed to the deorhi to open the door. As expected, it was Harendarnath Tirpathi’s lush, black jungle of a beard, at least twenty times bigger than his own, that first came into view.

A smile fluttered across Harendarnath Tirpathi’s lips, buried as they were under the thick mop of his moustache. One of his eyes, which was slightly crooked, became even more crooked. He jerked his unbelievably long hair and stuck out his hand — as calloused as a peasant’s — towards Joginder Singh, who was greatly impressed by the steely grip and equally so by his leather bag that was as distended as a pregnant woman. ‘Tirpathi Sahib, I’m very pleased to meet you’ was all he could get out of his mouth.

It has been fifteen days since Harendarnath Tirpathi’s arrival. His wife and daughter had been with him on the journey but they decided to stay at the home of a distant relative who lived in the Mozang area of Lahore. Tirpathi didn’t think it proper for them to stay there long; two days later he had them move into Joginder Singh’s house.

They spent the first four days talking many quite interesting things. Joginder Singh was very pleased to hear Harendarnath Tirpathi applaud his short stories. He read him an unpublished piece and received great praise. He even read him two stories he hadn’t quite finished and Tirpathi expressed a good opinion about these as well. They also discussed progressive literature, noted technical flaws in a number of writers, and made a comparison of old and new poetry. In short, those four days brought them a surfeit of enjoyment. Tirpathi’s personality left a deep impression on Joginder Singh. What he particularly liked about the man was his way of talking, at once childish and wise. The man’s beard, twenty times bigger than his own, totally overwhelmed his thoughts, and the image of his long, jet-black hair, that had something of the flow of folk songs, never left Joginder Singh’s eyes, not even when he took care of the mail at the post office.

Tirpathi completely claimed Joginder Singh’s heart during these four days. He was so enamoured of the man that even his crooked eye now seemed infinitely beautiful to him, so beautiful in fact that he concluded that had the eye not been crooked, Tirpathi’s face could never have looked so graceful.

Every time Tirpathi’s thick lips moved under his bushy moustache, Joginder Singh imagined a bevy of birds warbling sweetly in the bushes. Tirpathi spoke slowly and gently, and now and then when he caressed his beard, Joginder Singh felt a sense of immense comfort, as though his own heart was being caressed with tender love.

The atmosphere during those four days was such that, had he even tried, Joginder Singh couldn’t have succeeded in describing it in any of his stories. But — voila! — on the fifth day Tirpathi suddenly opened his leather bag and started reading his own short stories aloud and kept it up relentlessly for the next ten days. He must have read out the equivalent of several books.

Joginder Singh was mightily fed up. He developed an absolute aversion to short stories. Tirpathi’s leather bag, puffed up like some moneylender’s protruding belly, became a source of unending torment. Every evening, as he was returning from work, the fear that he might run into Tirpathi the moment he stepped through the doorway gripped his heart. When he reached home, they would exchange a few words and Tirpathi would open his bag and subject Joginder Singh to a couple of his short stories.

Had Joginder Singh not been a progressive, he would have told his guest flatly, ‘Enough, enough, Tirpathi Sahib, that’s quite enough. I have no more strength left to listen to your stories. Please. .’ But he thought, ‘No, no, I’m a progressive. I shouldn’t say this. It’s my own fault that I no longer like his stories. They must have something good in them. After all, I did like his stories before. In fact, I thought they were excellent. I. . I’ve become biased.’

For one whole week this conflict continued to ravage Joginder Singh’s progressive mind. He thought so hard and so much that he reached a point where he couldn’t think any more. All kinds of thoughts assailed his mind, but he’d lost the ability to sort them out properly. Slowly his confusion grew so intense and unforgiving that he began to hallucinate: he imagined he was stranded in a gigantic house during a hurricane, the numerous windows being blown open by gusts of merciless wind and he didn’t know how to close them all at once.

A full twenty days passed but Tirpathi showed no sign of leaving. Joginder Singh began to feel edgy. Every evening when Tirpathi treated him to a fresh story he’d written during the day, Joginder only heard flies buzzing in his ears and his mind began to wander.

One evening Tirpathi read out a brand new story that focused on the sexual relations of a man and a woman. Joginder Singh was shocked to realize that for exactly three weeks he had spent every night sleeping under the same covers with a long-bearded man rather than with his own wife. The thought stirred up a veritable riot inside of him, at least for a moment. ‘Heavens, what a guest I’m stuck with!’ he said to himself. ‘Is he a leech or something? Why doesn’t he leave? And why am I forgetting his Begum Sahiba and daughter. The whole family has moved in. He hasn’t even considered that it will crush us poor people. I’m an ordinary employee of the post office. All I make is fifty rupees a month. How long will I have to play host to him? And listen to his short stories that just keep coming one after the other? I’m a human being after all, not some metal footlocker. And worst of all, I can’t even sleep with my wife. These long winter nights, my God, how they’ve been wasted!’

After twenty-one days Tirpathi began appearing to him in a completely new light. Now everything about the man repulsed him. His crooked eye was now just a crooked eye. His long, lush, raven-black hair no longer seemed quite as soft and silky; his inordinately long beard an unforgivable stupidity.

After twenty-five days a strange condition swept over Joginder Singh: he began to think he himself was a stranger. Surely he had known a Joginder Singh once, but not any more. And his wife — after Tirpathi left and everything finally returned to normal, he would marry her all over again. His old life, which these people had been using like a tatty old rag, would be restored to him and he would be able to sleep with his wife, and. . and. .

Thinking beyond this point brought tears to the man’s eyes and something bitter caught in his throat. The desire to rush to Amrit Kaur, who used to be his wife in the good old days, to take her into his arms and start crying would overwhelm him, but he lacked the courage to do it because he was a progressive writer.

Now and then a crazy thought bubbled up inside of him like milk come to a boil: why not tear off this mantle of progressivism he’d wrapped around himself and start screaming, ‘To hell with Tirpathi! Damn progressivism! You and your folk songs are all phoney! I want my wife back! All your desires have shrivelled up in your folk songs, but I’m still young. Have pity on me. Just think about it: I, who couldn’t stay away from his wife for even a minute before, have had to sleep with you under a common quilt for the last twenty-five days! If this isn’t tyranny, what is?’