Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

This hurt her feelings. She made a face and perhaps swore at him in Marathi. He quickly realized his mistake and apologized sincerely. ‘Bai, please forgive me. I just asked. That’s all. But I do find it quite surprising that you sit here day after day all decked out. Do people visit you?’

The woman didn’t answer. He again realized his mistake and asked her in a matter-of-fact voice free of curiosity, ‘What’s your name?’

The woman was about to lift the curtain to go inside but stopped short and said, ‘Gangu Bai,’

‘Tell me, Gangu Bai, how much do you make in a day?’

The woman felt a note of compassion in his voice and came over to the window bars. ‘Six, sometimes seven rupees. . sometimes nothing.’

As he repeated Gangu Bai’s words—‘Six, sometimes seven rupees. . sometimes nothing’—he thought of the two hundred rupees in his pocket that he’d brought along to burn. An idea suddenly flashed across his mind. ‘Look, Gangu Bai, you make six or seven rupees a day. What if I gave you ten?’

‘For the work?’

‘No, not for the work. But you could think of it as for the work.’ He quickly pulled out a ten-rupee note from his pocket and pushed it across the bars. ‘Here, take it.’

Gangu Bai took the banknote, but she was gawking at him wonderingly.

‘Look, Gangu Bai, I’ll give you ten rupees every evening at about this time, but on one condition.’

‘Condition? What condition?’

‘That after you get your ten rupees, you’ll have your meal and go inside to sleep. I don’t want to see your lights on.’

A strange smile splashed across Gangu Bai’s lips.

‘Don’t laugh. I mean it. I never go back on my word.’

Then he headed for the gambling den. As he was climbing the stairs he thought, ‘I came here to blow two hundred anyway, so what if it’s one ninety now.’

Several days passed. The taxi stopped by the electric pole each evening. He got out, fixed the glasses on his nose, looked to his right at Gangu Bai ensconced on the takht behind the grillwork, arranged the front fold of his dhoti, pulled out a ten-rupee note and handed it to her. She touched it to her forehead, thanked him with a salaam, and he went upstairs to drop hundred and ninety rupees in card games. A couple of times on his way out, about eleven in the evening or two or three in the morning, he found Gangu Bai’s shop closed.

One evening after giving her ten rupees he went up to the den and finished early, by ten o’clock. He’d ended up with such unlucky cards on every hand that he’d lost that day’s quota within a few hours. He came down from the kotha and was getting into the taxi when his eyes fell on Gangu Bai’s shop. He was astonished to see that it was open and she was sitting on the takht behind the grillwork. It looked as if she was waiting for customers. He got out of the taxi and approached her. She panicked when she saw him, but by then he was already in front of her.

‘What’s this, Gangu Bai?’

She didn’t answer.

‘What a pity that you didn’t live up to your promise. Didn’t I say I wanted your lights off in the evening? And here you sit like. .’

His voice was filled with disappointment and sadness. Gangu Bai became thoughtful.

‘You’re bad,’ he said and started walking away.

‘Don’t go, Seth, stop,’ she called after him.

He stopped. Gangu Bai started with slow deliberation, measuring every word carefully. ‘Yes, I’m bad, very bad. But who is good here? Seth, you pay ten rupees to keep one light off, but look around you, how many more lights are still on.’

He looked through his thick lenses, first at the light bulb glaring right above Gangu Bai’s head and then at her tawny face. He bent his head and said, ‘No, Gangu Bai, no.’ He got into the taxi with a heart with no pleasure in it.

Chaudhry Maujo was sitting on a cot of coarse string-matting under the shady banyan and leisurely puffing away at his hookah. Wispy balls of smoke rose from his mouth and dissipated slowly in the stagnant air of the scorching afternoon.

Ploughing his little patch of land all morning had left him totally exhausted. The sun was unbearably hot, but there was nothing like the cool smoke of the hookah to suck away all the fatigue within seconds.

The sweat on his body had dried, and although the stagnant air was hardly any comfort for his overheated body, the cool and delicious smoke of the hookah was spiralling up to his head in indescribable waves of exhilaration.

It was nearing the time when Jaina, his daughter, would bring his repast of bread and lassi from home. She was very punctual about it, even though she didn’t have a soul to help her in her work. She’d had her mother, but Maujo had divorced her two years ago following a lengthy and particularly nasty argument.

Young Jaina was a very dutiful girl. She took good care of her father. She was diligent in finishing her work so there would be time to card cotton and prepare it for spinning, or to chat with the few girlfriends she had.

Maujo didn’t own much land, but it was enough to provide for his needs. His was a very small village, tucked away in a far-flung spot with no access to the railway. There was just a dirt road that connected it to a large village quite some distance away. Twice a month Chaudhry Maujo mounted his mare and rode there to buy necessities at a couple of shops.

He used to be a happy man, blissfully free of worries, except for the thought that sometimes assailed him: He had no male offspring. At such times he contented himself by thinking that he should be happy with whatever God had willed for him. But, after his wife had gone back to her parents, his life was no longer the same. It had become unspeakably cheerless and drab. It was as if she had carried all its delicious coolness and exuberance away with her.

Maujo was a religious man, but he knew only a few fundamentals of his faith: God is One and must be worshipped; Muhammad is His Prophet and it is incumbent to follow his teaching; and the Qur’an is the word of God which was revealed to Muhammad. That’s about it.

Ritual daily prayers and the Ramzan fast — well, these he had dispensed with. The village was far too small to afford a mosque; there were only a dozen or so houses, situated far apart. People did repeat ‘Allah! Allah!’ often enough in their speech and carried His fear in their hearts, but that was the extent of their devotion. Nearly every household had a copy of the Qur’an, but no one knew how to recite it. Everyone had placed it high up on a shelf, reverentially wrapped in its velvet sheath. It was only brought down from its sanctum when it was needed for someone to swear by it or take an oath to do something.

The maulvi was called in only when a boy or girl needed to be married. The village folk took care of the funeral prayer themselves, that too in their own tongue, not Arabic.

Chaudhry Maujo came in especially handy on such occasions. He had a way with words. They never failed to affect the listener deeply. No one could equal his manner of eulogizing the deceased and praying for his deliverance. Just last year when the strapping son of his friend Deeno died and was laid to rest in his grave, Maujo eulogized him thus:

‘Oh, what a handsome young man he was! When he spat, the spittle landed twenty yards away. No one, and I mean no one, in any villages far or near could match the sturdy projectile of his piss. And what an accomplished wrestler he was! He could wriggle out of an opponent’s hold as easily as unbuttoning a shirt.

‘Deeno, yaar, this is the worst day of your life! This terrible blow will affect you for the rest of your life. Was this the time for such a robust young man to die. . such a handsome young man? How the goldsmith’s lovely and headstrong daughter Neti had cast magic spells on him to win his love, but, bravo, your boy, Deeno, remained steadfast. He never gave in to her wiles. May God present him with the loveliest houri in Heaven, and may your boy never be tempted by her. And may God shower him with his mercy and blessings! Amen!’