Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

‘Sympathize!’ Tears rushed to his eyes. ‘I don’t need sympathy. Sympathy can’t bring her back, can’t pull the woman I loved out of the abyss of death and return her to me. You’ve never loved. No, you have not. Of that I’m certain. For you are unscathed by its failure. Look at me,’ he demanded, and looked down at himself. ‘Do you see any spot where love hasn’t left its scars? My entire existence is nothing more than the rubble of love’s crumbling abode. How can I relate this tale to you? And why should I? You wouldn’t understand. The words, “My mother died,” are not likely to affect a stranger as much as the deceased’s son. To you, indeed to anybody, my tale of love would seem commonplace. But the way it has affected me, how can anyone understand it! Only I have experienced this love and only I have borne its brunt.’

He fell silent. His throat had become dry; this was obvious from his repeated attempts to swallow.

‘Did she deceive you?’ I asked him. ‘Or was there something else?’

‘Deceive? She could never deceive. For God’s sake don’t use that word. She wasn’t a woman, she was an angel. But woe to Death that couldn’t bear to see us happy and gathered her up in its wings and took her away forever. . Ah! You’ve opened my wounds. So now listen. I’ll tell you part of that distressing tale. She came from a distinguished, wealthy family. When we first met, I’d already squandered away the whole of my ancestral property on a life of debauchery. Nothing remained. I left my home and went to Lucknow. Since I used to own a car, driving was the one skill I had. So I decided to become a chauffeur. My first job was at the residence of the Dipty *Sahib and she was his only daughter.’

He drifted off into his own thoughts and stopped talking. I remained silent. After some time he snapped out of his reverie and said, ‘What was I saying?’

‘That you worked for a dipty sahib.’

‘Yes. She was the Dipty Sahib’s only daughter. Every morning at nine I’d drive her, Zohra, to school. She observed purdah, but how long can one remain hidden from one’s chauffeur! I was able to see her face on the very second day. She wasn’t just beautiful; she had something quite special about her. She was a serious, poised young woman. The straight parting in her hair gave her an unusual aura of dignity. She. . she. . How do I explain to you what she was really like. I don’t have words to describe her inner and outer beauty.’

He kept reciting his Zohra’s accomplishments for a long time, making several attempts along the way to describe her in words, but failing repeatedly. It seemed that too many thoughts had crowded into his head. Now and then his face would light up in the middle of a sentence, only to be quickly clouded over by a gloom that left him talking in sighs. He told his story extremely slowly, as if relishing it himself. His story, which he recounted one piece at a time, went something like this:

He fell madly in love with Zohra. He spent the first few days looking for opportunities to steal a glance at her and working out all kinds of plans. But when he thought about it seriously, he recognized that he and Zohra were just too far apart. How could a chauffeur even think of falling in love with the daughter of his employer? That bitter realization clouded his days with unrelenting sadness. One day, though, he dared to scribble a few lines to Zohra on a piece of paper.

Zohra! I know I’m your servant. Your father pays me a salary of thirty rupees a month. But. . I’m in love with you. What shall I do? I’m so confused.

He stuck the scrap of paper inside one of her books. The next morning when he drove her to school his hands shook, and many times he very nearly lost control of the steering. But, thank God, no accident occurred. He spent the whole day in a strange state of mind. In the evening, when he was driving her back from school, she asked him to pull over. When he did so, she spoke in an extremely serious tone. ‘Look, Naim, don’t repeat this ever again. I haven’t told my father about the letter you slipped inside my book. But if you ever do this sort of thing again, I’ll be forced to report the matter to him. Understand? Okay, now drive on.’

After that, he tried to quit working for the Dipty Sahib and to extinguish his love for Zohra, but he didn’t succeed. This tug of war went on for a month. One day he gathered his courage and wrote her another letter. He slipped it into her book and waited for the decree of his fate. He was sure that he’d be dismissed from his job the very next morning, but that didn’t happen. On their way back from school that evening, Zohra once again spoke to him and admonished him. ‘If you don’t care about your own honour, at least care about mine.’ She said all this with such gravity and firmness that Naim’s hopes were completely dashed. Immediately he resolved to quit his job and leave Lucknow for good. At the end of the month he wrote one final letter to Zohra by the dim light of his lantern. Filled with pain and anguish he told her,

Zohra! I’ve tried my best to act on your advice. Believe me, I have. But I cannot control my heart. This is the last time I shall ever write to you. I’ll leave Lucknow by tomorrow evening so you need not say anything to your father. Your silence will decide my fate. I’ll live far away from you. . but don’t think that I’ll ever stop loving you. My heart will always be at your feet no matter where I live. I will always remember the days when I drove the car carefully and slowly in order to spare you any jolts. What else could I have done for you anyway?

This letter, too, he slipped into her book as soon as an opportunity presented itself. As they drove to her school in the morning, Zohra didn’t say a word to him. Nor did she speak to him on their way back in the evening. He went to his room utterly dejected, packed the few belongings he had and put the bundle away in a corner. Then he sat down on his cot and, in the pale light of the lantern, thought about the precipitous gulf that separated him from Zohra.

He was very despondent, well aware of his own insignificance. After all, he was just a lowly servant! What right did he have to fall in love with his employer’s daughter? But the thought occurred to him from time to time that it wasn’t his fault that he’d fallen in love with her. And besides, his love was not a deception. Around midnight, as he was mulling over these thoughts, he heard a knock on the door. His heart jumped to his throat, but then he thought it must be the gardener. It was possible someone had fallen sick at his home and he’d come for help. But when he opened the door, Zohra was standing across from him — yes, Zohra — in the December chill, without even her shawl.

He was tongue-tied. He didn’t know what to say. There was a deathly silence for a few moments and then, finally, her lips moved and she said in a trembling voice, ‘Well, Naim, I’m here. Tell me what you’d like me to do. But before you tell me, I have a few questions of my own.’

Naim was silent.

Zohra asked, ‘Do you really love me?’

Naim was hurt. His face flushed. ‘Zohra,’ he said, ‘you’re asking a question which would debase my love if I attempted to answer it. Instead, let me ask you: Don’t I?’

Zohra didn’t respond. After a brief silence she said, ‘My father has a lot of money, but I don’t have a single paisa to my name. Whatever is said to be mine is, in reality, not mine but his. Without wealth would you still love me as dearly?’

Being an overly sensitive man, Naim felt as if the question was an affront to his dignity. In a voice weighed down by sorrow, he said, ‘For God’s sake, Zohra, please don’t ask questions whose answers are so commonplace that you can even find them in third-rate romance novels.’