Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

Everything looked washed and immaculately clean in the studio, even Niaz Muhammad’s cats, who normally looked revoltingly filthy. Both of them were lying on the bench opposite me, cleaning their faces with their soft velvety paws. Neelam wore a spotless white georgette sari with a matching blouse of white linen, creating a subdued and pleasant contrast against the darkish skin of her slender arms.

For a moment I wondered, ‘Why is she looking so different?’

Suddenly our eyes collided and I found the answer in her distracted glance. She’d fallen in love.

She gestured to me to come over. For a while we talked about this and that. After Raj Kishore left, she asked me, ‘Will you come along with me today?’

We arrived at her house at six in the evening. She tossed her bag on the sofa as soon as we entered and said without looking at me, ‘It’s not what you’re thinking.’

I understood her meaning. So I asked, ‘How do you know what I was thinking?’

The same muted but mysterious smile appeared on her lips again.

‘Because we had both thought the same thing. . Maybe you didn’t think about it later, but after much deliberation I’ve concluded that we were both wrong.’

‘What if I say we were both right?’

‘Then we are both stupid,’ she said, plopping down on the sofa.

In no time at all the sombre look on her face deepened. ‘How can that be, Sadiq? I’m not a naive young girl who doesn’t know what’s inside her heart. How old do you think I am?’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘Absolutely right. But what you don’t know is that I already knew what love was when I was only ten years old. Forget knowing what love is, I was actually in love. By God I was. I was seized by a murderous love clear up to the age of sixteen. How can I ever love anyone now? Not a chance.’

She looked at my frozen expression and said nervously. ‘I know you’ll never accept it, no you won’t, not even if I bare my heart to you. Don’t I know you well enough? But by God, may I die if I lie to you. . my heart is incapable of loving anyone any more. However, I can at least say this much. .’ She hesitated.

I kept quiet as she had already drifted into deep thought. Perhaps she was trying to articulate what that ‘this much’ was.

Soon the same fleeting smile that had a way of adding a touch of knowing mischief crossed her lips again. She sprang up from the sofa and began saying, ‘But at least I can say that it’s not love. I’m positive. Whether it is some other affliction. . I can’t say. Sadiq, I want to believe it.’

‘You mean you want to make yourself believe it?’

That blew her fuse. ‘You’re very mean. . One must never abandon good form when saying something. . Why do I have to make you believe me anyway. . It’s me I’m trying to convince. The trouble is, I’m finding that hard to do. Can’t you help me?’

She sat down beside me, toying with her little finger, and asked, ‘What’s your opinion of Raj Kishore? I mean, what is it in him that you think I have a thing for.’ She let go of the finger and started playing with her fingers one by one, distractedly. ‘I don’t like the things he says, I don’t like his acting, I don’t like his diary. . God knows what nonsense he was spewing out.’

Cranky, she got up from the sofa. ‘Don’t know what’s happening to me. I just want a big commotion. . a big noise, like cats going at one another. . clouds of smoke spilling forth. . I’d be drenched in sweat. .’ Then she suddenly turned towards me and asked, ‘Sadiq, what do you think, what kind of woman am I?’

I smiled and answered, ‘I’ve never understood either cats or women.’

‘Why is that?’

I thought for a moment and said, ‘A cat used to live in our house. Once a year she was seized by bouts of terrible whining. . and then a tomcat would suddenly appear out of nowhere and the two would go at it with more ferocity than you ever saw, leaving both of them bruised, battered and bleeding. But soon after, our auntie cat would become the mother of four kittens.’

She looked as though some disagreeable taste had flooded her mouth. ‘Sheesh, what a dirty mind you have!’ Then, after chewing a cardamom to improve the taste in her mouth, she said, ‘I hate kids. Anyway, let’s just drop it.’

She opened her paan box and started preparing one for me with her slim, delicate fingers. With tiny spoons she dug into small, narrow cups containing lime and catechu pastes and, with finesse, applied them to a paan leaf already stripped of its central vein. She folded the leaf into a cone and offered it to me. ‘Sadiq, what do you think?’ she asked absent-mindedly.

‘About what?’

Chopping a piece of roasted betel nut into smaller bits with her sarota , she replied, ‘About this silliness that has started for no sane reason at all. If it’s not silliness, what else could it be? I mean I’m totally confused. Tearing at myself, mending myself. God only knows what lies ahead if this stupidity is allowed to continue. You don’t know, I’m a formidable woman.’

‘Formidable — whatever do you mean?’

The same mysterious, almost imperceptible smile flitted across her face. ‘You’re awfully shameless. You know everything, yet you insist on poking me with these soft needles to make me blurt it out myself.’

The whites of her eyes turned a shade of pink.

‘I’m a very hot-tempered woman — is that so difficult to understand?’

She suddenly sprang to her feet. ‘Go now. I want to take a bath.’

I left.

For quite a while after that she didn’t mention Raj Kishore to me. Still, we somehow knew one another’s thoughts. I knew what was going through her mind and she, mine. This silent exchange went on for a few days.

One day Kirpalani, who was directing Ban ki Sundri , was watching the heroine rehearse her song. All of us had piled into the music room. Neelam was ensconced in a chair and was slowly tapping her feet, keeping time to the music. It was a pedestrian song, but the melody was quite good. When the rehearsal ended, in walked Raj Kishore with his khadi shoulder bag. One by one he greeted director Kirpalani, music director Ghosh, and sound recordist P.N. Mogha in English. He joined his hands and said namaskar to Miss Eidan Bai and then informed her, ‘Sister Eidan, yesterday I saw you in Crawford Market. I was buying oranges for aap ki bhabhi . *when I spotted your car. .’ As he turned his head, his eyes fell on Neelam who sat buried in a low chair by the piano. His hands rose spontaneously to say namaskar to her, but the moment she saw him she catapulted out of her chair and warned him, ‘Raj Sahib, please don’t call me “sister”.’

She said it with such measured gravity that everyone in the music room was dazed for a moment. An embarrassed Raj Kishore could only mutter a feeble ‘Why?’

She didn’t answer and stomped out.

Three days later when I went to Shamlal’s paan shop at about three in the afternoon, people were still gossiping about this incident. ‘Saali, her own intentions must be dirty,’ Shamlal was asserting proudly. ‘Why else would a woman mind Raj Bhai calling her sister? But mark my words — she won’t get what she’s after. Raj Bhai doesn’t go easy on his zipper.’

This Raj Bhai’s zipper was getting on my nerves. I didn’t say anything to Shamlal. I just sat down and quietly listened to his and his customers’ chatter, laced with exaggeration and next to nothing of substance.

Everyone at the studio knew what happened in the music room. Actually, for the third day running this was the only topic one heard being discussed: Why did Miss Neelam suddenly forbid Raj Kishore from calling her ‘sister’? While I didn’t hear anything directly from Raj Kishore about the matter, it reached me through one of his friends that he had made interesting comments about the incident in his diary and prayed to God to keep Miss Neelam’s heart and mind chaste. Nothing notable happened for a few days after the incident.