Saadat Manto - My Name Is Radha

Behind the hedges of the spacious garden adjacent to the kothi, a cat had delivered a litter of kittens, all eaten up by the tomcat. Later, behind the same hedges, a bitch gave birth to a few puppies. They had now grown quite big and yelped all the time, inside the kothi and out, plus they deposited their terrible filth everywhere. Poison took care of them. They died one by one, their mother too. No one knew where the father had disappeared. But had he been around he would surely have met his end just as expeditiously.

Many years had passed since. . The hedges of the garden adjacent to the kothi had been trimmed and pruned scores of times. Behind them, many more cats and bitches had brought forth their young ones and they had all gone down the same path to oblivion without leaving any trace of their existence. Her hens — by far the most ill-mannered ever seen — often used the same hedges for laying their eggs and she was obliged to collect them every morning and carry them into the house.

In the same garden some man had brutally murdered their maid. . her red silk drawstring with tassels on the ends, bought for eight annas from an itinerant vendor only two days before, was coiled tightly around her neck. The killer had twisted the cord with such unforgiving force that her eyes had popped out.

The gruesome sight of the maid had so affected her that she fell victim to a raging fever and lost consciousness. . and was perhaps still unconscious. But no, how could that be? Long after the murder, the hens had laid eggs, many cats had given birth to kittens, and a marriage ceremony had also taken place. . a bitch with a red dupatta wrapped around her neck, her glittering kurta. . of brocade with gold and silver threads woven into the fabric. But this bitch’s eyes weren’t bulging out of their sockets; they seemed, rather, to have sunk down into them.

A military band had performed in the garden. . Soldiers in red uniforms had marched with those colourful skins tucked under their arms, spewing out a medley of strange sounds. When the decorative tassels attached to their outfits fell off, people rushed to pick them up and tie them to the ends of their drawstrings. . but when morning came all of this had simply vanished without a trace. . they’d all been poisoned.

God knows what got into the bride’s head that she decided to give birth to a baby, just one baby, and not behind the hedges, but in her own bed. . so roly-poly, a veritable red pom-pom. . But the mother died. . father too. . both done in by the child. . no one knew where the father was. Had he been there, his death was certain. Heaven knows where those band-wallahs in their tasselled uniforms had disappeared that they never came back. Tomcats roamed around the garden and gawked at her menacingly, taking her for a basketful of animal skin, membrane and pieces of tough meat, though her basket had only oranges.

One day she pulled out her two oranges and set them in front of the mirror. She backed up a little and looked at them, but she didn’t see them. . Because they’re teeny-weeny, she reasoned. . But they started to grow even as she was looking at them. She wrapped them in a silk cloth and put them away on the mantel above the fireplace.

Now the dogs went into action, barking their heads off. . The oranges started to roll around on the floor. They bounced on every floor of the kothi, hopped into every room, and sprinted off nimbly to large, spacious gardens. . The dogs played with them, and sparred with each other.

Strangely, two dogs in the pack died from ingesting poison. Her stout, middle-aged housemaid gobbled up the rest. She had been recruited to replace the young maid whom some man had murdered by tying her tasselled drawstring in a tight noose around her neck.

She did have a mother, six or seven years older than her stout, middle-aged housemaid, but not as stout or sturdy as her. She went out for a ride in the car every morning and evening, to lay eggs behind the hedges in faraway gardens like her bad-mannered hens. Neither she nor her driver picked them up.

She would fry omelettes, which left stains on her clothes. Eventually, after the stains had dried, she would throw the clothes away behind the hedges in the garden. Buzzards would swoop down to carry them away.

A girlfriend of hers came to see her one day — Pakistan Mail, Car No. 9612 PL. It was murderously hot. Daddy was in the hills, Mother on an outing. . she was drenched in sweat. The minute she entered she took off her blouse, flung it aside and installed herself directly under the ceiling fan. Her boiling milk jugs cooled off gradually. Her own milk jugs were cold but slowly began to warm up. Finally, heaving away, both the hot jugs and the cold became lukewarm and morphed into a tart lassi.

The band played for that girlfriend, though the soldiers’ uniforms had no fluttering tassels. Instead they had brass vessels, some small, some large, that produced sound, booming and soft. . soft and booming, when pounded on.

When this girlfriend next met her, she said that she was noticing changes in herself. And in fact she had changed. Now she had two bellies: one old, one new, one riding over the top of its mate. Her boobs looked ravaged.

Then the band played for her brother. . the middle-aged, stout housemaid cried inconsolably. Her brother tried his best to comfort her. Poor thing, she had remembered her own wedding.

Her brother and his wife quarrelled all night long, she crying, he laughing. . In the morning, the stout, middle-aged servant took her brother away to comfort him. The bride was given her bath. . her red, tasselled drawstring was threaded through the waistband of her shalwar. . only heaven knows why it wasn’t strung around her neck.

Her eyes were very large. If her throat was squeezed very hard, they would have popped out like the eyes of a slaughtered goat. . and she would have come down with a high fever again. But she was still not free of that first one. . Maybe it had subsided and this was a new fever from which she had now lost consciousness.

Her mother was learning to drive. . her father had set himself up permanently in a hotel. He came now and then, visited with his son and left. The son called his wife home sometimes. Every two or three days, when an old memory revisited the stout, middle-aged servant, she broke into tears. He tried to calm her down, she tried to pat and caress him; the bride would go away.

Her sister-in-law — the bride — she. . and yes, the girlfriend — Pakistan Mail, Car No. 9612 PL — go for an outing and wander off to Ajanta, where painting is taught. They gawk at the paintings and are transformed into pictures themselves. A riot of colours — red, yellow, green, blue — all screaming. Their creator — a good-looking man with long hair who wears an overcoat in winter as well as summer, uses wooden clogs whether inside or out — calms them down. After he has muted his colours, he starts screaming himself and is pacified by the three of them, who now begin to scream themselves.

The three of them make hundreds of specimens of abstract art at Ajanta. In the paintings of one, every woman is shown with two bellies, in every imaginable colour; in those of another every woman is stout and middle-aged; and in the work of still another everything is a profusion of tassels. A jumbled mass of drawstrings.

Abstract paintings kept coming, but the boobs of all three kept drying up and shrinking. . It was really very hot, so hot that they were bathing in sweat. Shortly after entering the room, its doors fitted with khus frames, they peeled off their blouses and planted themselves directly under the ceiling fan. The fan kept whirring away, but their boobs failed to grow hot or cold.

Her mother was in the other room. The driver was wiping oil off her body.