Saadat Manto - Naked Voices - Stories And Sketches

Salima answered in a voice laden with sadness, ‘I don’t believe that. As long as I live, I shall not be able to forgive myself. How could I, as a mother, commit such an unpardonable sin? How could I abandon my baby, the apple of my eye, leaving him at the mercy of the shrine’s caretakers? They can never be his mother; they can never look after him as I would.’

One fine day, she disappeared. She went straight to the saint’s hospice. She stayed there for over a week, made enquiries about her son but could find nothing about his whereabouts. Disappointed, she returned home and told her husband, ‘I shall not remember him anymore.’

Of course, she continued to remember him, but she did so secretly now, in her heart. With time, the mole on the baby’s right cheek became a scab on her heart.

A year passed and a daughter was born to her. The girl resembled her first born, but there was no mole on her right cheek. She named the baby Mujeeba because she had thought of naming her son Mujeeb. When the baby became two months old, Salima took her in her lap and, made a big black mole on her cheek by dabbing a spot of kohl. And she remembered her Mujeeb and began to cry. But as the tears began to fall down her cheeks, she wiped them with her dupatta, controlled herself and began to smile instead. She wanted to forget her sorrow.

Later, two sons were born to her. Her husband was very happy now.

Once, Salima went for a friend’s wedding, close to the mausoleum of Shahdole Sahab. Once again she made enquiries about her Mujeeb and was disappointed. She thought he must have died and so, upon her return, decided to hold a lavish funeral prayer for him on a Thursday. The women from the neighbourhood were curious: who had died? What was all this fuss for? But Salima gave no answer.

In the evening she took her ten-year-old daughter Mujeeba’s hand and took her to her room. With a spot of kohl, she made a large black mole on the girl’s cheek and kept planting kisses on it for a long, long time.

She considered Mujeeba her long-lost son. She had stopped thinking about him. After performing his last rites, she felt the burden on her heart had lessened. She built a grave for him inside her heart which she strewed with the choicest flowers from the garden of her imagination.

Her three children went to school. Salima would get them ready early every morning. She would have breakfast prepared for them. She would herself bathe and dress each one of them. When they went away to school, for a second she would be reminded of Mujeeb. Even though she had performed the last rites and the burden on her heart had lessened, sometime she felt as though the black mole on Mujeeb’s cheek had actually gone inside her brain.

One day, her three children ran up to her and said, ‘Ammi, we want to see the tamasha 2.’

She asked lovingly, ‘What sort of a tamasha?’

Her daughter, who was the eldest, said, ‘Ammi, there is a man who is showing the tamasha.’

Salima said, ‘All right, go and ask him to come. But he must show his tamasha outside; I can’t let him inside the house.’

The children ran to get the tamashawalla who performed his show much to the children’s amusement. When the show got over, Mujeeba went to her mother to get some money. Salima took a four-anna coin from her purse and came out. She reached her door and found a rat from Shahdole standing and shaking his head in the oddest possible manner. Salima laughed involuntarily.

Ten or twelve children surrounded the odd creature. They were creating such a din that you couldn’t hear a thing. Salima stretched her hand to give the four-anna coin to the creature when, suddenly, she stepped back — as though she had touched a live wire. The rat had a black mole on its right cheek. Salima looked carefully at it. Snot was dribbling down its nose. Mujeeba, who was standing close by, asked her mother, ‘Ammi, this rat … he looks like me … why? Am I a rat, too?’

Salima took the rat-boy’s hand and took him inside her house. She locked the door and kissed him. It was her Mujeeb. But he was behaving in such an odd way that the laughter that had welled up naturally inside poor, heart-broken Salima was giving way to sorrow.

She said to Mujeeb, ‘Son, I am your mother.’

The rat of Shahdole laughed loudly. He wiped a glob of snot on his sleeve, stretched his palm and said, ‘One paisa?’ The mother opened her purse but her eyes had already opened a stream of tears. She took out a 100-rupee note and gave it to the man who had turned her son into an itinerant roadshow. The man refused, saying he could not sell the only source of his livelihood so cheaply. Finally, Salima struck a deal with him for Rs 500. She paid the money and came inside the house to discover that Mujeeb had fled. Mujeeba told her that he had gone out from the back door. Salima’s womb kept calling out to Mujeeb, beseeching him to come back. But he was gone, never to return.

1 Gujarat, in the Sindh province of Pakistan, is home to many Sufi saints. The people here, though Muslims, attribute great importance to their local saints who they claim can work in mysterious ways, answering the prayers of the devout and fulfilling their wishes. People visit these shrines, tie threads, make mannat, or vow, to offer anything the saint should ask of them should their prayers be answered. Usually, the mannat takes the form of an offering of money or food. Occasionally, it can be marrying off a virgin daughter to the caretaker of the shrine. In this case, the mannat takes the form of offering the first-born to the saint, Shahdole sahab.

2 Itinerant tamashawallahs went around neighbourhoods showing spectacles ranging from dancing bears, prancing monkeys, families of acrobats, deformed babies, persons with congenital deformities or oddities. The tamasha, literally meaning spectacle, provided a crude form of amusement to the onlookers who usually threw a handful of coins, or sometimes food, sweets or fruit, for the benefit of the oddity on display and its owner. The practice continues in some parts of the subcontinent.

THE HUNDRED CANDLE

POWER BULB

He stood leaning against an electric pole in the square outside Kaisar Park where a few tongas stood awaiting customers and pondered over the desolation that had taken over everything around him.

Till two years ago this park had been a bustling, lively place; today it was a desolate wilderness. Where once men and women dressed in the most attractive fashionable clothes strutted about, today people clothed in abysmally dirty rags loiter about meaninglessly. There is a crowd in the market but it lacks both colour and energy. The cement buildings that ring the market have lost their sheen; they gape at each other, open mouthed and vacant eyed, like widowed women.

He is amazed by this loss of colour. Where has the bride’s vermilion disappeared? What happened to those lovely notes, those melodies that he had once heard here? It wasn’t very long ago that he had last come here — after all two years is not a very long time — when he had been enticed to come from Calcutta by a firm offering a better salary. How hard had he tried to rent a house in Kaisar Park and, despite a thousand entreaties, how unsuccessful he had been!

But now any cobbler, barber or weaver who wished to move into these flats and rooms could simply move in and take possession.

Where once a film company had had a swish office, stoves were lit. Where the city’s smartest people once gathered, a washerman now washed his filthy laundry.

What a great revolution in a mere two years!

He was surprised, yes, but he was also aware of the context and background of this revolution. Newspapers and friends who had stayed behind had told him about the storm that had hit this city. Yet he wondered what a strange storm it must have been for it had sucked the colour and shine from buildings. Men had killed men and debased women, but how had they managed to do the same to timber and mortar buildings?