Saadat Manto - Bombay Stories

Izzat got mad. ‘Look … look … now you’re finally starting to act like a real husband.’

I couldn’t help but laugh, and Nasir laughed too. When Izzat Jahan saw us laughing, a smile stole across her lips.

‘How else can I put it?’ she asked. ‘This is exactly what husbands are like — I mean he’s trying to bully me.’

Nasir and Izzat stayed for a bit and then left. Our first meeting was very interesting. Although I wasn’t able to talk to her in any detail about the Communist Movement, she still impressed me, and I imagined that future meetings would provide a lot of food for thought.

Then I found an apartment, and my wife joined me. One day Izzat came by, and the two of them took to each other immediately. From then on Izzat Jahan would often come by our apartment in the evening on her way home. I wanted to discuss with her every aspect of Communism from Hegel, Marx and Engels to Bakunin, Kropotkin and Trotsky, but she and my wife would go off to the other room and lie down on the bed and talk about who knows what. If I happened to mention the effects of Stalin’s current war policy on Communist theory, she would ask my wife the price of white wool. If I said anything about the hypocrisy of M.N. Roy, she would praise some song from the movie Family . And if I got her to sit down next to me and was able to begin a conversation, she would get up after several minutes to go into the kitchen to peel onions for my wife.

Izzat Jahan worked all day at the Party office. She lived twenty or twenty-five miles from there, and her commute was an hour by train each way, so she would return home tired every evening. Nasir worked in a factory, and every month he had to work fifteen nights as an overseer. But Izzat was happy. She repeated to my wife, ‘The meaning of marriage is not just a bed, and the meaning of a husband is not just someone to sleep with at night. People were not made just for this.’

My wife liked these words very much.

Izzat Jahan put a lot of herself into her work, and so I didn’t mind that she was too tired to talk to me. Nor did I mind that she spent more time with my wife, as it was clear she enjoyed her company more than mine. Nonetheless I was curious to see if Izzat would change my wife’s thinking — which was an average middle-class capitalist perspective — into her own.

One day I came back from work early, probably around two. I knocked on the door, but instead of my wife opening it, it was Nasir. Straightaway I went to put my bag on my desk as I usually did. Nasir lay down on my bed, pulling a blanket over him. Izzat Jahan was lying on the sofa on the other side of the room.

‘I think I’m coming down with a fever,’ Nasir said.

I looked in Izzat Jahan’s direction and asked, ‘And you?’

‘No, I’m just lying down.’

‘Where’s Ruqaiya?’ I asked.

‘She’s sleeping in the other room,’ Izzat said.

‘What’s this? Everyone’s sleeping?’ Then I called out for my wife, ‘Ruqaiya! Ruqaiya!’

‘Yes!’ her sleepy voice answered.

‘Come here. How long are you going to sleep?’

Ruqaiya came into the room, rubbing her eyes, and sat down next to Izzat. Nasir was still lying with the blanket pulled over him. I sat in a chair next to my wife, and we talked for a while about deep sleep because Ruqaiya always slept like a baby. Then Izzat and my wife began talking about needlework. In the meantime tea was made. Nasir drank a cup in bed, and I gave him two aspirins for his fever.

Izzat Jahan and Nasir stayed for a little less than two hours and then left.

When I lay down on my bed that night, I folded the top pillow in half as I always do, and what did I see but the bottom pillow did not have a pillowcase. Ruqaiya was standing next to me changing her clothes. ‘Why isn’t there a pillowcase on this pillow?’ I asked.

Ruqaiya stared at the pillow, and in a tone of surprise said, ‘Well, where did that pillowcase go? Oh, yes — it was your friend.’

Smiling, I asked, ‘Nasir took it?’

‘How should I know?’ Ruqaiya said defensively. Then she relented. ‘Oh, it’s so embarrassing! I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I was sleeping in the other room and they were — your friend and his wife — damn them! They turned out to be very rude.’

The next day we found the pillowcase underneath the bed, and rats and cockroaches had soiled it. In addition to that, we also found the aspirin tablets I’d given to Nasir to relieve his fever.

WHEN Babu Har Gopal came from Lahore, Hamid found himself without anywhere to turn. As soon as Babu Har Gopal got there, he ordered Hamid, ‘Hey, get a taxi, quick.’

‘Why don’t you take it easy for a while?’ Hamid suggested. ‘You must be tired after your long trip.’

But Babu Har Gopal was stubborn. ‘No, no, I’m not tired at all. I came here to have fun, not lie around. It was hard for me to get these ten days off. You’re all mine — you have to do whatever I say. This time I’m going to do everything I want. Now get me some soda water.’

‘Look, Babu Har Gopal, don’t start drinking so early in the morning.’

But his guest didn’t listen. He opened a cupboard, took out a bottle of Johnny Walker and unscrewed the cap. ‘If you’re not going to get any soda, then at least get some water,’ Babu Har Gopal said. ‘Or don’t I get any water, either?’

At forty, Babu Har Gopal was ten years older than Hamid. Hamid obeyed his guest because he was a friend of his deceased father. Hamid immediately ordered some soda water, and then implored, ‘Look, please don’t force me to drink. You know my wife is very strict.’ But nothing he said had any effect on Babu Har Gopal, so Hamid had to drink too. As expected, after Babu Har Gopal downed four shots, he said, ‘Okay, then, let’s go see what we can see. But look, let’s get a nice taxi, a private one, I like those a lot. I hate the meter ones.’

Hamid arranged for a private taxi. It was a new Ford, and the driver was also very good. Babu Har Gopal was very happy. He sat down in the taxi, took out his big wallet, and looked to see how much he had. He had a bunch of hundred-rupee notes. He sighed in relief and muttered to himself, ‘That’s enough.’ Then he turned to the driver. ‘Okay, then. Driver, let’s go.’

The driver turned his hat on sideways and asked, ‘Where to, sir?’ Babu Har Gopal motioned to Hamid. ‘You tell him.’

Hamid thought for a moment and then mentioned a destination, and the taxi headed in that direction. Minutes later, Bombay’s most famous pimp was sitting next to them. They went around to a number of places to see the girls, but Hamid didn’t like any of them. He liked things neat and tidy; he loved cleanliness. Hamid thought the girls looked dirty and vulgar in their make-up and wore the expression that all prostitutes share. This disgusted him. He wanted all women, even prostitutes, to maintain their dignity, and he didn’t want whores to lose their feminine modesty just because of their job. On the other hand, Babu Har Gopal had dirty habits. He was very rich, and if he’d wanted, he could have ordered all of Bombay washed clean with soap and water. But he didn’t care about personal cleanliness. When he took a bath, he used hardly any water, and he wouldn’t shave for days on end. He would pour expensive whisky even into a dirty glass. And he didn’t care whom he held deep in his nightly clasps. He would sleep with even a dirty beggar woman and then the next morning exclaim, ‘That was great! She was wonderful!’

Hamid couldn’t get over his surprise about the kind of person Babu Har Gopal was. He wore an extremely expensive shervani and yet his undershirt made Hamid want to vomit. He carried a hanky but used the hem of his kurta to wipe mucus from his runny nose. He ate off dirty plates and was unfazed. His pillowcase was soiled and stank, but he never thought of changing it. Hamid thought long and hard, but he couldn’t understand him. He often asked, ‘Babuji, why aren’t you revolted by dirtiness?’