Saadat Manto - Bombay Stories

He went down to the taxi. Lata came and sat next to him. When she touched him, Hamid felt all his tension flush from his body. He wanted to hold her, but Lata raised her hand, forbidding him to.

He dropped her off at seven thirty that evening and immediately lost all peace of mind. He was restless all night. Hamid was married and had two small children, and he knew he was being truly foolish. If his wife found out, there would be a scene. If he had seen Lata just once, that would have been one thing but it looked as though the affair wasn’t going to end anytime soon. He resolved never again to go to Shivaji Park, but by ten the next morning he was sleeping with Lata at a hotel.

Hamid went to Lata’s for fifteen straight days and in the process spent 2,000 rupees. On top of this, his absence had put his business in trouble. Hamid knew what was happening but Lata had taken possession of his heart and soul. Finally Hamid drew up his courage: he forced himself to go back to his business, stay busy, and forget Lata.

In the meantime Babu Har Gopal finished his research into filth and debauchery and went back to Lahore.

Four months passed, and Hamid kept his promises. But one day he happened to be going by Shivaji Park, and he spontaneously told the driver, ‘Stop here.’ The taxi stopped. Hamid thought, ‘No, this isn’t right. I should tell the driver to drive on.’ But he opened the door, exited the taxi and went up.

When Lata came out, Hamid saw she had put on weight. Her breasts were fuller, and her face had become chubby. Hamid handed over the hundred rupees and took her to a hotel. Once they were there she told him she was pregnant, and he lost all presence of mind. Stunned, he asked, ‘Who — who is the father?’

Lata didn’t understand what he was asking, and once he finally got through to her, she shook her head and said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t have any idea?’

‘No.’

Hamid cleared his throat. ‘So — it’s not mine?’

‘I don’t know.’

When Hamid questioned her in detail he found out that Lata’s keepers had tried to get her to abort the baby, but nothing had worked. No drug had any effect, other than the one that made her so sick that she had to spend a month in bed. Hamid thought things over, but only one thing made any sense, and that was that he needed to get a good doctor’s advice as soon as possible because they were planning to send her to her village.

Hamid dropped her off at her house and went to see a doctor friend who told him, ‘Look here, this is very dangerous, a matter of life and death.’

Hamid was at his wit’s end, ‘It’s a matter of life and death for me too! It’s got to be mine. I’ve calculated it carefully, and I’ve asked her too. For the love of God, think about what this means for me. What if it’s a girl? The thought makes me tremble. If you don’t help me, I’m going to go crazy thinking about this.’

The doctor gave him some medicine, and Hamid gave it to Lata. He was almost rabid in his expectation of good news, but the medicine did nothing. He managed to get a hold of another drug but that one didn’t work either. Now Lata’s pregnancy was showing. They wanted to send her to her village, but Hamid told them, ‘No, wait a little longer. I’m going to try something else.’

But he didn’t do anything. Hamid became paralysed from thinking too much. What should he do, what shouldn’t he do? He couldn’t figure anything out. He cursed Babu Har Gopal over and over, and he cursed himself too. If Lata had a girl, she too, would become a prostitute. He couldn’t bear this thought — it was reason enough to drown himself.

He began to hate Lata. Her beauty no longer stirred the emotions it once had, and if he happened to touch her, he felt as though he had thrust his hand into burning embers. He wanted her to die before giving birth to his baby. She had been sleeping with other guys — why the hell did she have to get pregnant with his kid?

Hamid wanted to stab her swollen stomach, or do something else to kill the child, and Lata too, was beside herself with worry. She had never wanted to have a baby. Moreover it was physically painful. In the beginning she was weak from throwing up, and now she had abdominal cramps. But Hamid imagined she didn’t care — if she didn’t care about her own situation, then at least she should look at what he was going through, feel some pity, and do away with the baby!

After the drugs failed, Hamid tried charms and quack remedies. But the baby was stubborn. Admitting defeat, Hamid gave permission to Lata to go back to her village, but he also went in secret to see where her house was. According to his reckoning, the baby was due in the first week of October. Hamid decided to get someone to kill the baby and so started hanging out with Dada Karim, the gangster. He wined and dined him, wasting a lot of money in order to prime him for his request.

Then Hamid told Dada Karim everything, and the price was set at 1,000 rupees. Hamid immediately handed over the money, and then Dada Karim said, ‘I don’t have it in me to kill such a young baby. I’ll bring it to you, and you can do whatever you like with it. Your secret will die with me — you don’t have to worry about that.’

Hamid agreed. He planned to put the child on the railroad tracks so a passing train would crush it — that or something else. He took Dada Karim to Lata’s village. Dada Karim learned that the child had been born fifteen days earlier, and suddenly Hamid felt the same joy rising in him that he had felt when his first boy had been born. But he immediately repressed this and said to Karim, ‘Look, let’s get it over with tonight.’

At midnight Hamid was waiting in an abandoned field; a strange storm was raging in his mind. With great difficulty, he had resolved to commit the murder at hand. The stone on the ground before him was large enough to kill the baby, and several times he had picked it up to measure its weight. At twelve thirty, Hamid heard footsteps. His heart began to beat so strongly that he thought it would burst from his chest. Dada Karim appeared from out of the darkness, and he was carrying a small bundle wrapped in cloth. He came up to Hamid, put the bundle in his trembling arms, and said, ‘My part’s done. I’m out of here.’ Then he left.

Hamid was shaking badly. The baby was squirming in the bundle. Hamid put it on the ground and tried to get his trembling under control. When he calmed down a little, he picked up the heavy stone. He felt over the bundle for the baby’s head and was about to bring the stone down when he thought he should look at least once at the baby. He put the stone aside and with his tremulous hands got out his box of matches and lit one. It burnt out in his fingers, as he couldn’t bring himself look at the baby. He thought for a moment. He gathered his courage, lit another match, and pulled back the cloth. After a quick glance, he looked back at the baby. The match fizzled out. Wait — who did the baby look like? He had seen this face somewhere, but when and where?

Hamid quickly lit another match and examined the baby’s face. Suddenly the face of a man came into focus, the man who lived with Lata at Shivaji Park. Hamid swore, ‘Well, fuck this! It’s his spitting image. Just like him!’

And bursting with laughter, he walked off into the night.

HER name was Mrs. Stella Jackson, but everyone called her Mummy. She was middle-aged and of average height. Her husband had been killed in the First World War, and she had been getting his pension for about ten years.

I don’t know how she got to Pune or for how long she had been living there. In fact I never tried to figure out where she came from. She was so immediately interesting that you never thought to ask about her past, and you never worried whether she had any relatives because she was connected with everything that happened in Pune. It’s possible I’m exaggerating a little, but it seems like each and every one of my memories of Pune include her.