Saadat Manto - Bombay Stories

Sarita was happy — Shahab was happy — Kifayat was happy — and seeing them all happy made Anwar happy too, and yet he was embarrassed for having been so inhibited. He felt a tingling sensation in his arms, and his repressed emotions awoke: he stretched loudly, yawned, and then felt ready to join in the revelry.

As she sang, Sarita took Anwar’s hat from his head, put it on and then jumped into the front seat to look at herself in the rearview mirror. Seeing Sarita wearing his hat, Anwar couldn’t remember whether he had been wearing it from the beginning of the car ride. He felt disoriented.

Sarita slapped Kifayat’s thigh and asked, ‘If I put on your pants, and wore your shirt and tie, would I look like a well-dressed businessman?’

But this talk of cross-dressing upset Shahab, and he shook Anwar’s arm, ‘By God, you’re such an idiot to have given her the hat!’ Anwar took these words to heart. He thought for a moment that he really was an idiot.

‘What’s your name?’ Kifayat asked Sarita.

‘My name?’ Sarita took the hat’s elastic cord and strapped in beneath her chin. ‘Sarita.’

‘Sarita, you’re not a woman but a firecracker,’ Shahab said.

Anwar wanted to say something, but Sarita began to sing in a loud voice, ‘I’m going to build my house in the City of Love and forget the rest of the world!’

Kifayat and Shahab felt transported, but Anwar still couldn’t get over his nerves. Sarita kept singing, ‘I’m going to build my house in the City of Love and forget the rest of the world …’ and she stretched out the last word for as long as her breath lasted. Her long hair was blowing back and forth, and it looked like a column of thick smoke spreading in the breeze. She was happy.

Sarita was happy — Shahab was happy — Kifayat was happy — and Anwar once again tried to join in, but when the song ended, everyone felt as though a shower of rain had suddenly stopped.

Kifayat asked Sarita to sing another song.

‘Yeah, one more,’ Shahab encouraged her. ‘If they could only hear us now!’

Sarita began to sing, ‘Ali has come to my courtyard. I’m staggering from joy!’ Hearing these lyrics, Kifayat began swerving the car from side to side. Then suddenly the winding road ended, and they found themselves near the sea. The sun was setting, and the breeze off the ocean was becoming colder by the minute.

Kifayat stopped the car. Sarita got out and set off running down the beach, and Kifayat and Shahab joined her. She ran upon the wet sand by the tall palm trees that rose along the ocean’s open vista, and she wondered what it was she wanted — she wanted to fade into the horizon, dissolve into the water, and soar so high into the sky that the palm trees stood beneath her; she wanted to absorb the sand’s moisture through her feet, and … and … the car, the speed, the lash of the rushing air … she felt transported.

The three young men from Hyderabad sat down on the wet sand and began to drink beer, but then Sarita grabbed a bottle from Kifayat and said, ‘Wait, let me pour you some.’

Sarita poured so quickly that the beer’s head rose over the glass’s edge, and this pleased her extraordinarily. She dipped her finger into the beer and licked off the foam, but it was very bitter and she immediately puckered her lips. Kifayat and Shahab burst out laughing. When he couldn’t stop, Kifayat had to look away to calm himself, and then he saw that Anwar too was laughing.

They had six bottles — some they poured quickly so that the head overflowed their glasses and its foam disappeared into the sand, and some they actually managed to drink. Sarita kept singing, and once when Anwar looked at her, he imagined that she was made of beer. The damp sea breeze was glistening on her dark cheeks. She was very happy, and now Anwar was too. He wished that the ocean’s water would change into beer, and then he would dive in with Sarita. Sarita picked up two empty bottles and banged them against each other. They clanged loudly, and she burst out laughing, and everyone followed suit.

‘Let’s go for a drive,’ she suggested to Kifayat. They left the bottles right there on the wet sand and raced ahead to the car to their seats. Kifayat started the engine and off they went. Soon the wind was rushing over them and Sarita’s long hair streamed up, over her head.

They began to sing. The car sped, lurching down the road, and Sarita kept singing where she sat in the back seat between Anwar, who was dozing, and Shahab. Mischievously, she started to run her fingers through Shahab’s hair, yet the only effect of this was that it lulled him to sleep. Sarita turned back to look at Anwar, and when she saw that he was still sleeping, she jumped into the front seat and whispered to Kifayat, ‘I’ve put your friends to sleep. Now it’s your turn.’

Kifayat smiled. ‘Then who’ll drive?’

‘The car will drive itself,’ Sarita answered, smiling.

The two lost track of time as they talked with each other, and before they realized it, they found themselves back in the bazaar where Kishori had ushered Sarita into the car. When they got to the factory wall with the ‘NO URINATING’ sign, Sarita said, ‘Okay, stop here.’

Kifayat stopped the car, and before he could say or do anything Sarita got out, waved goodbye and headed to her home. With his hands still on the wheel, Kifayat was replaying in his mind all that had just happened when Sarita stopped and turned around. She returned to the car, removed the ten-rupee note from her bra and dropped it onto the seat next to him. Startled, he looked at the note. ‘What’s this, Sarita?’

‘This money — why should I take it?’ she said before she turned and took off running. Kifayat stared in disbelief at the note, and when he turned to the back seat, his friends were fast asleep.

WE met exactly two years ago today at Apollo Bunder. It was in the evening when the last rays of the sun had disappeared behind the ocean’s distant waves, which looked like folds of thick cloth from the benches along the beach. On this side of the Gateway of India, I walked past the first bench where a man was getting his head massaged and sat down on the second. I looked out as far as I could see over the broad expanse of water. Far out, where the sea and the sky dissolved into each other, big waves were slowly rising. They looked like an enormous muddy carpet being rolled to the shore.

Light shone from the streetlamps along the beach, and its glimmering reflection formed thick lines across the water. Beneath the stone wall in front of me, the masts of sailboats were swaying lightly with their sails lashed to them. The sounds of the waves and the voices of the beach crowd merged into a humming sound that disappeared into the evening air. Once in a while the horn of a passing car would sound loudly, as though someone in the midst of listening to a very interesting story had said, ‘Hmm’.

I enjoy smoking at times like these. I put my hand into my pocket and took out my pack of cigarettes, but I couldn’t find any matches — who knew where I had lost them? I was just about to put the pack back into my pocket when someone nearby said, ‘Please, here’s a match.’

I turned around. A young man was standing behind the bench. People in Bombay usually have fair complexions, but his face was pale to a frightening degree. ‘You’re very kind,’ I thanked him.

He gave me the matches, and I thanked him again and invited him to sit down. ‘Please light your cigarette. I have to go,’ he said.

Suddenly I realized he was lying. I could tell from his tone that he was in no hurry and had nowhere to go. You may wonder how I could detect this from his tone alone, but that was exactly how it seemed. I said again, ‘What’s the hurry? Please sit down.’ I extended my cigarette pack towards him. ‘Help yourself.’