My Name Is Radha

by Saadat Hasan Manto

  I was feeling very sleepy and didn’t bother to change. I stretched out on the other bed and threw the blanket lying at the foot of the mattress over my legs. I was about to fall asleep when a bangle-clad forearm shot up from behind Saeed and reached towards the chair standing nearby, on which hung a white muslin shalwar.

  I sat up with a start, only to see Janki in bed with Saeed. I picked up the shalwar and tossed it to her.

  I went to Narain’s room and woke him up. He’d been out on a film shoot until two in the morning. I felt sorry for waking the poor man up, but found him quite eager to chat, though not on any particular subject. My sudden appearance had apparently provoked him into talking a bit of nonsense with me so we indulged in such talk till nine o’clock. The subject of Janki cropped up several times during our gossip session.

  When I told him about the bra incident, he laughed his head off, and mentioned, ‘The juiciest part is yet to come: When I stuck my mouth to her ear and whispered, “What size is your bra?” she told me straight away, “Twenty-four.” Sometime later, she suddenly realized the strangeness of my question and started cursing me. She’s just like a little girl. Whenever we run into each other, she quickly pulls her dupatta over her breast. But, Manto, let me tell you, she’s really a very faithful woman.’

  ‘Just how do you know that?’ I asked.

  ‘How?’ He smiled. ‘A woman who gives the size of her bra to a total stranger could never dupe anyone.’

  Strange logic, that! But Narain bent over backwards to convince me that Janki was, in fact, a very sincere woman. ‘Manto,’ he said, ‘you have no idea how devoted she is to Saeed. It’s no picnic looking after someone as indifferent as him. I see how well she’s acquitting herself of this difficult but self-imposed responsibility. She’s not just a woman, she’s also a diligent and honest ayah. She spends a good half an hour every morning waking that donkey up. She makes him brush his teeth, helps him dress, feeds him breakfast, and, at night, when he goes to bed after a shot of rum, she closes the door and settles in beside him. If she runs into someone at the studio, she only talks about Saeed. “Saeed Sahib is such a nice man. Saeed Sahib sings so well. Saeed Sahib has put on weight. Saeed Sahib’s pullover is ready. I’ve sent for a pair of Potohari sandals from Peshawar for Saeed Sahib. Saeed Sahib has a slight headache, I’m going to get some Aspro for him. Saeed Sahib wrote a she‘r for me today.” But whenever she bumps into me, she invariably frowns remembering the incident about the bra.’

  I stayed with Saeed and Narain for nearly ten days, but Saeed didn’t once talk to me about Janki, perhaps because their affair had become an old story by that time. But Janki and I talked quite a bit. She was very happy with Saeed, though she complained a lot about his devil-may-care attitude. ‘Saadat Sahib,’ she would say, ‘he doesn’t give a damn about his health. He’s so careless. He’s always immersed in his own thoughts and pays no attention to anything. What! You’re laughing? Would you believe it, I even have to ask him every day whether or not he’s been to the toilet.’

  Everything Narain had told me about Janki was absolutely correct. I always found her fretting over Saeed. During my ten-day stay at Andheri, I found Janki’s selfless dedication to Saeed very impressive, but I also kept thinking about Aziz. ‘Janki had worried about him no less.’ I wondered, ‘Has she entirely forgotten him now that she’s met Saeed?’

  Had I stayed longer, I would certainly have asked Janki about it. However, I got into an argument over something with the owner of the film company that wanted to negotiate a contract with me, and to ease my anxiety I immediately took off for Puna. Barely two days passed before I received Aziz’s telegram—he was in Bombay, on his way to Puna. Six hours later he was with me.

  And early the next morning Janki was knocking at the door.

  Aziz and Janki met, but they didn’t show the ardour or the impatience of lovers meeting after a long separation—perhaps because my relations with Aziz had been quite formal and reserved right from the start of our friendship and they didn’t want to appear impetuous in my presence.

  Aziz thought that he might stay in a hotel. However, the friend with whom I was staying was in Kolhapur on an outdoor shooting assignment so I let Aziz and Janki stay with me. The flat had three rooms; Janki and Aziz could sleep in separate rooms. I suppose I ought to have put both in one room, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t that informal with Aziz. Besides, at no point had he ever even vaguely hinted at his affair with Janki.

  In the evening, the two of them went out to see a movie. I stayed home as I wanted to get started on a new film script. I was awake until two in the morning and then fell asleep. I’d already given the spare key to Aziz, so there was no reason to worry about letting them in.

  Regardless of how late I work, I always wake up once between three-thirty and four o’clock to have a drink of water. Out of habit, I woke up that night too. It just so happened that Aziz was occupying the room in which I had set up my bed, and where my water pitcher was kept.

  I would never have bothered Aziz had I not been so awfully thirsty. My throat was completely parched from the large amount of whisky I had guzzled. I knocked. Some time elapsed before the door opened. Rubbing her dopey eyes, Janki said, ‘Saeed Sahib!’ But when she saw me, a soft ‘Oh’ escaped from her lips.

  Inside Aziz was sleeping on the bed. I smiled spontaneously. Janki smiled too, her lips twisted to one side. I picked up the pitcher and left.

  I woke up in the morning to a smoke cloud in my room. I rushed to the kitchen, only to find Janki burning piles of paper to heat water for Aziz’s bath. Tears, from the smoke, were streaming down her cheeks. When she saw me, she smiled and blew into the brazier. ‘Aziz Sahib catches a cold if he takes a cold bath,’ she explained. ‘He was sick the whole month I wasn’t in Peshawar to look after him. And why wouldn’t he be sick! He’d stopped taking his medicine! Did you notice how much weight he’s lost?’

  After his bath Aziz went out to take care of some business and Janki asked me to send a telegram to Saeed. ‘I really should have informed him yesterday, right after I arrived here. Oh, what a terrible mistake! He must be worried sick.’

  She had me write out the text. She informed him of her safe arrival in Puna, but she seemed more concerned about how he was doing and whether he was taking his shots regularly.

  Four days went by, during which Janki sent Saeed five telegrams. He didn’t write back. As she made plans to return to Bombay, suddenly, towards evening, Aziz came down with something. Janki asked me to send Saeed another telegram. She spent the whole night ministering to Aziz. It was just an ordinary fever, but Janki was exceedingly worried. I think there was also a measure of anxiety over Saeed’s silence. ‘I’m convinced,’ she said, ‘Saeed Sahib is ill, otherwise he would surely have written back.’

  On the fifth day, Saeed’s telegram arrived in the evening. Aziz was present at the time. ‘I’m very sick,’ Saeed had written and instructed her to ‘return forthwith’. Just before the telegram arrived, Janki was laughing her head off over something I’d said, but the minute she heard about Saeed’s illness she fell silent. Aziz took her silence very badly and when he addressed her, I could sense the bitterness in his tone. I got up and went out.

  When I returned in the evening I found the two sitting apart as though they’d had a prolonged quarrel. There were dried tear stains on Janki’s cheeks. After some small talk, she picked up her handbag and said to Aziz, ‘I’m going, but I’ll return soon,’ and then to me, ‘Saadat Sahib, please watch over him; his fever still hasn’t broken.’

  I accompanied her to the station, bought her a ticket on the black market and left after seating her in her carriage.

  Back at the flat, Aziz had a light fever. We talked a long time, without any mention of Janki.

  Three days later, around five-thirty in the morning, I heard the sound of someone opening the front door. Janki entered. She was asking Aziz in convoluted words about his health and whether he had taken his medicine regular
ly while she was away. I didn’t hear what Aziz said, but half an hour later, just as my eyes were closing under the onslaught of sleep, I heard the muted sound of Aziz’s angry voice. I couldn’t make out anything clearly except that he was giving her a piece of his mind.

  At ten, he took a cold bath, leaving the water Janki had heated for him untouched. When I reported this to her, tears welled up in her eyes.

  After the bath, Aziz got dressed and went out. Janki stayed in bed. About three in the afternoon I approached her, only to find that she was running a very high temperature. I went out to get a doctor and saw that Aziz was having his stuff loaded on to a tonga.

  ‘Where are you headed?’ I asked.

  He shook my hand and said, ‘Bombay. God willing, we’ll meet again.’

  He hopped on to the carriage and left before I could tell him about Janki’s raging fever.

  The doctor examined her carefully and diagnosed bronchitis. If proper care were not taken, it was likely that it would turn into pneumonia. He wrote out a prescription and walked out. Janki asked me about Aziz. My first thought was to suppress the information, but there was no point in hiding it. I told her he had left. She was shocked. She buried her head in the pillow and cried for a long time.

  The next morning, her fever had gone down one degree and she was feeling slightly better when Saeed’s telegram arrived from Bombay, around eleven. In very harsh words he reproached her, ‘Remember, you didn’t keep your promise.’

  I tried as hard as I could but wasn’t able to stop her from leaving at once. She boarded the Puna Express in her precarious condition and left.

  Five or six days later, Narain sent me a telegram. ‘An urgent matter has come up; come at once.’

  I thought he had negotiated a contract for me with some producer. This was not the case. When I reached Bombay, he told me that Janki’s condition was very grave. Her bronchitis had in fact turned into pneumonia. And that, after arriving in Bombay, she had fallen while attempting to board a moving train bound for Andheri and hurt both of her thighs badly.

  Janki bore her bodily pain bravely, but when she came to Andheri and Saeed pointed to her baggage and said, ‘Please leave,’ her spirit broke. Narain told me, ‘Saeed’s cold words left her stunned for a moment. I’m sure she must have thought of throwing herself under a train and dying. Saadat, regardless of what you may say about Saeed, his conduct with women is atrocious, downright unmanly. The poor thing! She was running a high fever and she’d fallen from a moving train, all of that just to get to this donkey as soon as possible. But he couldn’t care less! He repeated “Please leave!” without even a wisp of emotion, so coldly, just like a line of newsprint spilling out of a linotype machine. It hurt me a lot. I got up and left. When I returned in the evening, Janki was nowhere; Saeed was sitting on the bed writing a poem with a glass of rum in front of him. I didn’t say a word to him and went to my room. The next day I found out at the studio that Janki was lying critically ill at the house of one of the girls who work as extras. I talked to the owner of the studio and had her admitted to a hospital. She’s been there since yesterday. Tell me what else I can do. She hates me, so I can’t visit her. You go and check on her condition.’

  I went to the hospital. The first thing she asked was how Aziz and Saeed were doing. I must say, I was deeply touched by her concern for the two even after how shabbily they had treated her.

  Her condition was critical. The doctors told me that she had inflammation in both lungs and her life was in danger. What floored me, though, was that Janki was weathering her condition with fortitude.

  When I returned to the studio and looked for Narain, I was told that he had been gone since morning. In the evening, when he came back, he showed me three small vials, their mouths tightly sealed with rubber caps, and asked, ‘Know what these are?’

  ‘No. They look like some kind of shots.’

  He smiled. ‘Yes, shots. Penicillin shots.’

  I was astounded. Penicillin, in those days, was being produced in very small quantities in America and England, and all of it was earmarked strictly for military hospitals. ‘Penicillin is a rare commodity. How did you get hold of it?’ I asked.

  He smiled and said, ‘When I was a boy I was quite the expert at breaking into our family safe to steal money. Well, I did that again today. I sneaked into the military hospital and swiped these three vials from the refrigerator. Let’s move Janki to a hotel. Come on, hurry up.’

  I took a taxi to the hospital and brought her to the hotel where Narain had already booked two rooms.

  In an exceedingly feeble voice, she asked over and over again why I had brought her here, and every time I replied that she would know soon. When she did learn, that is, when Narain entered the room with a syringe in hand, she turned her face away in dismay and said to me, ‘Saadat Sahib, tell him to go away.’

  Narain smiled. ‘Darling, spit out your anger. Your life is at stake.’

  Janki became furious. In spite of her weak condition, she sat up in the bed and said, ‘Saadat Sahib, either you throw this bastard out or I’m leaving.’

  Narain pressed her back on the bed and said smiling, ‘This bastard won’t budge without giving you the shot. I’m warning you, don’t even try to resist.’

  He gave the syringe to me, grabbed her arm with one hand, rubbed her upper arm with a cotton ball doused in alcohol, handed the cotton to me, took the syringe and plunged the needle into the muscle. She screamed, but the penicillin had entered her body.

  As soon as Narain released her arm, she began to cry. He paid no attention, cleaned the injection site with the cotton ball, and went into the other room.

  The first shot was administered at nine in the evening. The second was due in three hours. Narain warned me that if it was delayed by even half an hour, the penicillin’s effect would wear off entirely. So he stayed awake. At eleven he got the stove going, sterilized the needle in boiling water, and filled the syringe with the next dose.

  Janki’s eyes were shut, her breathing raspy. Narain rubbed an alcohol-soaked wad of cotton on her other arm and jabbed the needle. A shrill cry escaped from her lips. Narain pulled the needle out, rubbed the cotton over the spot on her arm, and said, ‘We’ll give her the third dose at three o’clock.’

  I have no idea when he gave her the third or even the fourth injection. When I awoke I heard the hissing sound of the burning stove and Narain asking the attendant for some ice. He had to keep the penicillin chilled.

  At nine in the morning, we entered her room to give her the fifth shot and found her lying in bed with her eyes open. She scowled at Narain with hatred in her eyes, but said nothing. Narain smiled. ‘How are you feeling, my dear?’

  Janki remained quiet.

  Narain stood close to her and said, ‘These shots I’m jabbing into your arm are not love shots. They’re meant to cure your pneumonia. I swiped them from the military hospital . . . Come on, lie on your stomach and slide your shalwar down your bottom a bit. Have you ever taken an injection there?’

  He poked a spot on her derrière with his finger. Naked hate, tinged with awe, surfaced in Janki’s eyes.

  When she turned over, Narain said, ‘Shabash!’ and before she could resist, he pulled down her shalwar and ordered me, ‘Come on, rub some alcohol here!’

  She started to thrash her legs every which way. ‘Don’t,’ Narain shouted, ‘I’m giving you a shot, one way or another.’

  The fifth injection was given successfully. Fifteen more remained, to be administered every three hours. The whole course required forty-five hours.

  Five injections later, Janki’s condition still hadn’t shown any signs of improvement. But Narain believed in the miraculous potency of penicillin. He was absolutely sure that she would walk out of here fully cured. We talked a long time about this drug.

  Around eleven Narain’s servant walked in with a telegram for me. It was from a film company in Puna. They had asked me to rush over. I had to leave.

  I r
eturned to Bombay on the company’s business about ten or fifteen days later. After finishing my work I went to Andheri. Saeed told me that Narain was still holed up in the hotel. Since the hotel was quite far away in the city, I spent the night in Andheri.

  I reached the hotel the next morning around eight and found Narain’s door ajar. I entered but found the room empty. I pushed on the door to the other room. Something flashed before my eyes. The moment she saw me, Janki slipped under the quilt. Narain was sprawled out next to her. Seeing me leave, he shouted, ‘Come, Manto, come in. I always forget to latch the door. Come, yaar, sit down in this chair, but first hand Janki’s shalwar to her, will you?’

  Mozel

  For the first time in four years, Trilochan was looking up at the night sky, and only because anxiety was gnawing at his heart. He had gone up to the terrace at Advani Chambers to clear his mind in the fresh air.

  The cloudless sky stretched out like a sprawling canopy over the whole of Bombay. The city lights, dotting the landscape as far as Trilochan could see, appeared like so many fallen stars caught in a maze of tall buildings, glimmering like fireflies in the darkness.

  It was an entirely novel experience for him to be out under the open sky at night. He had an overwhelming feeling that he’d been cooped up inside his flat for the last four years, and deprived of one of nature’s great bounties. It must have been around three in the morning. A light, cool breeze was blowing around him, unlike the usual mechanical breeze of the electric fan, which always felt uncomfortably thick and heavy. When he woke up in the morning it was never without the feeling that his body had been thrashed all night long. Now, as every fibre of his being joyously soaked in the fresh morning air, he felt delightfully revived. He had climbed up to the terrace in a feverishly agitated state, but within half an hour it had subsided enough for him to think clearly.