Naked Voices

by Sadat Hasan Manto

  The burden on my heart lightened somewhat. Seven hundred people were removed from our land; moreover, all seven hundred became martyrs – the scales were tipped in my favour.

  I have been doing this ever since. Every day, according to the fitness of things, I manage to make at least two or three people drink from the cup of blessed martyrdom.

  As I have said before, no matter what the work, a man needs to work hard. May god bless Ameenabai Chitlekar of Sholapur who used to sing a sher which – forgive me – is actually not entirely appropriate in this context. Be that as it may, what I mean to say is that I have had to work very hard. For instance take the case of the man (whose existence was as meaningless as the fifth wheel of a horse-drawn carriage) for whom I had to spend one entire day chucking banana peels on the road so that he could drink from the cup of martyrdom. But, as far as I have been able to understand, there is an appointed time for martyrdom, just as there is an appointed hour for death. That man eventually gained martyrdom on the tenth day when he slipped from a banana skin on a hard floor.

  These days I am having a huge building constructed. One of my own companies has got the tender – worth two lakh rupees. A clear seventy-five thousand will go straight into my pocket. I have bought all sorts of insurance policies as well. By my reckoning, the whole building will collapse like a house of cards by the time the third floor goes up, because of the materials I have used. Three-hundred workers would be at work at the time. I have complete faith in the House of God – all three hundred shall become martyrs. However, perchance, if one or two remain alive it can only mean that they must be scoundrels of the first degree and God does not – cannot – accept their martyrdom.

  SHARIFAN

  When Qasim opened the door to his house, he could feel the searing pain of a single bullet, the one embedded in his right calf. But a film of crimson blood blinded him when he entered his house and saw his wife’s corpse. He was about to pick up the axe used for chopping firewood and go and unleash blood and mayhem on the streets and bazaars outside when he suddenly remembered Sharifan, his daughter.

  He began to call out loudly, ‘Sharifan … Sharifan!’

  The two doors leading to the verandah were both shut. Qasim thought, she must be hiding from fear. He went to the door, put his mouth close to a crack in the door and called out, ‘Sharifan … Sharifan … it is me … your father.’ But there was no answer from inside. Qasim pushed the door with both hands. It flew open and he fell flat on his face into the verandah. He gathered his wits and tried to pick him- self up when he felt as though … He let out a terrible shout and sprang to his feet.

  Barely a yard away, lay the dead body of a young girl – naked, absolutely naked. Fair complexioned, taut and nubile; the small pert breasts were raised towards the ceiling. Qasim felt shaken to the very core of his being. A scream, one that could rent the skies, emerged deep from within his innards but he had pursed his lips so tightly that it could not escape. His eyes had shut of their own volition. Still, he covered his face with both his hands. A muffled sound emerged from his lips, ‘Sharifan…’ With his eyes still tightly shut, he groped around and picked up some clothes, flung them over Sharifan’s body and left the verandah without stopping to see that the clothes had fallen some distance away from her.

  Once outside, he did not see his wife’s dead body. It is entirely possible that he could not see it because his eyes were filled with the sight of Sharifan’s naked dead body. He picked up the axe he used to chop fire-wood and left the house.

  Axe in hand he swept through the deserted bazaar like a stream of molten lava. He reached the chowk and came face to face with a Sikh. The Sikh was a tall strapping fellow but Qasim struck him down with such force that he fell like a tree uprooted in a fierce storm.

  The blood coursing through Qasim’s veins grew hot and began to splutter as boiling oil does when the smallest drop of water falls on it.

  Far away in the distance, across the road, he saw some men. Like an arrow, he made his way towards them. The men saw him and raised cries of ‘Har Har Mahadev!’ Instead of responding with a slogan of his own, he spat out the worse mother-sister oaths he knew and pushed his way into them.

  In a matter of minutes, three fresh corpses lay quivering on the road. The others in the group ran away. Qasim kept swirling his axe in the empty air. His eyes were shut. He jostled against one of the dead bodies and fell down. He thought someone had pushed him and began to scream obscenities and shout, ‘Kill them! Kill them!’

  But when he felt neither a hand at his throat nor a blow on his body, he opened his eyes and saw – the road was empty except for the three dead bodies and him.

  For a minute he felt disappointed, for perhaps he wanted to die. But, all of a sudden, the image of Sharifan – naked Sharifan – appeared before his eyes and turned his whole being into a pile of burning gun- powder. He got to his feet, picked up the axe and once again began to sweep through the street like a stream of molten lava.

  He crossed several bazaars but they were all deserted. He entered an alley but it had only Muslim houses. Thwarted, he turned the stream of his lava in another direction. He reached a bazaar. Raising his axe high in the air, he began to twirl it ferociously and spew the most god-awful mother-sister profanities that he could think of.

  Suddenly, he made the painful discovery that all this while he had been uttering only mother-sister curses. Now he began to scream daughter-related obscenities and in one single breath spat out all the daughter curses he knew. Still he felt no better. Irritable and dissatisfied, he walked towards a house whose doorway had something written over it in Hindi.

  The door was locked from inside. Like a madman, Qasim began to strike it with his axe. In a matter of minutes, the door broke into pieces. Qasim entered the house. It was a small house.

  Qasim forced the choicest profanities from his parched throat and shouted, ‘Come out! Come out!’

  The door to the verandah directly in front of him creaked. Qasim kept forcing a stream of obscenities from his parched throat till, finally, the door opened and a girl appeared.

  Qasim clenched his teeth then thundered, ‘Who are you?’

  The girl ran her tongue over dry lips and answered, ‘A Hindu.’

  Qasim stood ramrod erect. He looked at the girl with fire-shot eyes. She was barely fourteen or fifteen years old. He dropped the axe from his hand. Like a falcon he pounced upon the girl and shoved her into the verandah. And, then, began to tear her clothes with both his hands like a man possessed. Scraps and shreds of fabric began to fly in all directions as though someone was carding cotton. Qasim remained busy taking his vengeance for about half an hour. The girl offered no resistance because she had become unconscious as soon as she had fallen on the floor.

  When Qasim opened his eyes he found he had both his hands wrapped tightly around the girl’s throat. With a jerk, he removed them and jumped to his feet. Drenched in sweat, he looked once in her direction so that he could fully satisfy himself.

  Barely a yard away, lay the dead body of a young girl – naked, absolutely naked. Fair complexioned, taut and nubile; the small pert breasts were raised towards the ceiling. Qasim’s eyes shut tightly of their own volition. He covered his face with both his hands. The hot sweat that drenched his body turned into a sheet of ice and the lava coursing through his veins hardened into a rock.

  In a little while a man entered the house, brandishing a sword. He saw a man with eyes tightly shut trying to throw a blanket with trembling hands over something lying on the floor. He thundered, ‘Who are you?’

  Qasim was startled. His eyes flew open. Yet he couldn’t see a thing.

  The man with the sword shouted, ‘Qasim!’

  Once again, Qasim got startled. He tried to peer at the man standing not far away but he couldn’t recognize him because his eyes refused to see anything.

  Nervously, the man asked, ‘What are you doing here?’

  With quivering hands, Qasim pointed at the blank
et lying on the floor and in a hollow voice uttered only one word, ‘Sharifan…’

  The man stepped forward urgently and pushed the blanket aside. The first sight of the naked corpse made him tremble; abruptly he shut his eyes tightly. The sword fell from his hand. With his hand over his eyes, he left the house on wobbly legs, muttering ‘Bimla … Bimla …’

  NAKED VOICES

  Bholu and Gama were brothers. Both were extremely hard working. Bholu was an itinerant tinsmith. Every morning he would set out on his rounds with his little torch perched atop his head. He would roam the streets and alleys of the city calling out to people to get their dishes and utensils tin-coated. Every evening when he returned he would invariably have three or four rupees tucked into the fold of his tehmad.

  Gama was a hawker. He too roamed the streets all day long with his basket on top of his head. He too earned three or four rupees every day, but he had the bad habit of drinking. Every evening after buying his evening meal he had to buy a quart of country liquor. The liquor would go straight to his head. Everyone knew he lived to drink.

  Bholu tried his best to make Gama, who was two years older, see sense: drinking is not a good habit; you are a married man; why do you waste money; your wife will live a far better life if you save the money you throw on drink every day; do you like to see her go around half- naked dressed in those rags; and so on and so forth. Bholu’s words would go into Gama’s one ear and come out of the other. Till, finally, Bholu admitted defeat and stopped saying anything on the subject.

  Both were refugees. They had found a large building with many servant quarters. Like many other squatters, they had staked their claim to a quarter on the second floor. This was home for them.

  Winter passed easily enough but when summer came, life became difficult for poor Gama. Bholu would spread a cot on the roof and sleep comfortably enough but what was poor Gama to do? He had a wife and upstairs there was no provision for any sort of curtain. Gama was not alone in this; all the married men who lived in these quarters faced the same dilemma.

  One day Kallan came up with a bright idea. He put a screen of sackcloth all around his cot. And so a shield of sorts was created. The others followed suit and put up similar scaffolding around the beds they shared with their wives. Bholu pitched in to help his brother and in a few days the two dug bamboos and made a curtain of jute sacks and old blankets. While it was true that the screen blocked the wind, it was still much better than the inferno downstairs in the quarter.

  Sleeping on the roof brought about a strange change in Bholu’s character. So far, he had never been much of a believer in marriage. In fact, he had decided never to get caught in the marital trap. Whenever Gama raised the subject of his marriage, he would always say, ‘No, brother, I don’t want to take on unnecessary troubles.’ But with the coming of summer and sleeping on the roof for ten or fifteen days, he soon changed his mind. One evening, he told his brother, ‘Get me married or I shall go mad.’

  Gama asked, ‘Is this some sort of a joke?’

  But Bholu became even more serious and said, ‘You don’t know … I have been awake for fifteen nights.’

  Gama asked, ‘Why? What has happened?’

  ‘Nothing much, except that left, right … on every side there is some thing happening…there are strange voices and peculiar sounds from every direction. Can anyone sleep in such circumstances?’

  Gama laughed heartily from behind his thick moustaches.

  Bholu became suddenly bashful. Then he said, ‘That Kallan, he is the limit! He talks such rubbish all night long … And that wife of his … she is as unstoppable as he is! Their kids are lying around sleeping, but do they care!’

  As always, Gama was sitting and drinking. When Bholu went away, he gathered his cronies and told them with great relish that his brother could not sleep these days. And when he came to the reason why poor Bholu could not sleep and began to explain it at some length in his inimitable style, his audience began to hold their sides and roll with mirth. The next time Gama’s drinking buddies met Bholu, they teased him mercilessly. One asked, ‘Tell us, what does Kallan say to his wife?’ Another said, ‘So, you get your thrills free … you watch films all night long … that too talkies!’ Others said other, far more naughty things. Bholu got irritated with their bawdy jokes.

  The next day he caught hold of Gama at a time when Gama was sober and said, ‘You have turned me into a joke. Look here, whatever I told you was not a figment of my imagination. I am human. By God, I tell you, I can’t sleep! It has been twenty days since I have been awake. You get me married quickly or else, I swear by all that is holy, I shall crack up. Your wife has the five hundred rupees that I have been saving … use it to make all the necessary arrangements.’

  Gama twisted his moustache thoughtfully and then said, ‘All right, everything will be taken care of. I shall talk to my wife tonight and ask her to find a suitable girl from among her friends.’

  Within a month and a half a bride had been found and all the necessary preparations made. Gama’s wife chose Aisha, the tinsmith Samad’s daughter. She was a pretty girl, knew household chores and Samad too was a decent sort. People in the neighbourhood respected him. Bholu was a good catch – he was hard working and healthy. A date for the wedding was fixed for the middle of June. Samad protested that he didn’t want to get his daughter married at the peak of summer, but when Gama insisted, he had to give in.

  Four days before the wedding, Bholu made arrangements for his bride by erecting jute matting around the cot. He fixed stout bamboo poles and made sure the matting was securely tied. He got the cot strung with fresh ropes and bought a brand new earthen pot to keep on the ledge beside his bed. He even bought new glasses to drink from. He did all this with great care and enthusiasm.

  The first night he slept behind the sack curtain, he felt a bit odd. He was used to the fresh cool air but decided he better get used to this. He had begun to sleep behind the curtain four days before the wedding. The first night he lay there and thought of his wife-to-be he became drenched in sweat. The voices began to echo in his ears – voices that wouldn’t let him sleep and would make the strangest of thoughts race through his head.

  ‘Will we also produce the same sounds?… Will the people around us listen to our sounds? … Will they also stay awake all night long because our voices will not let them sleep? … What if someone were to peer?’

  Poor Bholu grew even more agitated. Only one worry niggled away at him: is a sack cloth any sort of curtain at all? There are people scattered in every direction; the smallest rustle can be heard in the still of the night. How do people live such naked lives? There is only one roof; the wife lies on one cot, the husband on the other. Countless eyes and ears are wide open in every direction. Even if they can’t see in the dark, they can hear everything. The smallest sound can make an entire picture come to life … What can the sack curtain do? The moment the sun comes up, everything is laid bare … There is Kallan pumping his wife’s breasts … There in that corner lies his brother Gama. His tehmad is undone and lying crumpled in one corner. You can see the exposed stomach of Shanda, the sweetmaker Eidu’s unmarried daughter, peering through a gap in the sack curtain.

  The wedding day dawned and Bholu felt like running away, but where could he go? He was caught in a trap of his own making. Had he run away he would surely have committed suicide! But what a disgrace it would bring to the poor unfortunate girl! And the fuss everyone would make!

  ‘All right, let it be! After all, everyone does it. I shall get used to it, too.’ Bholu tried to bolster his courage as best as he could and brought his bride home.

  A ripple of excitement ran through the quarters. People congratulated both Gama and Bholu. Some of Bholu’s close friends teased him and tried to teach him a trick or two for the wedding night. Bholu heard them in silence. Gama’s wife spread the bedding for the newly-weds behind the sack curtain. Gama placed four large garlands of fragrant jasmine flowers beside the pillow. A friend bou
ght some jalebis dunked in milk.

  For a long time Bholu sat with his bride in the quarter below. The poor girl sat huddled under her bridal finery with her head covered and bowed. The heat was stifling. Bholu’s new kurta stuck to his body with sweat. He tried to fan himself with a hand-held fan but the air was still and heavy. Bholu had earlier decided that he wouldn’t go up to the roof, that he would spend the night here, below in the quarter but when the heat became unbearable he got up and asked his bride to come with him.

  They reached the roof and found utter stillness and quiet. As the bride walked demurely towards the bed, her silver anklets spoke up with every shy step. Bholu felt as though the sleep that lay blanketed all about them was jolted to life. People began to toss and turn on their cots. Others began to cough and clear their throats. Whispers and murmurs began to float in the turgid air. Flustered, Bholu grabbed his wife’s hand and pulled her hurriedly towards the sack curtain. The sound of muffled laughter reached his ears. His anxiety grew. He tried speaking to his wife but the whisperings all around him seemed to increase. In the far corner where Kallan had his bed, the cot began to creak insistently: chur-choo, chur-choo. When it died down, Gama’s iron cot began to speak.

  Shanda the sweetmaker’s unmarried daughter got up several times to drink water. Every time her glass knocked against the pot, it sounded like an explosion to Bholu’ ears. The sound of a match being lit came repeatedly from Khaire, the butcher’s son’s cot. Bholu abandoned all attempts at making a conversation with his bride. He was scared that the ears around him would swallow his words and all the cots would begin a chorus of chur-choo, chur-choo. With bated breath, he lay still and silent. Occasionally, he would steal a timid glance at his wife, who lay huddled up in the cot near his. She lay awake for some time and then fell asleep.

  Bholu wanted to sleep but couldn’t. Every few minutes some sound would reach his ears … the sounds would cause entire, life-like pictures to come to life and stand before him.