And with that, the man fell silent, as though he would not speak again. I asked immediately, ‘What happened then?’
Tears came to his eyes. He said, ‘They were shot dead.’
I said nothing. The train slowed to a halt at the station. He called a coolie to carry his luggage. As he prepared to leave, I said, ‘I suspect you coined the ending of that particular story.’
Startled, he turned around and asked, ‘How do you know?’
I said, ‘There was a deep anguish in your voice.’
Swallowing the bitterness in his throat with his spit, my fellow-traveller said, ‘Yes, those bitches…’ He checked the invectives that rose to his lips. ‘They defiled the name of their martyred brother,’ he said and got off the train.
COWARD
The field was clear, but Javed was convinced that the lantern fixed by the Municipal Committee to the wall was staring at him. The wide courtyard, paved in a criss-cross fashion with thin, hand-fired Nanakshahi bricks, lay in front and on its own — as if away from the other buildings. Time and time again he tried crossing the courtyard to reach the corner house but that lantern, which was staring at him with its unblinking needle-sharp gaze, made his resolve totter and he would move away a few paces, closer to the big sewer. If he had wanted, he could have jumped across the sewer and crossed the courtyard in a few paces — just a few paces!
Javed lived far away from here but had reached here virtually in no time at all. His thoughts had raced faster than his steps. His mind had dwelt on many things on the way. He was no fool. He knew well enough that he was on his way to a prostitute and knew even better why he wanted to go to her.
He needed a woman — a woman, no matter what kind of woman. The need for a woman had not come up all of a sudden; it had been growing slowly inside him for a long time till it had attained its present form and now, suddenly, he felt as though he could not live another moment without a woman. He must get a woman — a woman whose thigh he could slap lightly, whose voice he could hear, a woman with whom he could talk in the most obscene manner possible.
Javed was an educated, sober sort of a chap. He knew the rights and wrongs, but in this matter was not willing to think any further. A desire had arisen deep inside him; it wasn’t a new desire by any means. It had sprung up several times before and, each time had been met with frustration despite innumerable attempts on his part. Defeated, he had reached the conclusion that he would never find a complete woman and if he were to continue searching for such a woman, he might one day just fall upon some woman walking by the road — like a mad dog that can bite any passerby.
Having failed to even pounce upon a passing woman like a mad dog, a new thought had crossed his mind. Now he no longer dreamt of passing his fingers through a woman’s hair. He still had a picture of the woman in his mind — the woman even had hair — but now he dreamt of pulling her hair out by the clumps, like a savage beast.
By now that image had quite left his mind — the image of a woman on whose lips, he thought, he would rest his own like a butterfly on a flower. Now he wanted to brand those lips with his hot lips. The thought of murmuring sweet nothings in a woman’s ear too had left him by now. He wanted to speak in a loud grating voice — speak of things that were as naked as his intentions.
Now there was no single, complete woman in his mind. He wanted a woman who had been chaffed and worn out so much that she looked like a low, fallen-down man — a woman who was half woman and half nothing in particular.
There was a time when Javed would feel a special sort of moistness in his eyes when ever he mouthed the word ‘woman’, when the mere thought of a woman would transport him to a strange moon-like place. He would utter the word — ‘woman’ — with the utmost care, scared as though this lifeless word might break with careless handling. For a long time, he had traversed this sublime, moon-like world relishing its pleasures. Till, finally, he discovered that a woman, the sort of woman he longed for, was only the sort that can be dreamt up by a man with a weak stomach!
Javed had now stepped out of the world of dreams. For a long time, he had tried to keep his unruly thoughts under control but now his body had woken up in a terrifying sort of way. The swiftness of his imagination had honed his bodily sensations into such fine zones of feelings that life had turned into a bed of needles for him. Every thought had turned into a spear and the woman had acquired a shape and form that, even if he wanted to, he would have found it difficult to describe her.
Javed had been human once; but now he hated human beings, so much so that he even hated himself. And that is why he wanted to debase himself in such a manner that all those beautiful thoughts that he had once strewn about his mind like flowers in a garden would be besmirched and soiled. ‘I have been unsuccessful in finding refinement, because all around me there is filth. I now want to destroy every atom and pore of my body and soul with this filth. My nose, that once used to quiver in search of fragrances, now twitches in anticipation at the thought of sniffing out the foulest of smells. And that is why, today, I have discarded the cloak of old thoughts and come to this neighbourhood where everything appears to be clothed in a mysterious stink. How frighteningly beautiful this world is!’
The courtyard, paved in a criss-cross fashion with thin, hand-fired Nanakshahi bricks, was in front of him. In the wan light of the lantern, Javed looked at the courtyard with new eyes. It appeared to him as though several naked women were lying there — some on their backs, others face down; all had bones jutting out at odd angles. He resolved to cross the brick-paved floor and reach the staircase of the corner house and climb up to the brothel. But the Municipal Committee’s lantern kept staring unblinkingly at him. His advancing steps retreated and he stopped. Thwarted, he wondered: ‘Why is the lantern staring at me? Why is it putting obstacles in my path?’
He knew it was a figment of his imagination and had nothing to do with reality. Yet, his advancing steps retreated and he stood beside the sewer holding in check all the ugly thoughts rearing in his head. He began to believe that this hesitation of twenty-seven years that had been bequeathed to him as a legacy had seeped into that lantern. That shrinking hesitation, that he thought he had left behind at home like a discarded second skin, had reached here long before him — here where he was about to play the dirtiest game of his life. A game that would cover him with slime and blacken his soul with darkness.
A grubby, filthy woman lived in that house. She kept four or five young women who plied their trade with ceaseless crassness — be it in the full light of day or the darkness of night. These women worked all day and all night like the pump that sucks out filth from choked sewers. A friend had told Javed about them, someone who had buried the corpse of love and beauty innumerable times in this gross graveyard. He used to tell Javed, ‘You go on and on about women, tell me, where is a woman? I have seen a woman only once in my life… my mother. I have seen women in purdah but I have heard a great deal about them too. Whenever I feel the need for a woman I find the choicest companion at Mai Jeeva’s brothel. By God, Mai Jeeva is not a woman; she is an angel. May God make her live till the Day of Judgement!’
Javed had heard a great deal about Mai Jeeva and the four or five women who worked the trade under her. He knew that one of them wore dark glasses all the time because she had lost her eyes due to some disease. Another was a coal-black girl who laughed all the time. Whenever Javed thought of her, a strange picture rose in front of his eyes. ‘I want precisely such a woman… one who laughs all the time. When she laughs, her dark lips must be opening up like the murky bubbles that form in stinking, rotting water and burst when they reach the surface.’