‘I put them on with a bit of effort. She called out: “Are you done?”
‘“Yes,” I said. She came in and told me to go again: “I am scared he’ll be here!”
‘I took the burqa in my hand and was sallying forth when she said: “What about all this other stuff?” I looked at the sari, blouse, petticoat and two halves of the rubber ball. I said: “Let these remain.”
‘She didn’t respond to that. I walked towards the door. She came with me. When I opened it and was on the other side, she smiled and said: “Aadaab arz karta hoon.”
‘I never saw her after that. She went away somewhere the next day. I tried to look for her and asked around but nobody could tell me much.
‘Her kurta and pyjamas are still with me. Perhaps my sari, blouse and petticoat are still with her. And those two halves of the rubber ball. I cannot say if they are. But I know that this wasn’t the sort of thing that either of us will ever be able to forget.’
The boy who liked asking girls for the time said this: ‘When I moved to Bombay, I was ecstatic because I saw girls walking around everywhere, often wearing watches.
‘One day, in Nagpada’s Jewish neighbourhood, I saw a Parsi girl on the footpath. She was walking with quick strides towards Batliwala Hospital. On her slender white wrist, I could see the black strap of a watch. I was about 200 metres behind her, a distance I covered in no time.
‘I walked a couple of steps ahead of her and turned around to ask in Gujarati:“Tamari ghadiyal ma ketla vagya?” (What time is it in your watch?)
‘She lifted her wrist, but the watch was gone!
‘“Mari ghadiyal kyan chhe?” (Where’s my watch?) she exclaimed.
‘My Gujarati gambit was over.
‘I said in Hindustani: “Aap ki ghadi mujhe kya maaloom kahan hai?” (How should I know where your watch is?)
‘Man, she began shrieking. In Gujarati. And in her Parsi-
manic manner. I was terrified. I had seen it on her wrist only moments before — god knows where it had vanished.
‘She kept shouting: “Tamej lidhi hase” (I’m sure you took it).
‘I kept trying to reassure her that I hadn’t: “If I had, why would I have asked you for the time? And forget that, how is it even possible for me to have taken it off your wrist?”
‘By now, many Jews and Christians gathered around us on the footpath. I was surrounded. Loud voices in every possible language began to raise themselves.
‘I tried to prove my innocence — sometimes in English, other times in Hindustani. But they were all on her side, of course.
‘I was tired of protesting and was about to tell them: “Go to hell if you don’t believe me.” Just then I spotted a little child through the crowd. It was playing with a black strap. At the end of the strap was the watch.
‘I pointed with a shout: “Look! What’s that child holding?”
‘The girl turned first: “My watch!”
‘An old Jewish woman took it from the child and gave it to her. I didn’t say anything, and didn’t have to because I thought I was quite the hero of the moment.’
The boy, who said girls like being teased, told the following story: ‘As I said, girls like it and often they invite us to do it to them. I can prove it with my story.
‘This happened a couple of years ago, when my thinking on the subject was different from what it is today. I was quite unsuccessful at love then. I’d be morose all the time, out of frustration of not having had a girl.
‘One day when a friend of mine told me in vivid detail that he’d made out with a girl in this particular lane, I was even more regretful about my failure. I was so saddened about being a loser that tears came to my eyes.
‘But then I thought of going to that same lane regularly and spending time till I met the girl. There was no other girl I could think of who would allow me to do the things my friend said he had with her.
‘So for a couple of weeks, I walked through the lane at the same time every day. I often saw the girl there. And she noticed me. But I couldn’t move forward.
‘One afternoon, the lane was deserted when I entered. Near its masjid I saw a lone woman in a burqa. As I went past her, she put her hand out and held on to my arm. She shouted: “Kyon ve gushtian, tu har roz idhar de pheray kyon karnaiyen?” This meant — you moron, why are you here every day?
‘I began to tremble. I said: “I… I… I… never come here.”
‘She laughed. I could now see her glittering eyes through the burqa’s mesh. It was her. My fear evaporated. I shrugged my arm off her grip and pinched her ass so viciously that she screamed “‘Allah kar key marjaein! Tera kakh na rahe” meaning that she wished I died and that nothing remained of me.
‘But everything remained, of course. She remained. My fear had left me. And her anger now left her.’
— (Originally published as Chhed Khubaan
Se Chali Jaye ‘Asad’)
* Mirza Ghalib’s nom de plume, which he used in the initial days
Our Progressive Graveyards
This essay explains the working of graveyards and readers, especially non-Muslims, will find it informative. The one thing that is striking about the piece is the moral tone that Manto adopts as a preamble to the essay. He wrote this in his early years in Bombay (at the end he indicates that the incident happened in 1942). This was the time when Manto took all that he “objected” to — the clubs, the half-naked women, the drinking, the dancing and the gambling — for granted. He imagined all of this existing without the British, which was, as he was to learn later, a naive way of looking at the issue. Indeed, he was to pine for the passing of most
of it in Pakistan only a few years later, as his other
pieces show.
Many excellent things have come to us from the culture of the west. What has it not brought to us uncivilized Indians? It gave our women the sleeveless blouse. Also lipstick, rouge, powder. Hair dyes and depilation. It’s a gift of civilization that a girl may now take a license to prostitute herself. She can marry under a civil act and divorce under it.
Then we have the dance halls, where one can clasp women and swing away, breast touching breast. There are the clubs where one can gamble away all of one’s money. And there are places to get a drink once you’ve done that.
English culture has made us very progressive. Our women now wear trousers and walk about. There are also those women who seem to be wearing nothing at all, but may still walk around undisturbed.
India’s become so advanced that we now talk of opening a club for nudists. How silly are those who say the British, who gave us all this, should go back to Europe. If they did, who would open a nudist club in India? Who would look after all of these other places where enjoyment may be found? Where will we dance, breast touching breast, with women? Won’t our brothels become empty of life?
And who will teach us to fight one another? Who will also produce in Manchester and send us clothes made of our own cotton?
The progress we’ve achieved under the British, we haven’t in any other era. They have brought modernity not just to our hotels, clubs and cinema halls, but also to our burial grounds.
In old-fashioned graveyards, corpses are brought and buried, as if they have no value or price. But this is not so in the new, progressive graveyards.