My Name Is Radha

Sahae

‘Don’t say that one lakh Hindus and one lakh Muslims died; say that two lakh human beings died. That two lakh human beings died is not such a great tragedy after all; the tragedy, in truth, is that those who killed and those who were killed, both have nothing to show for it. After killing one lakh Hindus, the Muslims may have thought that they had finished off Hinduism. But it lives, and will live on. Likewise, after killing one lakh Muslims the Hindus may have exulted over the death of Islam. But the truth is before you: This hasn’t managed to put even a scratch on Islam. Those who think that religions can be killed by guns are foolish. Mazhab, deen, iman, dharm, faith, belief — these are found in our souls, not in our bodies. How can butchers’ cleavers, rioters’ knives and bullets annihilate them?’

Mumtaz was unusually excited that day. Just the three of us had come to see him off at the ship. He was leaving us for an undetermined period of time and was headed for Pakistan — a Pakistan we hadn’t imagined even in our dreams would come into being.

We were Hindus, all three of us. Our relatives in West Punjab had incurred heavy losses in both property and lives — presumably, this was why Mumtaz had decided to leave. Juggal had received a letter from Lahore telling him that his uncle had died in communal riots; the news affected him in a bad way. Still reeling from its impact, he casually said to Mumtaz one day, ‘I’m wondering what I would do if riots broke out in my neighbourhood.’

‘Yes, what would you do?’ Mumtaz asked.

‘I might kill you,’ Juggal said in all seriousness.

Mumtaz fell silent, dead silent. His silence continued for nearly eight days, breaking only when he suddenly announced that he was leaving for Karachi by ship at 3.45 p.m. that very afternoon.

None of us talked to him about his decision. Juggal was feeling contrite that the reason behind Mumtaz’s departure was his comment: ‘I might kill you.’ Perhaps he was still wondering whether in the heat of passion he could really kill Mumtaz or not — Mumtaz who was one of his best friends. That’s why he was now the silent one among the three.

Strangely enough, though, Mumtaz had become unusually talkative, especially in the few hours before his departure. He had begun drinking the moment he got up in the morning. His bags were packed as though he were going on a vacation. He would talk to himself and laugh for no apparent reason. If a stranger had seen him he would have thought that Mumtaz was feeling overwhelming joy at the prospect of leaving Bombay. But the three of us knew well that he was trying hard to deceive both us and himself in order to hide his true feelings.

I very much wanted to ask him about his sudden decision to leave. I even gestured to Juggal to bring up the subject, but Mumtaz never gave us a chance.

After downing three or four drinks Juggal became even quieter and went to lie down in the other room. Braj Mohan and I stayed with Mumtaz. He had quite a few bills to settle, give the doctors their fees, fetch his clothes from the cleaners — all these chores he did light-heartedly and easily enough. But as he was taking a paan from the stall next to the restaurant at the end of the street, his eyes began to well up with tears. When we moved away from the stall he put his hand on Braj Mohan’s shoulder and said softly, ‘You remember, don’t you, how Gobind lent us a rupee ten years ago, when we were down on our luck?’

After this Mumtaz remained silent, but once we returned home he launched another endless stream of small talk — all totally unconnected, but nonetheless so full of feeling that Braj Mohan and I found ourselves fully participating in it. When the time for Mumtaz’s departure drew near, Juggal joined us too. But the moment the taxi started for the docks, a hush fell over everyone.

Mumtaz’s eyes continued to say goodbye to the wide, sprawling bazaars of Bombay, until the taxi pulled into the harbour. The place was terribly crowded. Thousands of refugees, a few of them affluent, most others poor, were leaving — it was a veritable crush of people. And yet Mumtaz alone seemed to me to be leaving, leaving us behind for a place he had never even seen before, a place which, no matter how hard he tried to get used to it, would still remain unfamiliar. That’s what I thought at any rate. I couldn’t tell what was going through Mumtaz’s mind.

After his bags had all been taken to the cabin, Mumtaz took us out on to the deck. For a long time he gazed at the place where sky and sea came together. Then he took Juggal’s hand in his and said, ‘How perfectly deceptive. . this meeting of the sky and the sea, and yet so incredibly delightful too!’

Juggal remained silent. Perhaps his earlier remark—‘I might kill you’—was still tormenting him.

Mumtaz ordered a brandy from the ship’s bar; that was what he had been drinking since morning. Drinks in hand, we stood against the guardrail. Refugees were piling on to the ship with a lot of noise and commotion, and seagulls were hovering over the water, which looked almost still.

Abruptly Juggal downed his glass in one huge gulp and said rather crudely, ‘Do forgive me, Mumtaz — I think I hurt you the other day.’

Mumtaz paused briefly and asked him, ‘When you uttered those words—“I might kill you”—was that exactly what you were thinking? You arrived at this decision with a cool head?’

Juggal nodded his head, and then said, ‘But I feel sorry.’

‘You’d have felt sorrier had you actually killed me,’ Mumtaz said pensively. ‘But only if you had paused to reflect that you hadn’t killed Mumtaz, a Muslim, a friend, you had killed a human being. If he was a bad man, what you would have killed was not his badness, but the man himself. If he was a Muslim, you wouldn’t have killed his Muslim-ness, but his being. If Muslims had got hold of his dead body, it would have added a grave to the cemetery, but the world would have come up one human being short.’

Stopping to think a bit, he resumed, ‘Perhaps my co-religionists would have anointed me as a martyr, but I swear I would’ve torn through my grave and cried that I didn’t accept the title, that I didn’t want this diploma for which I had taken no exam. Some Muslim murdered your uncle in Lahore, you heard the news in Bombay and murdered me — just tell me: What medals do we deserve for this? What robes of honour do your uncle and his killer back in Lahore deserve?

‘If you ask me, the victims died the miserable death of a pie-dog, and their killers killed in vain, utterly in vain.’

Mumtaz became agitated as he spoke, but the emotional excess was matched by an equal measure of sincerity. His observation that mazhab, deen, iman, dharm, faith, belief — these were found in our souls, not in our bodies, and that they couldn’t be annihilated by cleavers, knives and bullets had made an especially deep impression on me.

So I told him, ‘You’re absolutely right.’

This made Mumtaz think again. He said with some unease, ‘No, I wouldn’t say “absolutely right”. I mean, yes, sure, this is all okay. But perhaps I haven’t been able to say it all clearly, the way I want to. By “religion” I don’t mean this religion, nor this dharm, which afflicts ninety-nine per cent of us. I rather mean that very special thing which sets one individual apart from all others, the special thing which shows that someone is truly a human being. But what is it? Unfortunately I can’t put it on my palm and show it to you.’ A sudden gleam appeared in his eyes and he said, as if to himself, ‘But what exactly was special in him? A staunch Hindu, who worked the most abominable profession, and yet his soul — it couldn’t have been more radiant.’

‘Whose soul?’ I asked.

‘A certain pimp’s.’

The three of us started. Mumtaz’s tone was natural enough, so I asked him in perfect seriousness, ‘A pimp’s?’

Mumtaz nodded in affirmation. ‘What a man! Amazing. And even more amazing that he was, as it is commonly called, a pimp — a procurer of women — and yet had an absolutely clear conscience.’

Mumtaz paused for a few moments, as if refreshing his memory of past events, and then added, ‘I don’t remember his full name. Something Sahae. He came from Benares. And he was extremely particular about cleanliness. It was a smallish place where he lived, but he had elegantly divided it into neat little sections. The customers’ privacy was scrupulously maintained. There were no beds or cots, but instead mattresses and bolsters. The sheets and pillowcases were always clean and spotless. And even though he had a servant, he did all the cleaning and dusting himself. Not just cleaning; he did everything himself, and he always put his heart into it. He was not given to cheating or deception. If it was late at night and only watered-down liquor could be had in the neighbourhood, he would say outright, “Sahib, don’t waste your money.” If he had a suspicion about one of the girls, he’d let you know upfront. He even told me that he had earned twenty thousand rupees in three years, taking a two-and-a-half-rupee commission from every ten. He only wanted to make another ten thousand rupees. Why only that much? Why not more? He told me that after he had made his thirty thousand he would return to Benares and open a fabric shop. I don’t know why he was so keen on opening a fabric shop, of all things.’

At this point in the narration I couldn’t hold back my surprise, ‘What a strange man!’

Mumtaz continued: ‘I used to think he was a fake right down to his littlest toe. A huge fraud. Who could believe that he called all the girls who worked for him his “daughters”. He had opened savings accounts at the post office for all the girls and every month he deposited all their income for them. It was just unbelievable that he actually paid out of his own pocket for the expenses of some ten to twelve girls. Everything he did seemed a bit too contrived to me.

‘One day when I went to his place he told me that it was both Amina’s and Sakina’s day off. “I let them go out one day every week so they can go to some restaurant and satisfy their craving for meat. Here, as you know, everyone else is a Vaishnava.” I smiled to myself thinking he was lying. Another day he told me that the Hindu girl from Ahmedabad whom he had married off to a Muslim customer had written him a letter from Lahore saying that she had made a request at the tomb of Data Sahib which had been granted. So now she had made another such petition on behalf of Sahae: that he might earn his thirty thousand rupees soon and return to Benares to open his fabric shop. I broke out laughing. I thought he was trying to win me over since I’m a Muslim.’

‘Were you wrong about him?’ I asked Mumtaz.

‘Absolutely! There was no difference in his word and his deed. It’s possible that he had some weakness and he may have erred before in his life, but on the whole, he was a very fine person.’

‘And just how did you conclude this?’ Juggal asked.

‘At his death.’ Mumtaz fell silent for a while. After some time he peered into the space where sky and sun had been gathered into a foggy embrace. ‘The rioting had begun. Early in the morning one day I was passing through Bhindi Bazaar. There were few people around due to the curfew. Even the trams weren’t running. I walked along looking for a taxi. Near J.J. Hospital, I saw a man rolled into a bundle by the large bin on the sidewalk. I thought it must be some labourer sleeping, but when I saw the blood and gore splattered on the cobblestones, I stopped. It was clearly murder. I thought it best to get out of there, but then I perceived a slight movement in the body. I stopped again. Not a soul was around. I peered down at the body. It was the familiar face of Sahae, but with blood all over it. I sat down beside him on the sidewalk and looked closely. His twill shirt, which was always spotless, was soaked in blood. The wound was perhaps in the area of the ribs. He started to moan faintly. I carefully shook his shoulder, as one does to wake someone from sleep. I even called him a few times by the only name I knew. I was about to get up and leave when his eyes opened. For a long time he stared at me with those half-opened eyes. Then his entire body started twitching and, recognizing me, he said, ‘You? You?’

‘One after another I asked him all kinds of questions: Why had he come to that area? Who had wounded him? How long had he been lying on the sidewalk? The hospital was right across from us — did he want me to let them know?

‘He was too weak to talk. Once I’d exhausted all my questions, he groaned out these words with the greatest difficulty: “It was my time. This is how Bhagwan willed it!”

‘Who knows what Bhagwan wanted, but being a Muslim, I didn’t want to see a man I knew to be a Hindu die in a Muslim neighbourhood, thinking that his murderer might be a Muslim, as was the man who now stood watching his life ebb away. I’m not a coward, but at the time I felt worse than a coward. On the one hand, I was afraid of being arrested for the murder, and on the other I was scared that even if I wasn’t arrested, I could still be detained for interrogation. It also occurred to me that if I took him to the hospital he might implicate me to avenge himself. After all, he was dying, why not take me along too? Assailed by such thoughts, I was about to flee when Sahae called my name. I stopped. I didn’t want to, but my feet simply froze. I looked at him as though saying, “Get on with it, mister, I have got to go.” Doubling over with pain, he unbuttoned his shirt with great difficulty and put his hand inside, but then his strength gave way. At that point he said to me, “In the waistcoat under the shirt. . in the side pocket. . there is some jewellery and twelve hundred rupees. It. . is Sultana’s property. . I’d left it with a friend for safekeeping. . Today. . I was going to send it to her. . you know it’s getting ever more dangerous these days. Please give it to her and. . please tell her to leave right away. . but. . be careful about yourself!”’

Mumtaz fell silent, but I felt as though somewhere far away, where the sky and the sea were curled up in a foggy embrace, his voice was slowly dissolving into the voice of Sahae as it rose on the sidewalk pavement near J.J. Hospital.

The ship’s horn sounded. Mumtaz said, ‘I did go and see Sultana. When I gave her the jewellery and money, she broke into tears.’

We said goodbye to Mumtaz and walked off the ship. He was standing on the deck by the guardrail, waving his right hand. I said to Juggal, ‘Don’t you feel as though Mumtaz is calling after Sahae’s spirit — to make it his mate during his trip?’

Juggal only said, ‘How I wish I were Sahae’s spirit!’