My Name Is Radha

My Name Is Radha

I am talking about a time when there was absolutely no hint of war anywhere. It happened eight, maybe nine, years ago, when, quite unlike today, madness had method and tumultuous events followed a predictable course. Today — well, tumultuous events occur without rhyme or reason and throw everything upside down.

I was then employed in a film company at a monthly salary of forty rupees. Life was chugging along smoothly. I would show up at the studio at ten, feed the villain Niaz Muhammad’s two cats two paise worth of milk, write banal dialogues for a banal film, joke around for a while with the Bengali actress, ‘the nightingale of Bengal’ as she was called in those days, fawn over Dada Gora, the greatest director of his time, and return home.

Like I said, life was chugging along smoothly with the usual ups and downs. The proprietor of the studio, Hurmuzji Framji, a whimsical man of Iranian origin with big fat ruddy cheeks, was head over heels in love with a middle-aged Khoja woman. Feeling up the breasts of every newly arrived girl was his habitual pastime. There was this Calcutta whore, a Musalman, who was carrying on with her director, sound recordist and storywriter all at the same time. Carrying on meant that the tender affections of all three would remain reserved only for her.

The shooting of Ban ki Sundri was in progress. Every day, after feeding the villain Niaz Muhammad’s cats the two paise worth of milk — God only knows what kind of impression he expected to create on the studio-wallahs by keeping them — I would write dialogues for the film in some unfamiliar language. I knew absolutely nothing about the film’s story or its plot because I was merely a munshi — a pencil-pusher — in those days and didn’t pull much weight. My work only involved writing on a sheet of paper in mutilated Urdu whatever I was ordered to and what the director could understand, and hand it over. Anyway, the shooting of Ban ki Sundri was under way. Rumour was rife that Hurmuzji Framji was bringing an entirely new face from God knows where for the part of the vamp, while Raj Kishore had been assigned the role of the hero.

Raj Kishore, a native of Rawalpindi, was a handsome and healthy young man. It was widely believed that his body was very manly and had a graceful shape. I thought about his body often. It was certainly athletic and well proportioned, but I found nothing else appealing in it. Maybe that was because I myself am frightfully gangly, look more dead than alive and, besides, am given to wonder rather too much about my kind of people.

I didn’t hate him; I’ve rarely hated anyone in my life. Let’s just say that I didn’t much care for the man. The reason will reveal itself as you go along.

I absolutely loved his pure Rawalpindi accent, his language, his manner of speaking. Only in the Rawalpindi dialect of Punjabi can you find the sweetest, most endearing cadence. It has a strange kind of rugged femininity, at once sweet and mellow. Should a Rawalpindi woman talk to you, it would feel like having mango juice dribbled into your mouth. But I’m not talking about mangoes; I’m talking about Raj Kishore, whom I liked much less than that heavenly fruit.

As I mentioned, Raj Kishore was a good- and healthy-looking young man. Well, had the matter ended there, I’d have had no cause to grumble. What was worse was that he was also overly conscious of his physique and good looks. And this I could scarcely stomach.

Being healthy is a good thing, but to inflict one’s health on others like a disease is something else again. Well, Raj Kishore suffered from this disease. He never lost an opportunity to flaunt his health and his well-proportioned and shapely limbs before those less healthy than he was.

Doubtless, I’m a frail and chronically ill man. One of my lungs can hardly pump enough oxygen into my body. But as God is my witness, I have never ever put my weakness on display, although I know that one can exploit one’s frailty as much as one’s strength. But I believe one should not do that.

To me, true beauty is the kind that you quietly admire in your heart, not broadcast with your tongue. I consider such beauty an affliction that hits you with the impact of a rock. All the beauties that a young man should have, Raj Kishore had them. But, regrettably, he also had the nasty habit of exhibiting them in the crudest fashion, such as by flexing his arm muscles while talking to you; or worse yet, praising them unabashedly himself. Or, in the midst of a discussion on some serious issue, such as swaraj, unbuttoning his khadi kurta and measuring the unusually wide span of his chest.

Ah, yes, khadi — it reminds me: Raj Kishore was a staunch Congressite. Maybe that’s why he wore khadi. But the thought that he didn’t love his country as much as he loved himself never ceased to peck at my heart.

The majority of people thought that my opinion of the man was grossly unjust. This was because, whether in or out of the studio, everyone admired him for his beauty, his thoughts, his simplicity, and his language with its perfect Rawalpindi accent, which I also loved.

Unlike most other actors, he didn’t keep to himself. You were sure to find him in any and all Congress rallies, as well as literary gatherings. Regardless of how busy his life was, he always found time to share in the joy and sorrow of his neighbours, even those with whom he had only a nodding acquaintance.

Every film producer regarded him highly on account of his celebrity and his spotless character. And not just them, even the public knew all too well that Raj Kishore’s life was free of scandal. It’s not easy to be part of the film world and remain squeaky clean. That Raj Kishore was a successful hero further jacked up his stature in everyone’s eyes.

I spent part of my evenings at Shamlal’s paan shop in Nagpara. Here, people often gossiped about actors and actresses, none of whom was free of some scandal or other. Not so with Raj Kishore. Whenever his name cropped up in a conversation, Shamlal asserted proudly, ‘Manto Sahib, Raj Bhai is the only actor who’s not easy on his zipper.’

I didn’t know why Shamlal had started calling him ‘Raj Bhai’, nor was I too surprised by it because every little thing Raj Bhai did soon became public knowledge as a veritable achievement. How much he made, how much he gave to his father every month, or donated to orphanages, or spent on himself — people knew these details as if they had been singed into their memories.

One day Shamlal told me that Raj Bhai was exceptionally nice to his stepmother. When times were hard and he had no source of income, both his father and his father’s new wife had put him through all manner of hardship. But remarkably, Raj Bhai never shirked from his duty and welcomed them all with open arms. Now his father and his stepmother sat majestically on their canopied bed and ruled the roost. And Raj Bhai went every morning to touch his stepmother’s feet and joined his hands before his father, ready to carry out immediately any order the old man might give him.

Please don’t mind if I say that every time I came across such overblown praise for the man, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy. I don’t know why. God forbid, I didn’t hate him, as I’ve said before. He had never given me cause to despise him. Then again, at a time when we munshi-folk counted for nothing, worthy neither of respect nor importance, Raj Bhai would talk to me for hours. So, while I can’t say why, the thought that all of this was only so much posturing, that his life was an absolute sham, never failed to flash in some dark corner of my mind. The problem was, no one shared my opinion. So while everyone else worshipped him like a god, I stewed in my own juice.

He was married, had four children, was a model husband, an exemplary father. Turn up whatever corner of his life you wish, you wouldn’t find anything even vaguely dubious or dark. That’s all fine, but this idea — it never failed to rattle my brain.

I swear, I cursed myself several times for harbouring doubts about the man. ‘You’re rotten. Why do you needlessly mistrust a man whom the whole world considers good, and about whom you yourself don’t have any complaint? What’s wrong if he never tires of looking at his well-proportioned body? You’d likely do the same if you had a body like his.’

Still, I could never bring myself to look at him with the eyes of others. This often drove me to argue with him during our conversations. If something he said didn’t sit right with me, I went all out against him. But after every such altercation, I would see only a smile on his lips and feel an indescribably bitter taste sloshing around in my throat, which pissed me off even more.

Without a doubt, his life wasn’t stained by any scandal. He had no relations, innocent or otherwise, with any woman except his wife. I also admit that he called every female actor his sister, and they, in turn, called him brother. But my heart always questioned my mind: Why establish this relationship in the first place? A sister — brother relationship is one thing, but calling a woman your sister, that too so demonstratively, like putting up a sign that says ‘Road Closed’ or ‘No Pissing Allowed’, is quite another.

If you’re not intending to establish a sexual relationship with a woman, why announce it in public? If even the thought of a woman besides your wife can’t enter your heart, why bother to advertise the fact? Since I couldn’t resolve this, and other similar issues, a strange perplexity gripped me.

Anyway—

The shooting of Ban ki Sundri was progressing. The studio was bustling with activity. A slew of extras, both men and women, showed up every day and we had a nice time indulging in light-hearted banter with them.

One day, the make-up master, whom we called Ustad, walked into the villain Niaz Muhammad’s room with the news that the new girl who had been signed up for the role of the vamp had arrived, so filming was expected to start very soon.

We were having a round of tea at the time. We warmed up at once, partly from the tea and partly from the news. The arrival of a new girl in the studio was always a pleasant event, so we all quickly exited the room to have a look at this new creature.

We finally saw her when Hurmuzji Framji came out of his office, took two paans out of drummer Isa’s silver box, stuffed them inside his humongous cheeks, and headed for the billiard room.

All I could see of her was her dark, brownish complexion as she quickly shook hands with the seth and rode away in the studio car. A bit later Niaz Muhammad told me that she had rather puffy lips. Perhaps he was only able to see her lips. Ustad, who hadn’t glimpsed even that much, remarked, shaking his head with an air of disapproval, ‘Onh, kandum!’ No good! The girl didn’t come to the studio for the next four or five days. On the fifth day — or was it the sixth? — as I was coming out of Gulab’s restaurant after taking my tea, I suddenly bumped into her.

I tend to look at a woman surreptitiously. If she appears in front of me suddenly, I’m unable to see anything of her. Since this girl had materialized so unexpectedly, I couldn’t get a good enough look at her to form an opinion of her appearance, although I did see her feet; they were squeezed into a pair of new-style sandals.

The path from the lab to the studio was topped with gravel that had numerous pretty round stones sticking out. This made walking in her open sandals rather difficult for her, as they kept slipping on the round stones again and again.

After this encounter Miss Neelam and I gradually became friends. The studio personnel didn’t know it, but our relations were quite informal. Her real name was Radha. Once I asked her why she had changed her beautiful name and she replied, ‘Oh, no particular reason,’ then added a minute later, ‘it’s too beautiful to be used in films.’

You might think that Radha was a religious kind of woman. Not at all. She couldn’t care less about religion and its trappings. But just as I inscribe ‘786’, the numerical value of ‘bismillah’, on top of the first sheet of paper before writing a new story, she also just happened to love the name Radha dearly. Since it was her wish that we not call her Radha, henceforth I will only call her Neelam.

Neelam was the offspring of a Benares prostitute. And it was with a Banarasi accent and cadence that she spoke. It sounded very sweet to the ear. She always called me Sadiq, though my name is Saadat. ‘Neelam,’ I once said to her, ‘you can just as easily call me Saadat. I know you can. So why don’t you? For the life of me, I can’t understand it.’

A faint smile appeared on her dark, thin lips. ‘Once I’ve made a mistake, I stick to it.’

I think very few people were aware that the person everyone in the studio considered just an ordinary actress happened to possess a unique personality. She didn’t have the shallowness, the baseness of other run-of-the-mill actresses. Her gravitas, which everyone at work saw through his own lens and misinterpreted, was her loveliest attribute, entirely endearing.

This gravitas, this charming sturdiness served as the most becoming make-up on the clear, smooth surface of her darkish complexion, though it cannot be denied that it had packed the corners of her thin lips with the unnamed bitterness of sorrow — a quality, let’s accept it, that set her apart from other women.

I have never ceased to wonder, then or now, why they picked her for the role of the vamp in Ban ki Sundri. She wasn’t even nominally foxy or sharp. When she appeared on the set wearing a skimpy choli to play her part for the first time, I was terribly shocked. She could immediately guess people’s reactions, so the minute she saw my expression she explained, ‘Director Sahib ordered me to appear in this outfit because I’m not playing the part of a respectable woman. You know what I told him, “If this is an outfit, I’m willing to walk with you naked.”’

‘So what did Director Sahib say?’

Again a faint smile appeared on her thin lips. ‘He immediately started imagining me naked. . How silly can these people get! What need was there to tax his poor imagination once he had seen me in this wispy outfit.’

This should suffice by way of Neelam’s introduction for an intelligent reader. Let me now proceed with the events which I must record to finish this story.

In Bombay the monsoon starts in June and continues till the middle of September. The first couple of months the rain comes down so hard that it’s impossible to work in the studio. The shooting of Ban ki Sundri had started towards the end of April. We were just about finishing the third set when the first rains broke on us. Only one small scene that had no dialogues remained, so we kept shooting. Once that ended, we were at a loose end for months.

This provided many opportunities for people to spend time together. I spent nearly the whole time sitting in Gulab’s restaurant, sipping cup after cup of tea. Whoever walked in was dripping wet, or almost. All the flies outside had swarmed in. The atmosphere became unbearably filthy. A cleaning rag lying on one chair, an onion-chopping knife on another. Gulab Sahib standing nearby, churning out his Bombay Urdu with his disease-rotted teeth: ‘Tum udhar jaane ko nahin sakta’ (You can’t go there), ‘Ham udhar se ja ke aata’ (I’ll go there and come back), ‘Bohat lafra hoga. . han. . bara vanda ho ja’ienga’ (It will create a big mess. . yes. . it will result in a big loss).

Everyone came to this restaurant, with its corrugated tin roof, everyone except Seth Hurmuzji Framji, his brother-in-law Edalji, and all the heroines. Niaz Muhammad was obliged to come here twice because of his pets Chunni and Munni. Raj Kishore showed up once a day. The minute he crossed the threshold with his tall, athletic body, everyone’s eyes suddenly lit up, but not mine. The young male extras immediately got up to offer Raj Bhai their seats. Once he sat down, everyone crowded around him like so many moths. After that, you heard only two types of things: the extras praising Raj Bhai’s marvellous acting in old films, or Raj Bhai regurgitating the ancient history of how he dropped out of school and, later, out of college to join the film world. Since I had memorized all of this by now, I would greet him when he entered and get out of the place.

One day, after the rains had stopped, Niaz Muhammad’s cats scared the daylights out of Hurmuzji Framji’s German shepherd, who ran to Gulab’s tea joint with his tail tucked between his legs. As he was running in, I saw Neelam and Raj Kishore talking on the round platform under the maulsiri tree. Raj Kishore was standing and, as usual, nodding his head, which meant that as far as he was concerned he was making interesting conversation. I don’t remember now when or how he’d been introduced to Neelam, but she’d known him well even before she joined films. And if I remember correctly, she had casually praised his good-looking, well-proportioned body once or twice.

I came out of Gulab’s restaurant and had just made it to the eves of the recording studio when I saw Raj Kishore take down his khadi bag from his broad shoulder with a jerk and pull out a fat notebook. I immediately knew that it was his diary.

After finishing the day’s work and receiving his stepmother’s blessings, he was in the habit of writing in his diary before he went to bed. Even though he loved Punjabi dearly, he wrote the diary in an English that was vaguely reminiscent of the delicate style of Tagore in some places, and Gandhi’s political manner in others. It also reflected a significant influence of Shakespearean drama. But I never did see any sincerity in anything he wrote. Should you ever come across this diary, you’ll know all there is to know about ten, maybe fifteen years of his life. How much money he donated, how many poor he fed, the meetings he participated in, which outfits he wore and which he discarded. . and if my guess is right, you’ll also spot my name on some page beside the figure 35, the amount I once borrowed from him and haven’t returned to this day since I figured he’d never note that it had been returned.

Anyway, he was reading some pages of his diary out loud for Neelam’s benefit. Even though I was quite some distance from them, I surmised from the way his lips moved that he was praising the Lord in the style of Shakespeare.

Neelam sat quietly on the round cement platform under the maulsiri. From her elegantly serious face, it was apparent that Raj Kishore’s words were making no impression on her. She was looking, rather, at his protruding chest. His shirt was open and his dark black hair looked ravishing on his fair chest.

Everything looked washed and immaculately clean in the studio, even Niaz Muhammad’s cats, who normally looked revoltingly filthy. Both of them were lying on the bench opposite me, cleaning their faces with their soft velvety paws. Neelam wore a spotless white georgette sari with a matching blouse of white linen, creating a subdued and pleasant contrast against the darkish skin of her slender arms.

For a moment I wondered, ‘Why is she looking so different?’

Suddenly our eyes collided and I found the answer in her distracted glance. She’d fallen in love.

She gestured to me to come over. For a while we talked about this and that. After Raj Kishore left, she asked me, ‘Will you come along with me today?’

We arrived at her house at six in the evening. She tossed her bag on the sofa as soon as we entered and said without looking at me, ‘It’s not what you’re thinking.’

I understood her meaning. So I asked, ‘How do you know what I was thinking?’

The same muted but mysterious smile appeared on her lips again.

‘Because we had both thought the same thing. . Maybe you didn’t think about it later, but after much deliberation I’ve concluded that we were both wrong.’

‘What if I say we were both right?’

‘Then we are both stupid,’ she said, plopping down on the sofa.

In no time at all the sombre look on her face deepened. ‘How can that be, Sadiq? I’m not a naive young girl who doesn’t know what’s inside her heart. How old do you think I am?’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘Absolutely right. But what you don’t know is that I already knew what love was when I was only ten years old. Forget knowing what love is, I was actually in love. By God I was. I was seized by a murderous love clear up to the age of sixteen. How can I ever love anyone now? Not a chance.’

She looked at my frozen expression and said nervously. ‘I know you’ll never accept it, no you won’t, not even if I bare my heart to you. Don’t I know you well enough? But by God, may I die if I lie to you. . my heart is incapable of loving anyone any more. However, I can at least say this much. .’ She hesitated.

I kept quiet as she had already drifted into deep thought. Perhaps she was trying to articulate what that ‘this much’ was.

Soon the same fleeting smile that had a way of adding a touch of knowing mischief crossed her lips again. She sprang up from the sofa and began saying, ‘But at least I can say that it’s not love. I’m positive. Whether it is some other affliction. . I can’t say. Sadiq, I want to believe it.’

‘You mean you want to make yourself believe it?’

That blew her fuse. ‘You’re very mean. . One must never abandon good form when saying something. . Why do I have to make you believe me anyway. . It’s me I’m trying to convince. The trouble is, I’m finding that hard to do. Can’t you help me?’

She sat down beside me, toying with her little finger, and asked, ‘What’s your opinion of Raj Kishore? I mean, what is it in him that you think I have a thing for.’ She let go of the finger and started playing with her fingers one by one, distractedly. ‘I don’t like the things he says, I don’t like his acting, I don’t like his diary. . God knows what nonsense he was spewing out.’

Cranky, she got up from the sofa. ‘Don’t know what’s happening to me. I just want a big commotion. . a big noise, like cats going at one another. . clouds of smoke spilling forth. . I’d be drenched in sweat. .’ Then she suddenly turned towards me and asked, ‘Sadiq, what do you think, what kind of woman am I?’

I smiled and answered, ‘I’ve never understood either cats or women.’

‘Why is that?’

I thought for a moment and said, ‘A cat used to live in our house. Once a year she was seized by bouts of terrible whining. . and then a tomcat would suddenly appear out of nowhere and the two would go at it with more ferocity than you ever saw, leaving both of them bruised, battered and bleeding. But soon after, our auntie cat would become the mother of four kittens.’

She looked as though some disagreeable taste had flooded her mouth. ‘Sheesh, what a dirty mind you have!’ Then, after chewing a cardamom to improve the taste in her mouth, she said, ‘I hate kids. Anyway, let’s just drop it.’

She opened her paan box and started preparing one for me with her slim, delicate fingers. With tiny spoons she dug into small, narrow cups containing lime and catechu pastes and, with finesse, applied them to a paan leaf already stripped of its central vein. She folded the leaf into a cone and offered it to me. ‘Sadiq, what do you think?’ she asked absent-mindedly.

‘About what?’

Chopping a piece of roasted betel nut into smaller bits with her sarota, she replied, ‘About this silliness that has started for no sane reason at all. If it’s not silliness, what else could it be? I mean I’m totally confused. Tearing at myself, mending myself. God only knows what lies ahead if this stupidity is allowed to continue. You don’t know, I’m a formidable woman.’

‘Formidable — whatever do you mean?’

The same mysterious, almost imperceptible smile flitted across her face. ‘You’re awfully shameless. You know everything, yet you insist on poking me with these soft needles to make me blurt it out myself.’

The whites of her eyes turned a shade of pink.

‘I’m a very hot-tempered woman — is that so difficult to understand?’

She suddenly sprang to her feet. ‘Go now. I want to take a bath.’

I left.

For quite a while after that she didn’t mention Raj Kishore to me. Still, we somehow knew one another’s thoughts. I knew what was going through her mind and she, mine. This silent exchange went on for a few days.

One day Kirpalani, who was directing Ban ki Sundri, was watching the heroine rehearse her song. All of us had piled into the music room. Neelam was ensconced in a chair and was slowly tapping her feet, keeping time to the music. It was a pedestrian song, but the melody was quite good. When the rehearsal ended, in walked Raj Kishore with his khadi shoulder bag. One by one he greeted director Kirpalani, music director Ghosh, and sound recordist P.N. Mogha in English. He joined his hands and said namaskar to Miss Eidan Bai and then informed her, ‘Sister Eidan, yesterday I saw you in Crawford Market. I was buying oranges for aap ki bhabhi.^* when I spotted your car. .’ As he turned his head, his eyes fell on Neelam who sat buried in a low chair by the piano. His hands rose spontaneously to say namaskar to her, but the moment she saw him she catapulted out of her chair and warned him, ‘Raj Sahib, please don’t call me “sister”.’

She said it with such measured gravity that everyone in the music room was dazed for a moment. An embarrassed Raj Kishore could only mutter a feeble ‘Why?’

She didn’t answer and stomped out.

Three days later when I went to Shamlal’s paan shop at about three in the afternoon, people were still gossiping about this incident. ‘Saali, her own intentions must be dirty,’ Shamlal was asserting proudly. ‘Why else would a woman mind Raj Bhai calling her sister? But mark my words — she won’t get what she’s after. Raj Bhai doesn’t go easy on his zipper.’

This Raj Bhai’s zipper was getting on my nerves. I didn’t say anything to Shamlal. I just sat down and quietly listened to his and his customers’ chatter, laced with exaggeration and next to nothing of substance.

Everyone at the studio knew what happened in the music room. Actually, for the third day running this was the only topic one heard being discussed: Why did Miss Neelam suddenly forbid Raj Kishore from calling her ‘sister’? While I didn’t hear anything directly from Raj Kishore about the matter, it reached me through one of his friends that he had made interesting comments about the incident in his diary and prayed to God to keep Miss Neelam’s heart and mind chaste. Nothing notable happened for a few days after the incident.

Neelam had grown more sedate than before, and Raj Kishore’s shirt remained open all the time, the dark black hair on his muscled white chest poking out.

Since it hadn’t rained for a couple of days and the paint on the fourth set of Ban ki Sundri had dried, director Kirpalani put up a notice saying that shooting would start shortly. The scene to be shot was between Neelam and Raj Kishore. I had written the dialogues, so I knew he would kiss her hand during their conversation. There was no compelling reason for a kiss in the scene, but as per the formula, it had been thrown in merely to excite the public, just as women were made to appear on screen in clothing that titillated the senses.

I was present when filming started. My heart was throbbing. I was wondering how the two would react. The very thought of it sent a tingling sensation through my body. The scene ended and nothing happened. Electric lamps came on and went off after every dialogue with tiring monotony, and the calls of ‘Start’ and ‘Cut’ rose and subsided. Around dusk, at the climax of the scene, Raj Kishore grabbed Neelam’s hand romantically, but turned his back to the camera and kissed his own hand instead before releasing hers.

I was expecting her to pull her hand away and smack his face so loudly that it would burst the eardrums of P.N. Mogha in the sound studio. But on the contrary, I found a melting smile on her thin lips, entirely bereft of even the slightest trace of wounded feelings.

I was terribly disappointed, but I didn’t mention it to Neelam. When a couple of days had passed and she too hadn’t said anything about it, I imagined that she probably hadn’t realized the significance of that kiss; rather I should say, the thought of it hadn’t even crossed her sensitive mind. The only reason could be that in those moments she was listening to words of love pouring out of the mouth of someone who was otherwise used to calling women his sisters.

But why had he kissed his own hand? Was he getting even with her? Was he trying to humiliate her? A spate of such questions crowded my mind without yielding a satisfactory answer.

On the fourth day, when I went, as usual, to Shamlal’s, he complained, ‘Manto Sahib, you never tell us anything about your company. Is it because you don’t want to or because you don’t know anything? Do you know what Raj Bhai did?’

Then he began telling the story in his own style: ‘There was this scene in Ban ki Sundri in which Director Sahib ordered Raj Bhai to kiss Miss Neelam on the lips. But Sahib, Raj Bhai is one thing, and that saali, that whore, is quite another entirely. No comparison. Raj Bhai blurted out right away, “No, Sahib, not a chance. I won’t ever do such a thing. I have my own wife. How will I ever touch her chaste lips after kissing this foul woman?” Well, sir, Director Sahib had to change the scene right away and Raj Bhai was told, all right, don’t kiss her lips, just kiss her hand. But Raj Bhai is no greenhorn whom you can take for a ride. No sir! When the time came, he kissed his own hand instead so deftly that everyone thought he had kissed that saali’s.’

I didn’t mention this to Neelam. She was totally unaware of the whole thing, so why make her unhappy.

Malaria is rampant in Bombay. I remember neither the month nor the date, except that it was raining hard when they were putting up the fifth set of Ban ki Sundri. Neelam suddenly came down with a high fever. Since there was no work for me at the studio, I would sit by her side for hours and look after her. Malaria had added a strangely melancholic pallor to the brownish hue of her face. A glimpse of some obscure vulnerability could be seen in the indescribable bitterness that never left her eyes and the corners of her thin lips.

The quinine shots affected her hearing so much that she had to raise her voice when she spoke, perhaps thinking that I too was hard of hearing.

One day, after her fever broke and she was lying in bed thanking Eidan Bai in a feeble voice for inquiring after her, a car honked in the street below. I noticed that the noise sent a shiver through Neelam’s body.

Minutes later the room’s heavy teakwood door opened and Raj Kishore appeared in his white khadi shirt and tight pyjamas, with his old-fashioned wife in tow. He greeted Eidan Bai by addressing her as ‘Sister Eidan’, shook hands with me and, after introducing his wife — very much an ordinary-looking housewife but with prominent features — sat down on Neelam’s bed. For a few moments he stared vacantly into space, smiling, and then looked at Neelam. For the first time I spotted the traces of some obscure feeling in his limpid eyes. I hadn’t yet been fully surprised when he started out in his playful manner. ‘I have been meaning to come and inquire after you for some time, but this blasted car, the engine gave out on me. The garage took ten days to fix it. I just got it back today. I immediately said to Shanti (he pointed at his wife), “Get up, right now, let’s go. . someone else will take care of the kitchen work. Luckily, today is also the festival of Raksha Bandhan. We’ll both inquire after sister Neelam and have her tie the rakhi on my wrist.”’ He promptly took a silken gajra out of the pocket of his khadi shirt. The pallor on Neelam’s face became slightly more pronounced.

Raj Kishore was purposely avoiding Neelam’s eyes. ‘But no,’ he said to Eidan Bai instead, ‘not like this. It’s a joyous festival. Sister Neelam shouldn’t tie the rakhi when she’s feeling indisposed. . Shanti, get up and put some lipstick on her.’

‘Where’s the make-up box?’

It was lying on the mantelpiece. Raj Kishore took a few giant strides and brought it over. Neelam remained silent. . her thin lips tightened, as if she was finding it hard to hold back from screaming.

Neelam didn’t resist when Shanti, like a dutiful wife, tried to put some make-up on her. Eidan Bai propped her up, supporting her listless body like a corpse. Shanti began applying a coat of lipstick rather awkwardly. Neelam looked at me and smiled. And in that smile I could feel the resonance of a stifled scream.

I thought. . no, I was positive that something was about to happen. . Neelam’s tightly pressed lips would explode and, like mountain streams that break through the most formidable dykes under the onslaught of punishing rains, she would release a torrential deluge of dammed emotions that would topple us and carry us to God knows what unknown depths in their fury. Strangely, she remained silent, absolutely silent, only the melancholy pallor of her face tried to hide behind the vaporous redness of powder. She remained as inert as a graven image. Her make-up done, she said to Raj Kishore in a strangely firm manner, ‘Please give me the rakhi, I will tie it on your wrist now.’

Within seconds the tasselled silken rakhi was on his wrist and Neelam, whose hands should have trembled, was knotting the cord with steely calm. During all this, I once again caught a glimpse of some obscure emotion floating in Raj Kishore’s limpid eyes before it quickly dissolved in a laugh.

According to custom, he gave Neelam a gift of money in an envelope. She thanked him and tucked the envelope under her pillow.

After they left and Neelam and I were alone, she cast a desolate glance at me and lay down quietly, resting her head on the pillow. Raj Kishore had forgotten to take his bag; it was still on the bed. When she saw it, she pushed it aside with her foot. I sat by her side browsing through the newspaper for nearly two hours. When she didn’t say anything, I left without asking her permission.

Three days later, as I was shaving inside my nine-rupees-a-month kholi in Nagpara, and listening to the vituperations of Mrs Fernandez who lived next door, someone barged in. I turned around to look. It was Neelam.

For a moment I thought it was someone else. . the deep red lipstick smeared across her lips somehow gave the impression of a mouth that had been left unwiped after spitting blood. . her hair terribly mussed up, her white sari practically in tatters, several buttons on the front of her blouse torn open, revealing scratches on her light-almond-coloured breasts.

I was so dazed looking at her in this condition that I couldn’t even ask what had happened or how she had found the address to my kholi. The first thing I did was shut the door. After I pulled up a chair and sat down across from her, she opened her lipstick-coated lips to say, ‘I came straight here.’

‘From where?’ I asked, softly.

‘From my place. . and I’ve come to tell you that that silliness has now ended.’

‘How?’

‘I knew he would return when I was quite alone. So he came. . to reclaim his bag.’ The same mysterious smile curved her thin lips, now utterly disfigured by lipstick. ‘He came to pick up his bag. . I said to him, “Come, it’s in the other room.” Perhaps my tone sounded different, because he tensed a little. . “Don’t be nervous,” I said. In the other room, I didn’t return his bag. I sat down at the dressing table and started putting on make-up.’

She stopped, picked up the glass sitting on my broken table, quickly emptied it, wiped her mouth with the corner of her sari, and resumed. ‘I kept applying make-up for a whole hour. I smeared my lips with as much lipstick as I could and rubbed on as much rouge on my cheeks as I could, while he stood in a corner, watching my face in the mirror. When I had turned myself into a veritable witch, I walked over to the door on firm feet and bolted it.’

‘And then?’

When I looked at her for the answer, she seemed totally changed. Her lips seemed different now that they’d been wiped; her tone sounded about as muted as a piece of red-hot iron being pounded with a hammer.

At the moment she didn’t look at all like the witch she had no doubt resembled after painting herself with all that make-up.

She didn’t answer right away. She got up from my charpoy, installed herself on top of the table, and said, ‘I gnawed at him. . stuck to him like a wild cat. He scratched my face, I clawed at his. We wrestled for quite a while. . oh, he was so strong. . but. . as I once told you, I’m a formidable woman. The weakness brought on by the malaria just vanished. My body was on fire. . my eyes were shooting sparks. . my bones were becoming rigid. I grabbed him and sprang on him like a furious cat. . I don’t know why. . I have no idea why I tangled with him so thoughtlessly. Neither of us said anything that anyone might understand. . I kept screaming, and he kept saying, “Yes, yes”. . I tore off pieces of his white khadi kurta with my fingers. . He yanked out clumps of my hair right from their roots. . He used his utmost force, but I was determined to win at all costs. This left us totally exhausted. He was lying on the rug like a corpse and I was gasping so hard, I felt my heart would give out any moment. In spite of my breathless state I still managed to tear his kurta to shreds. As soon as I saw his broad chest I realized the essence of that silliness. . the silliness that both of us had wondered about but neither of us could make any sense of. .’

She got up quickly, jerked her dishevelled hair over one shoulder and continued, ‘Sadiq. . the bastard, he really has an exquisite body. . I don’t know what came over me. I suddenly lowered myself over him and started biting him. He cringed with pain. But when I stuck my bleeding lips to his and kissed him passionately, he suddenly cooled off like a sated woman. . I got up. . And in a flash I felt hatred for the man surge up in me. I peered down at him intently. . the red of my blood and lipstick had traced hideous patterns on his broad chest. . I glanced around my room and suddenly everything seemed like a sham. Afraid that I might suffocate, I quickly opened the door and came straight to you.’

She fell silent, as silent as a corpse. I was frightened. I touched her arm dangling from the edge of the bed. . it was as hot as fire.

I called her name loudly several times, but she didn’t answer. Finally, when I screamed, ‘Neelam!’ in sheer terror, she started.

As she was leaving she only said, ‘My name is Radha!’