By the Roadside
PENGUIN BOOKS
By the Roadside
Saadat Hasan Manto, the most widely read and the most controversial short-story writer in Urdu, was born on 11 May 1912 at Samrala in Punjab’s Ludhiana district. In a literary, journalistic, radio scripting and film-writing career spread over more than two decades, he produced twenty-two collections of short stories, one novel, five collections of radio plays, three collections of essays, two collections of personal sketches and many scripts for films. He was tried for obscenity half a dozen times, thrice before and thrice after Independence. Some of Manto’s greatest work was produced in the last seven years of his life, a time of great financial and emotional hardship for him. He died several months short of his forty-third birthday, in January 1955, in Lahore.
Muhammad Umar Memon is professor emeritus of Urdu literature and Islamic studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a critic, short-story writer, translator and editor of the Annual of Urdu Studies. He has translated the best of Urdu writers. His most recent translation is Collected Stories, a selection of stories by Naiyer Masud.
Saadat Hasan Manto
By the Roadside
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By the Roadside
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By the Roadside
It was the same season, the sky was as washed and clear a blue as his eyes, just like today. The sunlight had the comforting warmth of pleasant dreams. The smell of the earth was the same as it is now, crowding my senses. Lying down as I am today, I offered my throbbing soul to him.
‘Believe me, my life was bereft of moments like the ones you’ve given me,’ he said. ‘All the empty spaces of my being that you’ve filled today are grateful to you. Had you not come into my life, perhaps it would have remained incomplete. I’m at a loss; what more can I say. I feel complete, indeed so complete that I don’t think I need you any more.’
And he walked away, never to return.
My eyes shed tears and my heart cried. I begged him. I asked him over and over again: ‘Why—why don’t you need me any more, now when my need for you, with all its tumultuous passion, has only just begun . . . after those very moments which, as you say, filled the empty spaces of your being.’
‘These moments have bestowed on me, one by one, whatever atoms of your being I needed to make myself whole,’ he said. ‘Now that my life’s goal has been accomplished, our relationship naturally comes to an end.’
Oh the wounding cruelty of those words! I couldn’t bear their onslaught. I screamed in pain, which left him unmoved. I told him, ‘These atoms that perfected you were part of my being. Don’t they bear some relationship to me? Could the rest of me ever disown them? Your fruition comes at the cost of leaving me severed in two. Did I make you my lord for this?’
‘Bees suck the nectar of flowers and buds to make honey, but they’re never so much as allowed to taste it, not even its dregs. God demands worship, but doesn’t worship Himself. He spent a few moments in seclusion with Non-Being and brought forth Being. Where is Non-Being now? Does existence need it any more? It was the mother that died giving birth to Being.’
‘All a woman can do is cry,’ I said to him. ‘She can’t argue. Her most potent argument is the teardrop that falls from her eye. Look at me—I’m crying, shedding continuous tears. If you must leave me, at least gather a few of them in the shroud of your handkerchief. I’ll be crying for the rest of my life, but at least I’ll cherish the memory that you too participated in the funeral rites of a few of my tears . . . if only to make me happy.’
‘I’ve already made you happy. I’ve made you experience the tangible happiness you saw only as a distant mirage. Can you not live by the memory of the bliss, the exhilaration of those moments? You say that my fruition has left you incomplete. Isn’t this incompletion enough to keep your life dynamic? I’m a man. Today you’ve brought me fruition, tomorrow someone else will. My being is fashioned from such a substance that there will be many moments when I will experience this feeling of incompletion and many women like you will enter my life to fill the void created by those moments.’
I kept crying and agonizing.
These few moments, I thought, that I had within my grasp just now—no, I was within their grasp—why did I surrender myself to them? Why did I let my throbbing soul walk straight into the gaping opening of their cage? There was pleasure in it, exhilaration, even bliss—yes, there certainly was, but only in the mingling of our bodies. How is it that he remained whole, but I’m shattered to pieces? Why is it that he no longer needs me, but I long for him even more passionately? He came out of it stronger and I, feebler. Why is it that two patches of cloud come together in the sky only for one to rain down tears and the other to play with this rain like a flash of lightning, to just skip about and run away? What law is that? Who made it—the skies, the earth, or their Creator?
I kept shedding tears and trembling.
Two souls fusing into one and stretching out into an overpowering expanse—is this mere lyricism? No, two contracting souls surely come to that minuscule point which expands into the universe. But why is one soul sometimes left hurting and wounded in that universe—just because it helped its mate reach that minuscule point?
What kind of universe is that?
It was the same season, the sky was as washed and clear a blue as his eyes, just like today. The sunlight had the comforting warmth of pleasant dreams. Lying down as I am today, I offered my throbbing soul to him. He is no longer here. Only God knows the inconsolable anguish of what wisps of clouds he is playing around with like a flash of lightning. He attained his fruition and left . . . A snake that bit me and slithered away. But why is the spoor he left behind stirring inside my belly? Am I now receiving my completion?
No, no, this cannot be completion. It is ruination. But why are the empty spaces of my body filling up? What debris is packing the hollows of my body? What are these rustling sounds coursing through my veins? Why am I curling back upon myself in a desperate attempt to reach that minuscule spot within me? In what seas is my boat rising after sinking?
For what guest is milk being warmed on the fires blazing inside of me? For whom is my heart fluffing up my blood like carded cotton wool to fashion soft little comforters? And for whom is my mind stitching tiny clothes with the multicoloured threads of my thoughts?
For whom is my skin getting a wash of brilliance? Why are the sobs caught in every limb and pore of my body turning into sweet lullabies?
It was the same season, the sky was as washed and clear a blue as his eyes, just like today . . . but why has the sky tumbled down from its heights to stretch out inside of me? Why are its blue eyes scurrying through my veins?
Why is the roundness of my breasts assuming the holiness of the arches of mosques? No, no, this is no holiness. I’ll pull down these arches. I’ll extinguish the fires within me where a repast is being prepared for the uninvited guest. I’ll toss the multicoloured threads of my thoughts into a jumbled mass. It was the same season, the sky was as washed and clear a blue as his eyes, just like today. But why do I remember those days from which he has carried away every last trace of his footprints?
But whose footprint is this, flailing in the depths of my belly? Isn’t it familiar?
I’ll scrape it off . . . I’ll erase it. It’s cankerous, an ulcer of the most malignant kind.
But why does it feel like a ball of cotton wool? If it is cotton wool, what wound is it supposed to dress? The wound he inflicted on me before he went his way? No, no. It seems as though it is meant for the wound with which I was born. For a wound I’d never seen before, that lay dormant in my womb for who knows how long.
>
What is a womb but a useless pot of clay, a child’s plaything? I’ll smash it to pieces.
Who is this whispering in my ear, ‘The world is a crossroads. Why do you wish to give out your secret to everyone here in the open? Mind you, fingers will be pointed at you.’
But why wouldn’t the fingers point in the direction in which he went, went after completing his being? Don’t the fingers know the way? But that day it was the fork in the road where he left me standing, either prong of which offered only gaping incompletion, and tears.
Whose teardrop is turning into a pearl inside my shell? Where will it be strung?
Fingers will be raised. Yes, they will be raised when the shell opens its mouth and drops its pearl in the middle of the crossroads, raised towards the shell and towards the pearl. The fingers will morph into a brood of vipers that will bite both of them and turn them blue with venom.
The sky was blue like his eyes, just like today. Why doesn’t it fall? What invisible columns are keeping it aloft? Was the earthquake that day not enough to topple them from their bases? Why is the sky still stretched out over me as before?
My soul is drenched in sweat. Its every pore is open. A fire is blazing all around. Gold is melting in the vessel inside my body. The bellows are at work and flames are leaping up. Liquid gold is pouring out like lava from the volcano. Blue eyes are running through my veins gasping for breath. Bells are tinkling. Someone is approaching. Shut the doors! Shut them tightly!
The cauldron has been tipped over allowing the liquid gold to flow out. Bells are tinkling. It’s coming. My eyes are beginning to close. The sky has turned murky and it’s falling.
Whose cries are these? Make them stop! Its screams are falling on me like the blows of a hammer. Make it stop crying . . . stop crying . . . I’m turning into a lap. For heaven’s sake, why?
My arms are spreading out. The milk is coming to a boil on the fires. My round breasts are becoming bowls. Bring it over, that lump of flesh, and lay it down on the soft swaddle of my carded blood.
Don’t snatch it away. Don’t separate it from me. For God’s sake, don’t!
Fingers . . . let them point. I don’t care. This world is a crossroads. Let all my secrets be broadcast here.
My life will be ruined. Let it be. Give me back my flesh. Don’t pluck this shard of my soul away. You have no idea how precious it is. It’s a jewel, the gift of those few moments. Moments that selected some atoms of my being to make someone else whole and let me think I was left incomplete. But I’ve become whole today.
Believe me. Ask the void inside of me, ask my breasts filled with milk, ask the lullabies that are moving forward after calming all the sobs and hiccups in every part and every pore of my body, ask the rockers being placed in my arms. Ask the pallor of my face that has given all its ruddiness to the cheeks of that lump of flesh. Ask those breaths that have been stealthily delivering that lump its share.
Fingers . . . let the fingers point at me. I’ll hack them off. If a hullaballoo breaks out, I’ll plug my ears with those fingers. I’ll become deaf and mute and blind. The piece of my flesh will have no trouble understanding my signs. And I’ll feel it and know it’s mine. Don’t take it away from me, don’t. It’s the sindoor of the parting of my womb, the bindiya on the forehead of my motherly affection, the bitter fruit of my sin. Let people spit on it, I’ll lick it clean with my tongue.
Look, I’m pleading with you with folded hands. I’m touching your feet with my forehead. Please don’t overturn my milk-filled bowls. Don’t set fire to the soft swaddling clothes made of my carded blood. Don’t sever the cords of the swings of my arms. Don’t deprive me of the songs I hear in his cries.
Don’t snatch that lump of flesh away from me, don’t separate it from me, for God’s sake, don’t . . .
Lahore, 21 January. The police found an abandoned newborn girl shivering from cold by the side of the road in Dhobi Mandi and took her under their protection. Some cruel person had tied a piece of cloth tightly around the baby’s neck and wrapped her naked body in a wet cloth so that she would die quickly, but she was alive. She’s a very beautiful baby with blue eyes. She has been admitted to the hospital.
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Copyright © Muhammad Umar Memon, 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted
This digital edition published in 2018.
e-ISBN: 978-9-387-62577-8
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Saadat Hasan Manto, By the Roadside
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