Naked Voices by Sadat Hasan Manto

Author:Sadat Hasan Manto [Hasan, Saadat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789351940166
Publisher: Roli Books

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.

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