Manto by Saadat Hasan Manto

Author:Saadat Hasan Manto
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184002157
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE PUBLISHERS INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED

* The word in Urdu is tawwaif, which covers anything from a working prostitute to a dancing girl or courtesan.

* Spanish cherry tree

Ram Khilavan

I had just killed a bedbug, and was going through some old papers in a trunk, when I discovered Saeed bhaijan’s picture. I put the picture in an empty frame lying on the table and sat down to wait for the dhobi.

Every Sunday I would wait like this, because by the end of the week, my supply of clean clothes had run out. I can hardly call it supply; in those days of poverty, I had just about enough clothes to meet my own basic standards for five or six days. My marriage was being negotiated at the time and because of this I had been going for the past two or three Sundays to Mahim.

The dhobi was an honest man. Despite my sometimes being unable to pay him, he would return my clothes every Sunday by ten. I was worried that one of these days he would grow tired of my unpaid bills and sell my clothes in the flea market, leaving me with no clothes in which to negotiate my marriage. Which, needless to say, would have been cause for great humiliation.

The vile, unmistakable stench of dead bedbugs filled my room. I was wondering how to dispel it when the dhobi arrived. With a ‘salaam saab’, he opened his bundle and put my clean clothes on the table. As he was doing this, his gaze fell on Saeed bhaijan’s photograph. Taken aback, he looked closely at the picture and emitted a strange sound from his throat: ‘He, he, he, hein?’

‘What’s the matter, dhobi?’ I asked.

The dhobi’s gaze fixed on the picture. ‘But this, this is barrister Saeed Salim!’

‘You know him?’

The dhobi nodded his head vigorously. ‘Yes, two brothers. Lived in Colaba. Saeed Salim, barrister. I used to wash his clothes. ’

Saeed Hassan bhaijan and Mahmood Hassan bhaijan, before immigrating to Fiji, did in fact have a practice in Bombay for a year, but this would have been a few years ago.

I said, ‘You’re referring to a couple of years ago?’

The dhobi nodded vigorously again. ‘Saeed Salim barrister when he left, he gave me one turban, one dhoti, one kurta. New. They were very nice people. One had a beard, this big.’ He made a gesture with his hand to show the length of the beard. Then pointing to Saeed bhaijan’s picture, said, ‘He was younger. He had three little runts… they used to like to play with me. They had a house in Colaba; a big house!’

I said, ‘Dhobi, they’re my brothers.’

The dhobi made that strange ‘he, he, he, hein?’ sound again. ‘Saeed Salim, barrister?’

To lessen his surprise, I said, ‘This is Saeed Hassan’s picture and the one with the beard is Mahmood Hassan, the eldest.’

The dhobi stared wide-eyed at me, then surveyed the squalor of my room. It was a tiny room, destitute of even an electric light. There was one table, one chair and one sack-covered cot with a thousand bedbugs.

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