Nangī āvāzeñ ("Naked Sounds"), by Sadat Hasan Manto. An English Translation

Original Urdu Text ننگی آوازیں

Original Urdu text in devanāgarī नंगी आवाज़ें

Naked Sounds

Bholu and Gama were two brothers, incredibly hard-working. Bholu was a pot-varnisher; early in the morning, he would place the bellows on his head and set out, shouting all day long in the city’s alleys: “Get a tin varnish for your pots and pans!” When he returned home in the evening, he always had a significant amount of money in his lungi’s pouch.

Gama was a food vendor. He also had to wander around all day carrying a basket on his head and he, too, earned a good living. But he was addicted to alcohol. In the evening, before eating dinner in Dina’s shabby tavern, he always needed half a pint of alcohol. After drinking, he would get ebullient and start singing like a bird. Dina’s tavern would light up. Everybody knew that he drank and that he lived for it. Bholu tried to reason with Gama, who was two years older than him: “Look, this alcohol addiction is a terrible thing: you are married and squander money for nothing! If you saved that very sum which you spend on alcohol every day, my sister-in-law could live a very good life. Do you like that your wife has to walk around in rags?” But with Gama, the words just went in one ear and out the other. Eventually, Bholu would grow weary and give up discussing the matter.

They were both refugees. The servants’ quarters were adjacent to the big building. There, in the areas where the others squatted, both brothers had reserved the quarter on the second floor as their own living-space.

The winter passed by smoothly, but when summer came, Gama felt great discomfort: as for Bholu, he would spread out a cot on the roof and go to sleep; but what could Gama do? He had a wife, and upstairs no curtain whatsoever was set up. Kallan came up with an idea: in a roof’s corner, he stretched out a sack-jute all around his and his wife’s charpoy; this way, a curtain was improvised. The others followed Kallan’s example and applied this technique. Bholu helped his brother out: in a matter of days, he arranged a curtain by sticking bamboo stalks and all the necessary material into the ground, and connecting them with jute. This way, even though the breeze could not pass through, the place was still in every way better than the hell of the downstairs quarters.

Sleeping outside brought about a radical shift in Bholu’s mindset. He had always been against marriage. In his heart, he had taken an oath to never agree to that hassle. Whenever Gama would bring up the topic of his getting married, he would say: “No, brother, I do not want a leech sucking on my marrow!” But when summer came and he started sleeping upstairs spreading out a cot, he changed his mind in just a couple of weeks.

One evening, in Dina’s tavern, he said to his brother: “Get me married, or else I’ll go crazy.” When Gama heard that, he exclaimed: “Are you joking?” Bholu’s expression became very grave: “You have no idea… I have not slept through the night in fifteen days.”

 “Why, what happened?” Gama asked.

“Nothing, man! Left and right, wherever I glance, some thing or other is always going on. I hear all kinds of sounds. How the hell will I be able to sleep?” Gama laughed aloud through his thick moustache; Bholu recoiled. “That Kallan, he has gone too far! That bastard keeps talking nonsense all night long! His damn wife cannot hold her tongue, either; the children are lying down crying, but she…”

Gama was drunk to his satisfaction. When Bholu left, Gama, in a chirping tone, told all his acquaintances in the tavern that his brother could not sleep. When he disclosed the reason in his own peculiar style, his audience was bent over with laughter. When these people ran into Bholu, they greatly ridiculed him. One would ask him: “Hey, brother, what does Kallan talk about with his wife?”; someone would say: “Sir, you have fun for free… you watch movies all night… with tone and music and everything, a hundred percent!”. Some cracked really dirty jokes.

Bholu got annoyed: when Gama was in a calm state of mind, he told him: “you have turned me into a laughingstock, man! Look, what I have told you is not a lie. I am human. I swear by God, I cannot sleep! I have been awake for twenty days! Make arrangements for my marriage, or else it will be the ruin of me, I swear by the Five Holy Ones. My five hundred rupees are kept safe by your wife… make the arrangements, quickly!”

Gama remained pensive for a little while, twirling his moustache, and then said: “Fine, it will get arranged. I will tell your sister-in-law this very day to ask around among her girlfriends.”

Within a month and a half, the matter was fixed. Gama’s wife really liked Ayisha, the daughter of Samad the varnisher. She was beautiful and she knew how to do house chores. Besides, Samad was also an upright person; the people of the neighbourhood held him in respect. Bholu was hardworking and physically fit. The date of the wedding was fixed for mid-June. Samad kept repeating that he would not have his daughter married in such heat, but when Bholu insisted, he gave in.

Four days before the wedding, Bholu improvised a curtain of jute up on the roof, for his bride. He firmly secured a bamboo stick into the floor and tightly attached the jute; he spread new sheets on the charpoys and put a pitcher on the parapet wall. He bought a glass from the market. He made all the preparations with great care.

At night, when he went to sleep surrounded by the jute-curtain, he felt somewhat awkward. He was used to sleeping in open air, but now, he had to form a new habit. And that is why he started sleeping this way already a few days before the wedding.

The first night, when he lay down and thought about his wife, he became drenched in sweat. Noises started to echo in his ears, sounds which would not let him sleep and would cause all kinds of distressing thoughts to run havoc in his mind. “Will I also be making such noises? Will the people around hear these sounds? Will they also spend sleepless nights like this one? And if someone peeps through, what then?” Bholu’s distress grew even more acute. The same thought kept tormenting him all the time: “is a jute curtain even a curtain? Also, there are people scattered all around! In the silence of the night, even light whispers reach other people’s ears. How do people lead such a naked life? This roof is a brothel! On this charpoy lies the wife, and on that charpoy, the husband. Hundreds of eyes, hundreds of ears are open all around. A man gets to see everything, even if it’s not under his eyes; the slightest noise materializes into a picture right in front of him. What is this jute curtain anyway? When the sun comes out, its light reveals everything. Just there in front of me, Kallan is groping his wife’s breasts; there in the corner lies his brother Gama, the stray lungi lying loosely on one side. Through the perforated jute, one can see the stomach of Shada, the sweet-maker Idu’s unmarried daughter.”

When the wedding day arrived, Bholu felt like running away; but where could he have gone? He was already in the grip of things! If he were to disappear, Samad would certainly commit suicide. And God only knows what his daughter would go through, let alone the hurricane that would be unleashed!

“All right, what will be will be. I also have other companions. I will slowly get used to it, me too…” Bholu consoled himself and brought home his newly wed wife’s palanquin.

The quarters filled with feverish activity. People congratulated Bholu and Gama profusely. Bholu’s closer friends teased him and told him useful tricks for the first night. Bholu listened in silence. His sister-in-law arranged a bed under the jute curtain, upstairs on the roof. Gama put four big garlands of jasmine by the pillow; a friend brought milk with jalebis in it for him.

Until late at night, he remained seated by his bride, downstairs. The poor girl, shy to death, was all crumpled up, her face bowed down and covered with the hem of her saree. In the sweltering heat, Bholu’s new kurta was glued to his body. He was fanning himself, but it was as if the breeze just flew away. Bholu had decided beforehand that he would not go up to the roof; he was going to spend the night downstairs, right in the quarters. But when the heat reached its peak, he got up and told his wife to move.

More than half of the night had already passed. All the quarters were wrapped in silence. Bholu felt reassured by the fact that everybody would probably be sleeping, and nobody would see him: he would enter quietly, on the tip of his toes, from underneath his jute curtain, together with his bride, and then come down in the morning, before sunrise.

When he got to the roof, complete silence reigned. When the bride shily raised her feet, her silvery anklet bells twinkled. For a moment, Bholu felt as if the sleep which was scattered all around had startled and awakened. People started turning in their charpoys; sounds of coughing and throat-clearing surfaced here and there; suppressed whispers floated around in that heated atmosphere. 

Bholu panicked, seized his wife’s hand and swiftly went into the shelter of the jute. The sound of held-back laughs collided with his ears. His fear grew even bigger. When he spoke with his wife, a whispering emerged close by.

In a faraway corner, where Kallan’s place was, the charpoy made a squeaking sound. When it quieted down, it was Gama’s metal charpoy that started talking… Shada, the sweet-maker Idu’s daughter, got up a few times to drink water; every time her glass hit the pot, it would cause a jingling sound. From the charpoy of the butcher Khera’s son came the sound of lighting matches, again and again.

Bholu did not manage to say one word to his bride: he feared that the open ears all around would immediately swallow his words, and that all the charpoys would start making a squeaking noise. He lay silent, holding his breath. Time and again, he would glance timidly at his wife, who was lying on the other charpoy in a foetal position. She remained awake for a little while and then fell asleep. Bholu also tried to go to sleep, but he could not. After a few short, repeated intervals of silence, he heard some sounds… sounds which turned into pictures and floated in front of his eyes. His heart was in a great turmoil. When he had decided to get married, all the pleasures unknown to him kept spinning around in his heart and in his mind: a warm feeling would invade him, a big wave of pleasure-giving heat. but now, in the first night, it was as if he had lost interest. During the night, he tried several times to awaken that interest, but the sounds… those image-creating sounds threw everything into chaos. He felt naked; a stark-naked person at whom people all around kept staring intensely, mocking him.

In the morning, he got up around four, went outside and drank a glass of cool water. He brooded for a while. To some extent, he drove away that hesitation which had settled down in his heart. Now, a strong, cool breeze was blowing… Bholu’s glance turned to a corner. Kallan’s worn-out jute was fluttering. He was lying starkly naked with his wife. Bholu felt intense loathing, and anger at the same time: why did the wind blow like that on the roof? And when it blew, why did it stir up the jutes that way? He felt an urge to tear up all the jutes on the roof, throw them down and launch into a naked dance.

Bholu went downstairs. When he set out for work, he ran into several friends: all asked him for an account of the first night. Feja, the tailor, even called out to him from a distance: “So, Master Bholu, how did you do? I hope you did not blemish our good name!” Chaga, the tin-roof maker, spoke to him in a highly confidential tone: “Look, if there is something wrong, just tell me. I have a very good recipe!”

Bala patted vehemently on his shoulder: “So, you fighter, how was the wrestling match?”

Bholu remained silent.

In the morning, his wife left for her parents’ house. When she came back, five or six days later, Bholu had to face that same problem again. It was as if the people listening on the roof had been waiting for his wife’s arrival. For some nights there had been silence, but when they slept upstairs… the same whispers, the same squeaking noise, the same coughing and throat-clearing, the same jingling noise of the glass colliding with the pot … people turning in their sleep all the time; suppressed laughter.

Bholu lay on his charpoy staring at the sky all night. Now and then, he would take a deep sigh, look at his bride and grudge inwardly, “What has happened to me? … what has happened to me? … what has happened to me?”

This same scene went on for seven nights; eventually, Bholu was fed up and sent his wife to her parents’ house. When twenty to twenty-five days had passed, Gama said to Bholu: “Hey, you are a very strange man; the wedding only just happened, and you have already sent your wife to her parents’ house! She has been gone for so many days now! How do you even manage to sleep on your own?”

Bholu only said this much: “It’s fine!”.

“Fine what?!... tell me what the matter is! Do you not like Ayisha?” Gama said.

“That is not the case”.

“If that’s not the case, then what else is the problem?”

Bholu evaded the issue, but only a few days later, his brother raised the topic again. Bholu got up and went out of the quarters. A charpoy was lying there: he sat on it. He heard his sister-in-law’s voice coming from inside. She was telling Gama: “That thing you have said to Bholu, that he does not like Ayisha, was it? That is wrong!”.

“What is the matter then? Bholu is not in the least interested in her” came Gama’s voice.

“What interest should he have?”

“Why?”

Bholu could not hear Gama’s wife’s answer, but he felt as if his whole being had been thrown into a mortar and turned to dust. All of a sudden, Gama uttered in a loud voice: “No, no… who told you that?”

 “Aysha mentioned it to her friend…it spread around and reached my ears” said Gama’s wife.

 “This is very bad news!” exclaimed Gama in an utterly shocked tone.

It was as if a knife had got stuck into Bholu’s heart: his mental sanity was thrown off balance. He got up, mounted to the roof and started uprooting all the curtains on it. Hearing the cutting and tearing sounds, people gathered there. When they tried to stop him, he put on a fight; the matter escalated. Kallan picked up a bamboo stick and hit him in the head; Bholu felt dizzy, fell down and lost consciousness. When he recovered his senses, he had already lost his mind.

He now roams around stark naked in the markets; and if he happens to see a jute curtain hanging somewhere, he pulls it down, shreds it and tears it into pieces.