SITARA: DANCING TIGRESS FROM NEPAL
Saadat Hasan Manto
No one wrote about the strange and sublime beasts of Bollywood better than Manto. It is because of him that the Bombay film world of the 1940s still appears far more interesting than of any decade since.
As a writer, I have had to go through and overcome many difficulties but I have never felt more hesitant then I now do as I sit down to record my memories of the famous dancer and film star Sitara. To most, she was known as an actress who was a superb dancer, but I happened to have the opportunity to study her character, hence this piece. Sitara was a living case history, and only a psychologist could write about her as she deserved to be written about. Over the years, I have known and analysed many women but the more I learnt about her, the closer I came to the view that she was not a woman but a typhoon which did not blow in and out as typhoons do, but which retained its force and fury without showing any signs of weakening. She may have been a woman of average build but she was stronger than most people I have known. Had another woman suffered as many illnesses as she did, she could not have survived. Sitara was made of a different clay and was both brave and strong-minded. She never missed her morning dance exercises and spent at least an hour dancing as if there was no tomorrow.
Every morning, she would dance with bone-breaking vigour for an hour, but I never found her looking tired. She had amazing stamina and there was never a sign of fatigue on her face. She loved her art in the same total way as she loved her man. Even for an ordinary performance, she would rehearse for hours and give it everything she had. She always wanted to do new things. Her movements were swift and she was one of those restless people who cannot sit still even for a minute. She was always up and about.
She had two sisters named Tara and Alaknanda which made them into a female trinity. These three sisters were probably born in a Nepalese village and came to Bombay one by one to seek their fortune. Her sisters faded out long ago and there would be few who would even recall their names but, in their time, they lived interesting lives. Tara had many affairs, including one with Shaukat Hashmi, who was married to Purnima who later divorced him. Alaknanda passed through many hands and in the end settled down with the famous Prabhat Studio actor Balwant Singh. How long she lived with him I do not know. Of the three sisters, only Sitara was able to make her mark. I hesitate to write about her because she was not one but several women and so many were the men with whom she had affairs that it would be impossible to deal with them all in one short piece.
Were the sisters to have a biographer, the book would run into thousands of pages. I have often been denounced as a writer of pornography. Those who do so never give me credit for refusing to write about smutty people, and God knows there are enough of them in this world. People in my view do smutty things either out of instinct or because of the surroundings in which they live. What comes instinctively to a human being can perhaps be kept under control if he tries, but if he is indifferent, then whom can he blame except himself?
Whenever I think of Sitara, I am reminded of a typical five-storey Bombay high-rise with many flats and rooms, all inhabited. It is a fact that she had the ability to be involved with many men at the same time. When she came to Bombay, she was with a gaunt-looking Gujarati film director whose name I do not recall but it was something Desai. They were probably married too. He was very good in his work but obstinate by nature, which earned him many rejections. I met him at a time when the Saroj Film Company was still in business but dying slowly. We became friends right away because he understood film-making and had a taste for literature. Sitara had just left him but he had few regrets because he told me that he did not have the ability to cope with a woman like her. She was then living with someone else but, off and on, she would come to see Desai. He would welcome her but never encourage her to stay long. There is no divorce under Hindu law. Desai and Sitara had had a Hindu marriage and despite her affairs with a succession of men, technically she remained Mrs Desai.
I am taking you back to the time when Mehboob’s star was rising. He cast her in one of his movies and soon there was a roaring affair going on between the two of them. I won’t write about it because only Ishrat Jahan, known to moviegoers as Bibbo, can do justice to this story. Mehboob was shooting outdoor in Hyderabad and despite his affair with Sitara, his routine was unchanged. He would offer his prayers with the greatest devotion and make love to her with the same single-minded enthusiasm. Mehboob was completing a movie at Film City Studio where P.N. Arora (later to make his mark as a producer) was the sound recordist. Fazal Bhai, who was all-in-all at Film City, had earlier sent Arora to England for training. The recording laboratory was under the overall charge of Seth Shiraz Ali. Mehboob was still carrying on with Sitara. But according to Diwan Singh Maftoon, editor of the famous journal Riasat, she was also having it on the side with Arora. After the Mehboob movie was done, she moved in with Arora. Then there appeared on the scene the handsome Al-Nasir who had just arrived from Dehradun to become an actor. Because of his looks, he was given a role in a movie which also starred Sitara. It was only to be expected that he would get added to her list. In effect, besides Al-Nasir, she was maintaining relations with three other men all more or less simultaneously: her husband Desai, Arora and Mehboob.
Her fifth man was Nazir, whose mistress, a Jewish actress by the name of Yasmin, had recently left him. I don’t know exactly how Nazir and Sitara met, but they instantaneously fell for each other. Nazir was a very forthcoming and open-hearted person. When we met, for instance, instead of shaking hands, he would shower me with the choicest abuse, his way of showing affection. He had a heart of gold and he was straight as an arrow. His affair with Sitara lasted for several years. Because of his strong personality, she temporarily gave up the other men, but it was not going to last because Sitara was not a one-man woman. Before long, she had fallen into her old ways with time for everybody: Arora, Al-Nasir, Mehboob and her husband. This was too much for a selfrespecting man like Nazir, who believed in maintaining a relationship faithfully once it had been formed. Sitara was made of different clay and even a man like Nazir could not keep her from hopping into bed with other men. His former mistress Yasmin was both very feminine and quite beautiful, but when she had told Nazir that she would like to settle down with a husband and a home, he, whom many considered a hard man, had said to her in all sincerity that since they were not going to get married, she was free to marry whom she pleased. How that kind of a person could carry on with a woman like Sitara for so long always baffled me.
I first met Nazir at Hindustan Cinetone. It was a bad time for the movie industry. Many financiers had been bankrupted because of playing the stock market to make quick money. The original name of Cinetone used to be Saroj Film Company, and God knows what else before that. I had written a story called ‘Keechar’ which Seth Nanoobhai Desai had liked immensely. It was the sort of story which no producer would have been willing to film because of its theme, which was sure to provoke the government’s ire. Nanoobhai was a brave man and he had bought my story, but the project had remained incomplete because of other difficulties he had run into. I had specially written a character—that of a labourer—for Nazir, which he had liked. On learning that Nanoobhai was unable to make that ‘heretical’ film, he had offered to buy the story and promised to film it no matter what it took. Since Nanoobhai really liked the story, he had declined the offer. He had also in the meantime arranged the money, and the film, which was in the Gujarati language, had been completed and released, directed by Dad Gunjal. Nazir had been playing with the idea of forming a film company of his own for some time and being at a loose end since the end of his affair with Yasmin, he had concentrated on this project and managed to set one up. As far as I can remember, his first production was Sandesa, followed by Society which starred Sitara. And that was when she had really got under his skin, though true to form, she had not stopped meeting her other lovers, especially P.N. Arora.
Here is an interesting story. After I left Bombay for a year to work for the All India Radio, Delhi, it was only natural that I would remain largely unaware of the gossip in Bombay. One day I ran into Arora on the street. He was walking with the help of a stick and his back was bent. He was always thin but he looked in extremely poor shape that day. I felt that he had difficulty even walking, as if there was no life left in him. I was in a tonga which I asked the driver to stop. Expressing surprise at his appearance, I asked him what was wrong. Almost out of breath with fatigue, he managed a faint smile and replied. ‘Sitara … Manto, Sitara.’
Al-Nasir, who lost his slim, upright and handsome figure after a few years, becoming fat and flabby, was a sensation when he came, with his fair, almost pink complexion, nurtured by the cool hill air of his native Dehradun. He was so good-looking that one could almost compare him to a beautiful woman. When I returned to Bombay from Delhi after accepting an offer from Shaukat Hussain Rizvi, I met him at Minerva Movietone. I just could not believe my eyes. His pink complexion had become ashen and his clothes hung loose on him. He seemed to have shrunk and all energy and strength appeared to have been squeezed out of him. ‘My dear, what have you done to yourself?’ I asked because I was worried about his health. He whispered the answer in my ear, ‘Sitara … my dear, Sitara.’
Sitara was everywhere. I wondered if Sitara’s only purpose in life was to infect men with pallor, from the England-trained Arora to the Dehradun-born Al-Nasir. So I took Al-Nasir aside and asked him to give me the low-down on her. He said it was Sitara who had drained him out and he had come to a point where he knew that if he did not fight free of her and run, it would be the end of him. So one day, he had just hopped on a train bound for Dehradun where he had spent three months in a sanatorium and recovered some of his strength. He said she had been writing him long letters in Hindi which he was unable to read, but added that he dreaded their arrival. He again whispered in my ear, ‘Manto sahib, that woman … I tell you!’
Women like Sitara are rare, perhaps one in a million. She survived illnesses so dangerous that few other women could have scraped through them. She had determination, and so formidable was her constitution that not once, but several times she successfully cheated death. Many thought that after such grave bouts with a host of ailments, she would lose her will and ability to dance, but they were wrong. She danced as she had always danced, in her later years as in her early youth, giving it everything she had. She would never miss her daily practice and she would have herself massaged every day. She always had two house servants, a man and a woman. The massage was always performed by the man. As for the woman, she invariably chose one who looked like an oldfashioned procuress.
Sitara was mostly to be seen in a fine muslin sari which left nothing to the imagination. It wasn’t too pretty a sight. She never talked much but she had sharp eyes which noticed everything. When she was fifty-five, she had the agility of an eagle-eyed young woman. For a time she lived alone in Dadar’s Khudadad Circle. Khudadad in Urdu means God-given and the truth is that her talent and her qualities were God-given. Nazir, who later got tied up with the actress Swarn Lata (whom he married), despite his tolerance and generosity, could only take so much of Sitara and no more. In the end, he gave up on her because she could never be satisfied with one man. I am told he had once stood in front of her with his hands joined together in supplication and begged her, ‘Sitara, please let me go. I made a mistake and I am sorry for it and I want you to forgive me.’
Nazir used to rough Sitara up occasionally but she did not seem to mind. Perhaps she was one of those women who derive sexual pleasure from this sort of thing. There is an interesting sub-plot to the Sitara-Nazir affair. His nephew K. Asif (later to become a filmmaker of note) was staying with his uncle when Sitara was living in the house. Asif was a big, strong man, still tender in years, who, as far as I know, had never known a woman in his life. He was keen on movies and curious to learn everything about them because he had ambition and he had come to know many film personalities, including actresses, since he had moved in with his uncle. He must also have witnessed what went on between Sitara and Nazir. A restless young man, he was raring to go and though Sitara may have appeared to him like a stone wall, she was the kind of wall which men like Asif would be challenged to scale.
Nazir’s flat was off a courtyard in front of Ranjit Studio. It had three rooms, one of which served as the office of his company, Hind Pictures. The place did not offer much by way of privacy, so it is to be assumed that young Asif must have witnessed, and certainly heard, what a man and woman do when they are alone. This must have been a new experience for someone whose knowledge of such things consisted of stories he had heard his married friends tell. His opportunity came one day when he actually saw ‘action play’ between his uncle and his mistress. It reminded him of a fight between two wild dogs who were trying to bite and tear each other apart as, frothing at the mouth, they carried on their savage encounter. A shiver ran down his spine. Man, he said to himself, was an animal, and love was a deadly encounter, but there was one difference. He wanted to be in just one such encounter himself. His body was young, sinewy and powerful, his blood warm; all he wanted was an opportunity to prove his manhood.
The talented but luckless Pakistani film director Nayyar was also living in Bombay in those days and staying with Nazir. He and Asif were the same age, both bachelors with wild and youthful fantasies. They would talk about women who were to be theirs in the future which stretched ahead. Whenever Sitara’s name came up, they would tremble and feel transported to a world inhabited by demonic spirits. They did not know what a nymphomaniac was, nor could they have known that if, on the one hand, there were women like Sitara, the flip side of the coin was that there were others who were frigid like slabs of ice. They did not know then that Sitara was not faithful though she was Nazir’s mistress. They did not know that she still made love to Arora, her husband Desai and Al-Nasir. But they did know why every other day there were scratch marks on Nazir’s rhinoceros skin.
Sitara would be up at the crack of dawn and begin the day by dancing like a savage for an hour. Her drummer would get exhausted but not she. The earth would tremble under feet as she completed her exercises. This was followed by an extended session with her masseur. Then she would bathe, put on fresh clothes and go to Nazir who would still be asleep. She would wake him up and make him drink a cup of milk or something else. That over, another dance would begin. Asif and Nayyar were aware of all this. They were still at an age when you look into empty rooms and peek through windows, when the slightest sound makes you come to a standstill, when you try to read meanings into everything. Nayyar was slightly built compared to Asif and his sexual urges were also less headstrong than his friend’s. Asif body was full of the static of youth and raw passion which made him long to fell a woman, like a thunderbolt which falls on the earth’s stony surface on a dark night.
Sitara would spend hours chatting to Asif. He felt less shy with her than when he had first come from Lahore, but he still could not muster the courage to touch her. He was terrified of his uncle’s temper. However, there was one thing he was in no doubt about: Sitara was attracted to him. If he were to grab her wrist, she would come with him, no matter where he took her, even on a bed of stones on a dark, stormy night. Asif was restless. He did not want to wait. The two of them were like two trains which are programmed to collide headlong one day. This bothered him because he wanted the collision to take place today. He felt close to her but they were running on parallel tracks, near yet far. There was no physical contact. The two would talk as passengers riding on trains going in opposite directions do, only to move apart. Asif was waiting for that dark and stormy night when he would take the leap. Nazir in the meanwhile had become suspicious, and he was horrified. One day he screamed at Sitara and ordered her to pack up and leave. He also beat her up.
Sitara was after all a woman and after the violence and unpleasantness with Nazir, she did not have the strength to just walk out of the door. She wanted help but how could she ask for it? He was frothing at the mouth with anger because he knew what she was up to. That night he went into his office and slept there. Asif knew that his chance had arrived and he slipped into Sitara’s room and rubber her body where it hurt, then he helped her pack and took her to her Khudadad Circle flat in Dadar. Sitara thanked him for his kindness and encouraged by that, he took her hand and said, ‘You don’t have to thank me.’ She did not try to free it and one thing led to another. And so it came to pass that young Asif joined the long line of men on whom she had cast her siren spell.
Sitara gave him the time of his life. Had it happened [even] during the day, he would have surely seen stars in the sky, but it had taken place at night in the privacy of her flat at Khudadad Circle. Asif was smitten, ‘Look,’ he said to her, ‘we should have a strong relationship; it is time you stopped going after other men. You should belong to just one man.’ Sitara promised that she would not look at another man from that day on. Asif was happy and left as he was afraid his uncle might ask him where he had been. He promised to be back the next day. After he left, Sitara went to her dressing table, brushed her hair, put on a fresh sari, walked down to the street, hailed a taxi and gave the driver P.N. Arora’s address.
Sitara hated the sight of me. I was editing the film weekly Mussawar in which I wrote a couple of satirical but amusing pieces about her. My columns Nit Nai (the latest) and Baal ki Khal (splitting hair) were popular and always in good taste, but Sitara did not like what I had written; not that I cared because, frankly, there was nothing I wanted from her. It was also my effort, as far as possible, to keep well away from film personalities. When I wrote a rather naughtily embellished account of her quarrel with Nazir, she was beside herself with rage and was said to have abused me all day. When my spies gave me details of her affair with Asif and I made indirect references to it in my columns, she asked him to beat me up, adding that if he didn’t, she would hire someone to do it. She also asked him to have some other journalist attack me in his paper. Asif did nothing because he could take a joke; he just let Sitara curse me to her heart’s content.
Things between Asif and his uncle, meanwhile, had reached a rather delicate stage. Nazir was getting very, very suspicious about his nephew’s movements. Asif was out of the house until the small hours and when he was asked where he had been, he would come up with one excuse or another. But excuses, no matter how good, run out in the end. Nazir had banished Sitara from his life and once his mind was made up, he never changed it. Sitara he did not give a damn about, but he was worried about his nephew whom he had brought all the way from Lahore so that he could make something of himself. He did not want him to fall into Sitara’s clutches. He knew her well and he also knew that she fed on young men like Asif. She had a way with men. Most of the time, she did not even have to try; they just fell into her lap willingly and once there, found all escape routes blocked.
Once a man caught Sitara’s fancy, he had to be on call all hours of the day and night. Asif, therefore, had begun to be absent from home much of the time. Once or twice, Nazir asked him if it was Sitara who was the cause of his disappearances. ‘Uncle, I can’t even think of it,’ Asif would say. Not that Nazir believed him. He was too old in tooth and claw not to know that this boy, his own nephew, was Sitara’s latest acquisition. As for Asif, had it been a woman other than his uncle’s former mistress, he would not have lied; but this was different. How could he tell his uncle that he was having an affair with his ex-mistress? Not only did Asif have no desire whatsoever to turn away from Sitara, he would not even have been able to, had he tried.
Nazir’s anger was mounting, but slowly. He did not wish to act until he had caught the two in a compromising position himself. And one day, that opportunity came his way. I do not now remember how Nazir caught Asif, but catch his nephew he did. Asif still swore that there was nothing between Sitara and him, but it was no use. Nazir’s first impulse was to break every bone in their bodies, but thanks to the actor Majid (who came to Lahore after 1947), who was in his good books, he cooled down. Majid, on his own, had tried several times to warn Asif about Sitara and the dangerous game he was playing, but Asif was beyond advice. He was also foolish enough to believe that his affair with Sitara would remain a secret. Nazir may have had a temper but he was also a tender-hearted man. He had had a long physical relationship with Sitara. He did not want his nephew to fall into her hands because he knew it would do him no good. Even if Asif had not been his nephew, he would still have given the young man the same advice. Nazir, a man of great sincerity—although he gave the impression of being hard—was not happy with what he had done, rather not done. And he was nobody’s fool, he was perceptive, and, what was more, he knew Sitara as few men knew her.
Asif began to get home earlier so as not to provoke his uncle’s ire. Once he would leave, Sitara would make up her face, change and hop into a taxi to spend the rest of the night with Arora on whom the potions of Delhi’s herbal medical miracle-makers had had a salutary effect. He had regained some of his old vigour and he no longer had that hollow-cheeked look. She had not given up her other old flames either. They—Al-Nazir, Mehboob and God alone knows how many others—remained on her ‘active list’. Asif had reduced his visits because of his uncle, but he had not eliminated them. And how could he, even if he had tried. Sitara was like a sorceress of old who turn their lovers into flies and stick them on the wall. In fairy tales, it always required a prince bearing a special amulet to break the spell and release the sorceress’s prisoners. Was a prince going to come to Asif’s rescue, because he was bewitched by one on whom even the most potent black magic could not have much effect? She was a fort that could not be stormed; so Asif continued to see Sitara and his relationship with his uncle kept worsening. By the way, after Nazir threw out Sitara, the famous musician Rafiq Ghaznavi had tried to make peace between them but without success. Once he invited Sitara, Arora and Nazir to his flat for drinks but despite his best efforts—he was a most persuasive conversationalist—he could not manage to change Nazir’s mind. In the end, everybody left and Sitara spent the night with Rafiq, who kept assuring her that her time with Nazir was a thing of the past and she should accept it. That was the beginning and the end of his peace mission. It was also the first and last night she spent with Rafiq. One should wonder why. Was it that he had found her to be less than a perfect dancer and she had discovered that he was not the musician he fancied himself to be?
Sitara was perhaps the first woman in Asif’s life and she had taken a shine to him. Nazir unfortunately caught them in flagrante delicto one more time, but I do not know who got Asif off the hook this time. Some days later, I heard that Asif had disappeared from Bombay. Then I was told that Sitara was not to be seen anywhere either. When people asked, they were told that she had gone to a Hindu shrine. Had it been the annual Haj pilgrimage season, some wags would have quipped that Asif had gone to the Holy Land, but it wasn’t. Then news came that both of them were in Delhi, were married and, further, that Sitara had become a Muslim and taken the name Allah Rakhi. One can imagine the effect it must have had on Nazir. Under Hindu personal law, there is no divorce. Once a woman is married, she is married for life. She can have a hundred men but she will remain the wife of the man to whom she first got married. Even if a Hindu woman changed her religion, she remained married to her original husband. From that point of view, Sitara may have become Begum K. Asif, but for all intents and purposes, she was still Mrs Desai.
Once the story was confirmed, I had a field day with it in my Mussawar columns. Every week, I would write about the newly married couple in a cutting manner. When the two returned to Bombay after their honeymoon, Nazir was so embarrassed and angry that it is not possible to describe it in words. One day at the races I found Asif in a sharkskin suit with his arm around Sitara’s waist. When he saw me, he smiled, then began to laugh. He shook my hand and said, ‘Brilliant, the columns you are writing are most amusing, by God I say.’ Sitara made a face and stood aside, but Asif paid no attention to her and kept talking to me for quite some time. He may have had little education but he had the ability to take a joke. In Bombay, word down the bazaar grapevine was that someone called Asif had married Sitara. In Bhindi Bazaar and Mohammad Ali Road, traditionally Bombay’s Muslim-dominated localities, men would sit in Iranian cafes sipping tea and expressing satisfaction over the fact that a Muslim had married a Hindu and converted her to Islam. Most of these devout Muslims often happened to be ardent supporters of the All India Muslim League. Some would say that Asif should not allow this sali to appear in movies, others would say there was nothing wrong with it, as long as she observed purdah when she left home. Some cynics would declare, ‘It is all a stunt.’ Once I asked Asif if he had really married Sitara in a Muslim ceremony. ‘What ceremony, what marriage!’ he answered. Only God knows what the truth was.
Asif had no place of his own, so he was living in her flat and driving her around in her car. In Delhi, Asif had met a financier, Lala Jagat Narayan, and talked him into investing in a movie he wanted to make. He must also have taken an advance because he did not appear to be hard-pressed for funds. Asif had lot of selfconfidence and could get the better of even famous directors and writers. He had great native intelligence, and plenty of horse sense. When he became a director, he did not confine himself to the advice of a small coterie, as so often happens, but invited a crosssection of people to advise him, never hesitating to accept a good suggestion or idea.
I am reminded of a story which involves me. When Asif was making Phool and I was living in a flat on Claire Road, one day I heard persistent honking on the street. I came out on the balcony and found a huge car parked in front of my building. I had a firstfloor flat and I bent over to see who the occupant was. It was Asif who stuck his head out of the car window and smiled. ‘Come in,’ I said. He opened the car door, said something to Sitara who was in the back seat and replied, ‘In a minute.’ The car drove off and a minute later, Asif walked in. He shook hands warmly and said, ‘I want to read you my story.’ ‘I charge a fee as you know,’ I said jokingly. Without another word, Asif walked out. I called after him and even ran out to the street but he would not return. All he said was he would come back when he had my fee. I felt ashamed of my bad joke, though I had been quite sure that he would take in the spirit in which I had made it. When I told my wife what had happened, she said it was silly of me to have said what I had. Asif, after all, was not a close friend and it was understandable that he had reacted the way he did.
Of course, I had not the least intention of injuring his feelings or expecting him to give me money. On the other hand, I really wanted him to narrate the story of his yet-to-be-made film to me. There were many third-class directors in Bombay who had asked me to listen to their stories not once but twice and even thrice because they wanted my opinion. I had never asked them for money. I regretted having upset Asif. One day, there was a knock at the door. I opened it and found a man with an envelope which he gave to me and left. I had not even opened it when I heard a car honk on the road. It was Sitara’s car. The envelope contained five hundred rupees and a one-line note, ‘Here’s the fee. I will come tomorrow.’ I was floored. Next day, Asif appeared at nine. ‘Well, doctor, have you received your fee?’ he asked. I was speechless but I apologized and tried to return the money, but he would not take it. He sank into the sofa and said, ‘Manto sahib, what are you thinking? This money is not mine, nor my father’s, but the producer’s. It was my mistake that I arrived without a fee because I wasn’t thinking. I do not believe in getting things done free. You are going to waste your time, so it is only right that you should be paid for it. By God, that is what I believe. But let’s forget about this nonsense and let me tell you the story.’
Without giving me an opportunity to answer, he sat down in a sofa and I took a chair facing him. I had never heard him tell a story and it was quite an experience. He rolled up the sleeves of his silk shirt, loosened his belt, pulled up his legs and assumed the classic posture of a yogi. ‘Now listen to the story. It is called Phool. What do you think of the name?’ ‘It is good,’ I replied. ‘Thank you, I will narrate it scene by scene, he said. Then he began to speak in his typical manner. I do not know who the author was but Asif was playing all the characters, raising his voice, moving around all the time. Now he would be on the sofa, the next minute his back would be against the wall, then he would push his legs against it and his upper torso would be on the floor. At times, he would jump from the sofa on to the floor, only to climb on to a chair the next minute. Then he would stand up straight looking like a leader asking for votes in an election. It was a long story, like the intestine of the devil, as the expression goes. After he finished his narration, we were silent for a few moments. ‘What do you think about it?’ Asif asked. ‘It is trash,’ I replied. Asif bit his lips, sat upright on the sofa and asked furiously, ‘What did you say?’ Had it been somebody else, he might have flinched, but I am not made that way. ‘It is trash,’ I repeated.
Asif tried his various conjurer’s tricks to impress me but they had no effect on me. Also, I simply have no patience with loudness, which was one of Asif’s characteristics. Finally, I decided to give it to him. ‘Look here, Asif, I suggest you get hold of a big, heavy stone, place it on top of my head and hit that stone with a hammer, once, twice, thrice, and as long as you like. And by God, I swear I would still say that your story is trash.’ Asif stood up, took my hand in both of his and said, ‘By God, it is trash. I had only come to hear you say that.’ I first thought he was joking but he was serious, so we sat down and began to think of improvements.
Asif and Sitara stayed married for quite some time, which reminds me of another story which predates my friendship with Asif and his relationship with Sitara. Asif had pimples on his face, which are associated with adolescence. I used to think that if youth was so ugly and painful, then may it please God not to bless anyone with youth. (I am thankful to the Almighty that he has never conferred such youth on me.) I used to dabble in herbal medicine and I wanted to do something for Asif’s appearance. I also consulted a couple of doctor friends and one day I brought a handful of medicines for him, but they did him no good. But when Sitara came into his life, every pimple on his face disappeared.
Kamal Amrohi and I used to be colleagues at Bombay Talkies. I recall the time when we were trying to put his story, later filmed as Mahal, into final shape. One day I noticed a pimple on his face and thought nothing of it, but in a few days it became so painful that we felt something had to be done to rid him of it. ‘I have a treatment that can’t miss,’ I told Kamal. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘Do you know where Sitara lives?’ I asked. ‘I do,’ he replied. ‘All you have to do is go there, walk up the stairs right up to her door but under no circumstances are you to enter. There is your cure,’ I said. Kamal was an intelligent man and burst out laughing. He knew what I meant.
Meanwhile, Sitara and Asif were living together in Mahim where I visited them several times. Their third-floor flat was at the other end of a street facing the church on Lady Jamshedji Road. Asif had finished Phool and was thinking of making Anarkali which Kamal Amrohi had scripted for him, but he was not too happy with it and had asked various people to give it a new twist, including me. I used to get to his place by eight in the morning where the door would be answered by an old woman wearing a thin muslin sari which always made me uneasy. She looked like an old Arabian Nights witch to me. I would go in and sit on the sofa. From the next room which was the bedroom, I would hear strange noises which sent a shiver down my spine. After some time, Asif would appear, smacking his lips. He used to be a sight, with his night shirt torn at various places and blue marks on his chest and arms, his hair dishevelled, and his breathing uneven. He would greet me casually and then fall in a heap on the floor. After some time, Sitara would send him a cup of custard which he would eat with undisguised reluctance. Then he would begin our work that was more gossip than anything. The two of them seemed to be doing well, though rumours spread that Asif was marrying a girl from his family and a date had been set and soon he would be travelling to Lahore with his friends for the ceremony.
I was busy when all this happened, otherwise I would have met him and asked what it was all about. I never got an opportunity until many days later. ‘Well, I have decided to put an end to it and I will,’ was all he said. He was in a car and I was walking. He had stopped and was in a hurry so we could not have a proper conversation. A few days later, I learnt that Asif had gone to Lahore with a large party of friends and a big wedding had taken place there where drinks flowed and dancing girls performed. Then I heard that Asif had returned to Bombay with his new bride and had hired a portion of a house in Pali Hill, Bandra. I later found out that it was actually Nazir’s house and he had vacated one half of it for his nephew. I am not sure what Sitara thought of it, but I do know that her visits to Arora continued. Asif had now begun to make preparations to make Mughal-e-Azam (completed several years after Independence).
Then a most interesting development took place. Asif began to remain absent from home and it came to light that he was again spending his nights with Sitara. Consequently, the new marriage failed. Nazir’s grown-up son was also around at the time and one is not sure what exactly happened, but this much was known that Asif had stopped going home at night. There was much unpleasantness and then we heard that a divorce was in the offing. All through this crisis, Asif kept meeting Sitara. It seemed they were together again. There were many stories in the market about Asif’s new wife but I have no wish to go into them because I am not sure if they were true. All I know is that Asif had married in Lahore with great fanfare and brought his bride to Bombay, settled down in Pali Hill and in less than three months, the marriage was on the rocks. Who but Sitara could have been responsible for it? She was a woman of experience and knew how to make herself attractive to a man, rendering him useless for other women. That was how she had weaned Asif away from his new bride and that was why he had come back to her. That woman Sitara had something other women lacked. Asif left his wife because she probably did not have the qualities that he had found in Sitara. Was it that she had left Asif with no taste for inexperienced virgins?
I have written this account and I know that it will not annoy Asif because he is a big-hearted man. Sitara, of course, would be angry, but after some time, she will forgive me because, in her own way, she too is a big-hearted woman. In my book, she walks tall. I do not know what she thinks of me but I have always thought of her as a woman who is born once in a hundred years.
Extracted from Stars from Another Sky, a collection of Manto’s writings on the Bombay film world of the 1930s and 1940s, translated by Khalid Hasan.