Manto: A Love Affair with Truth

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There was another inmate, a Sikh, who had been confined for the last 15 years. Whenever he spoke, it was the same mysterious gibberish: ‘Uper the gur gur the annexe the bay dhayana the mung the dal of the laltain.’ Guards said he had not slept a wink in 15 years. Occasionally, he could be observed leaning against a wall, but the rest of the time, he was always to be found standing. Because of this, his legs were permanently swollen, something that did not appear to bother him. Recently, he had started to listen carefully to discussions about the forthcoming exchange of Indian and Pakistani lunatics. When asked his opinion, he observed solemnly, ‘Uper the gur gur the annexe the bay dhayana the mung the dal of the government of Pakistan.’ Of late, however, the government of Pakistan had been replaced by the government of Toba Tek Singh, a small town in the Punjab, which was his home. He had also begun inquiring where Toba Tek Singh was to go. However, nobody was quite sure whether it was in India or Pakistan.— From ‘Toba Tek Singh’ by Manto

Khalid Hasan’s new translations of Manto has been published by Penguin India.Read this review by Peerzada Salman

WHY do we employ trite epithets to describe Saadat Hasan Manto? He was a ‘genius’; he was a ‘gifted’ writer; he had an ‘uncanny ability’ to hold a mirror up to nature; he was ‘able’ to see society stark naked, etc. The answer to that question is: we can’t do better. It is virtually impossible to praise Saadat Hasan Manto enough. He can only be looked up to as someone who had a bold love affair with truth.

Saadat Hasan Manto courted truth for many years, and just when he was about to get spliced to it, he died on January 18, 1954. It’s been 54 years now, and truth in our society remains a beautiful spinster that every writer tries to hit on, but fails miserably to attract its attention.

Courting or flirting with truth is a dicey matter. Its blatant nature can sometimes make the evident eclipse the indistinct. Allow me to elucidate.

It is somewhat disconcerting that Manto is known more for ‘what’ he has written on than for ‘how’ he has written it. His characters are notoriously famous, and his storylines are some of the most oft-discussed, even analysed-to-death in Urdu literature. But it is always the content, and not the narrative, that hogs the literary limelight. And mind you, nothing’s wrong with that.

Manto was no ordinary storyteller. He knew that unless he had an effective mode of communication for tale-telling, he could never pen a tour de force. Who isn’t familiar with that madcap Sikh, Bishen Singh from Toba Tek Singh? But how many of us can easily recall his mumblings? Thanda Gosht has been critiqued over and over again, but the salacious phrases that the voluptuous Kalwant Kaur hurls at the burly Ishwar Singh to seduce him are seldom thrashed out. Why? Because Manto is a top-notch raconteur. His stories make the readers draw on all their five senses: auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile and the sense of taste. Therefore, his art is appreciated but his craft is overlooked.

This is not an endeavour to run down the importance of subject matter. Any effort to do so would be downright silly. But can the intrinsic poetics in William Shakespeare’s plays be discounted while studying his tragedies, histories or comedies?

The language that Manto’s characters speak is usually colloquial, but not slipshod. His plots seem linear yet going through them creates the impression that a lot is happening simultaneously. Till the very last moment Khol Do moves on a socio-political plain, but when it ends the psychological trauma that its protagonist suffers sends a shiver down the spine.

In this respect Khalid Hasan’s Saadat Hasan Manto: Selected Stories becomes noteworthy. Hasan has a doubly tricky job to perform; not only does he have to capture the nuances of the language that Manto’s characters communicate in and the sensibilities that his stories embody while translating them into the English language, but he also has to measure up to the master writer’s poetic analogies that he conjures out of ostensibly carnal feelings. And make no mistake: Khalid Hasan does not botch it up.

An example from the story On the Balcony should suffice. Even if you are not proficient in the Urdu language, you’ll still be able to appreciate Manto’s magical words: ‘I like her nose. I have a light pink tea service which I like because the handles of its cups resemble her nose. You will laugh but one morning when I saw her from close, a strange desire rose in me to hold her by the nose and drink the nectar of her lips. I find her lips lovely, maybe because they always look moist, like a peeled orange…’

The Urdu language is inordinately grateful to Saadat Hasan Manto.

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Saadat Hasan Manto (Selected Stories)Translated by Khalid HasanPenguin Books, India. Will be available shortly with Paramount Books, KarachiISBN 0-14-310218-4309pp. Rs531

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