Master story writer

B M Malhotra
Widely reputed as one of the best Urdu short story writers of the Indian subcontinent, Saadat Hasan Manto has evoked both admiration and denunciation – admiration for his skilfully weaving interesting though conscious-grazing brief yarns and denunciation for his uninhibited exposure of baser instincts and actions of human beings in their stark nakedness.
Besides twenty-two anthologies of short stories for which he is famous, he authored a novel (Baghair Unwan Ke), a play (Teen Auratein), essays (Manto Ke Mazameen) and the first-hand biographical anecdotes (Meena Bazaar) concerning a number of persons associated with the Hindi film industry, of which he too was a part as a script writer and a scenarist.
During a literary and journalistic career spanning two decades from the mid-1930s to the mid 1950s he also wrote a few open letters to Uncle Sam and the then Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru on political issues as well as a letter to his readers about his art and experiences as an author.
Born on May 11, 1912 at Sambrala in district Ludhiana (India), Saadat was initially educated at Amritsar, where his ancestors of Kashmiri origin had settled a couple of generations ago. Lacking in the right enthusiasm for education, he failed in his matriculation examination with a poor showing, surprisingly in Urdu, which was later to become his principal medium for production of prolific writings. He subsequently dropped out of a college where  also he did not do well as a student.
In the 1920s and the early 1930s Amritsar, where the infamous Jallianwala Bagh massacre had been perpetrated on peaceful unarmed Indian civilians in 1919, continued to be politically astir and the young Manto as a restless patriot found the nationalistically charged atmosphere acutely exciting.
He was at that time guided by Bari Alig, an erudite historian and a revolutionary who, among other things, introduced him to the Russian and the French literatures and made him successfully translate into Urdu a Victor Hugo classic. Manto also wrote a couple of short stories which were published in a Lahore magazine. In 1934 he studied for a few months at the Aligarh Muslim University and produced a few more stories.
In 1936 Manto arrived in Mumbai where he edited the Urdu film weekly, “Mussawar”. He liked Mumbai immensely as he flourished there enormously until the beginning of 1948 when he migrated to Lahore. Throughout the seven years that he spent in that important city of Pakistan till his death on January 18, 1955, he felt entirely forlorn, suffocated and unhappy.
In that last phase of his life, despite his continued prolific creativity, he experienced extreme poverty and a sharp deterioration in his health triggered by heavy intake of country liquor. He deeply regretted having moved away from his beloved Mumbai to indifferent Lahore. Indeed, for him while Mumbai was sweet, Lahore was bitter.
In Mumbai he scripted films including Kisan Kanya (1937), Apni Nagariya (1940), Naukar (1943), Ghar Ki Shobha (1944) and Eight Days (1946) and wrote stories of Jhumke (1946) and Mirza Ghalib (1954) and dialogues of Chal Chal Re Naujawan (1944) and Shikari (both 1944). In Eight Days, which was directed by the thespian Ashok Kumar himself, though credit for the direction was given to Dattaram Pai, Manto even played a role – that of a Flight Lieutenant Kripa Ram. Controversy persistently pursued and surrounded some of Manto’s writings. The three short stories titled, The Gift”, “A Wet Afternoon” and “Odour” written by him before India’s partition and two captioned “Colder Than Ice” and “The Return” scripted by him afterwards were alleged to be obscene and harmful for public morality for which reason he had to face court trials and the concomitant public censure, but he was eventually acquitted except in one case. These stories, many thought, were indecent with their too explicit scenes and descriptions.
The canvas of his stories mainly covered the intense suffering caused by the partition and in the horrific turmoil following it, the bestiality of the perpetrators of violence and sexual excesses on hapless innocent victims. His Hindu, Sikh and Muslim villains and their victims were men and women without being identified by their respective religions as the writer’s focus was on exposing the immoral, ignoble and inhuman sides of religiously unlabelled human beings.
It has been said that a novel tells a lie to tell a truth. This aphorism is equally true about all the other genres of fiction as well. Manto’s short stories, though using assumed characters and situations, do point to certain harsh truths and realities as they prevail in the world in different circumstances.
From among Manto’s partition-related short stories Toba Tek Singh has been acclaimed as the best. It takes the reader to the lunatic asylum in Lahore where the idea of transfer of its non-Muslim inmates to India and of Muslim lunatics to Pakistan, like the religion-based transfer of other mentally normal population between the two countries, is implemented.
One old lunatic, named Bishan Singh, however, refuses to be moved away and insists upon being retained in his home town Toba Tek Singh. The guards leave this harmless man alone but he later screams once and falls down dead. The story ends with the ironic comment that between the barbedwired borders of India and Pakistan is an unnamed piece of land on which lies Toba Tek Singh! Selected writings of Manto, whom Salman Rushdie described as the “master of modern Indian short story”, have been translated into English and several other languages of the world. He is the most written about Urdu prose writer. In 1987 the British T.V. made a film called Partition, which was based on his works.
Manto composed a prayer addressed to God seeking to be recalled from this world of the mortals. In a confessional vein in the course of thatprayer, he blamed himself for running away from fragrance but chasing filth , for hating the bright sun but preferring dark labyrinths, for evading modesty but being fascinated by the naked and the shameless and for abhorring sweetness but loving bitter fruit.
He also wrote his own epitaph in the words,” In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful here lies Saadat Hasan Manto and with him lie buried all the secrets and mysteries of the art of short story writing . . .Under tons of earth he lies, still wondering who between the two is the greater short-story writer: God or he”. He was evidently proud of his wit and the art of creating evocative and impact making short stories.
Manto’s surviving family, however, after due reflection, instead used the following verse of Ghalib, his most favourite Indian poet, as the epitaph on his grave:
“Ya Rab, zamaana mujhko mitaata hai kis liye? / Loh-e-jahaan pe harf-e-mukarar nahin hoon main” ( God, why does time erase my name from the tablet of the living? / I’m not one of the words that is mistakenly written twice and, on detection, removed).

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