Manto's world

A great deal has been said and written about Manto, little in his favor and much of it against him... I have had the privilege of knowing Manto. The truth is that I am his doppelganger... Some people see him as the devil himself, others call him a bald angel... We were born together and I suppose we will die together. But it may also come to pass that Saadat Hasan may die and Manto may not."

Manto on Manto

Chronicler of the chaos and mayhem of India's Partition, died on January 18th 57 years ago. At the time of his death, which was from complications of alcoholism, he was just 43 years old. In those 43 years he had published 22 collections of short stories, one novel, 5 collections of radio plays, 3 collections of essays, and 2 collections of personal sketches. In addition, he was tried for obscenity 6 times in total, three times before 1947 and three times after 1947 in Pakistan, but never convicted. 2012 was Manto's centenary year and the government of Pakistan finally decided to honor Manto with the Nishan-e Imtiaz, Pakistan's highest civilian honor. No doubt, if Manto had been alive when the award was given to him, it would have become the subject of one of his typically caustic short stories. Manto died very young but his prediction, that Saadat Hasan the man would die while Manto the writer would live on, has proven prophetic.

He was an extraordinary man. A high school dropout who never finished college, dabbled in alcohol and drugs when young, became a published author in his early twenties and an alcoholic by his thirties; a successful screenwriter and playwright and, of course, a writer of exquisitely shocking short stories in which he dissected and put on display all the foibles and hidden impulses of "respectable" society. It is for his short stories that Manto remains best known. About them he says:

"How do I tell you how I write stories? I write stories because, like alcohol, I have become addicted to it. I don't write stories. The truth is the stories write me. The thing is, God be my witness, I have no clue about my mode or manner of writing stories. Often when I am lying dead and defeated, my wife has told me, "Don't think. Just lift the pen and start writing." On her instructions I lift the pen or pencil and start writing... and suddenly the story springs out all by itself... I consider myself not a story writer but a pickpocket who picks his own pocket... Is there a greater fool than me?"

Manto is now synonymous with boldness of expression. No short story writer before or since has received the accolades and the censure that he did. He had assumed, in his lifetime, the stature of one of his fictional characters. He was scorned for being obsessed with sexuality but his stories of urban alienation and existential helplessness remain beyond compare. The founder of Psychoanalysis and modern Psychology, Sigmund Freud (also reviled in his lifetime for being obsessed with sexuality) once said: "Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me." It would be appropriate to replace 'poet' in Freud's saying with 'artist'.

No matter how brief the story, Manto's characters leap off the page straight into the reader's heart. Mozail (' Mozail'), Naisti (' License'), Saugandhi (' Hatak' or 'The Insult'), the unnamed prostitute in ' Sau Candle Power Ka Bulb' ('The Hundred Candle Power Bulb'), Bishan Singh (' Toba Tek Singh'), Mangoo Kochwaan (' Naya Qanoon'or 'The New Constitution') and many others which remain etched in a reader's memory long after the story ends. The surprising thing is not that one creative has produced all these memorable characters. The real wonder is that the person who wielded this pen died at age 43, with many of those years consumed by poverty and disease.

Saadat Hasan Manto was born in 1912 at Samrala, a village about 20 miles from Ludhiana. His father Maulvi Ghulam Hussain married twice. Manto's mother was his second wife. Ghulam Hussain's family was not happy with his second marriage, especially given that he had eight children from his first wife. This was the first source of bitterness and anger in young Saadat's life. His daughter Nuzhat Jalal recalls: "He [Manto] was always restless and a big reason for this was his older stepbrothers who lived abroad. Our grandmother [Manto's mother] and father [Manto] did not have the place in the family they should have had. Grandfather [Manto's father] would always make comparisons between his sons living abroad and our father and would belittle him. That was one of the many reasons he was always bitter since childhood."

Ghulam Hussain died in 1930 when Manto was 18 years old. Manto was never close to his father. His friend Abu Saeed Qureshi writes: "Saadat once ran away to Bombay. He was failing Matric in those days. He used to say that his deceased father was a very strict man. His sister Nasira relates that he was terribly scared of their father. Once he was flying a kite, and his father came. He jumped from the roof. He got hurt but didn't express a word of pain." Manto's biographers say that this lack of fatherly affection was compensated for by his mother Bi Bi Jaan.

Manto's love of women is reflected in his best stories. Manto's women, whether they are prostitutes or homemakers, possess more courage and perseverance than their male counterparts. Where male characters are prominent, it is primarily due to their barbarity and cruelty. In his best short stories, Manto has presented his female characters with great sympathy and love. Manto's descriptions of his female characters, even when they are prostitutes and murderers, force us to at least sympathize with, if not love, them.

Two years after Manto was born, the First World War, the most destructive in human history until that time, started in 1914. Many soldiers from the Punjab also served in the War. The Russian Revolution, the first successful workers' revolution in history was a direct result of the First World War. Hindustan was not immune to its influence either. The independence movement was gaining momentum in the subcontinent. The Khilafat movement, the Moplah rebellion and the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy in Manto's home city belong to the same age.

Although Manto was not old enough to be influenced by these social and political developments, they were part of the collective consciousness of his society and times. By the time Manto reached adulthood, his father had died (This was in 1930). Manto was sick of studies after failing twice in FA. It was at this time that he met Abdul Bari Aleeg. Bari Sahib (a comical sketch of whom is included in Manto's collection ' Ganjay Farishtay' [Bald Angels]) was a teacher, writer and journalist. He was also an active member of Hindustan's new All India Progressive Writers' Movement, and a believer in socialism.

Before he met Bari Aleeg, Manto wrote of his natural uneasiness: "In those days of vagrancy, I felt constantly dissatisfied. A strange restlessness gripped my heart and mind. I smoked hash cigarettes with friends, took cocaine, drank, but that disquietude would not go away."

This was not just the 'existential angst' of a maladjusted adolescent. Manto expressed these sentiments throughout his life. In a letter to Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi in 1939 when he was 27 years old, he wrote: "Whatever happens, I can find no satisfaction. I am not satisfied with anything. I am not even satisfied with myself. I feel as if who I am, what is inside me, it should not be so. It should have been different."

Manto began his career under the influence of socialist ideas and was briefly a part of the All India Progressive Writers' Association along with Faiz, Krishen Chander and most of the leading literary figures of the day. Soon, however, Manto parted ways with the Progressive to carve out his own unique path. He decided that it was not his task to preach or point out the evils of society with a view to reforming them, something that his great predecessor Munshi Premchand (1880-1936) had done to great effect. In Manto's view it was not the task of the writer to deliver speeches, complain about the world's cruelty and indifference or attempt any solutions. For Manto, a writer was simply an observer whose job it was to record the happenings around him and present them 'as-is'. This is often the feel of his writing: it is as if Manto's eye is a camera which is continuously observing events without blinking and recording them as they are. It is not that Manto was unaffected by the horrible events of Partition. He expressed his agitation repeatedly in his works. "If you are unaware of the times in which we are living, read my short stories. If you cannot tolerate them, it means this age is intolerable. There is no fault in my writing. The fault which is attributed to my name is actually the fault of the current system. I do not want to agitate people's thoughts and emotions. How can I disrobe civilization, culture and society when it is in fact already naked?" However, when it comes to his writing, his gaze is dispassionate and detached.

Witness some glimpses of this style of writing by Manto:

"At fifteen past seven the police took away the dead body. Ice and blood remained behind on the road. A tonga passed by. The child saw the shiny clot of frozen blood on the road. His mouth watered. He tugged his mother's arm and pointed at it. 'Look, mummy, jelly.' (' Jelly' in ' Siyah Hashiye' [Black Margins']).

"He glanced inside. There was a woman lying on a mat. He looked more closely. She was sleeping. There was a dupatta on her mouth. Her chest was heaving up and down as she breathed. He moved a bit closer and let out a scream but immediately stifled it. A short distance away from the woman was a man lying on the bare floor. His head was smashed. Alongside him lay a bloodstained brick. He saw all this in an instant." (' Sau Candle Power Ka Bulb' [The Hundred Candle Power Bulb])

"Sardar Gormukh Singh's son Santokh had walked out a little distance from the Judge Sahib's house when he encountered four masked men. Two of them had burning torches and two had canisters of oil and other flammable material. One of them asked Santokh, 'SardarJee, done with your work?' Santokh nodded in the affirmative: 'Yes, I am.' The man laughed inside his mask and asked, 'Should we take care of them then?' 'Yes, as you wish,' and Sardar Gormukh Singh's son walked away." (' Gormukh Singh Ki Waseeyat' [The Testament of Gormukh Singh])

“Don't say that a hundred thousand Hindus and a hundred thousand Musalmans died. Say (instead) that two hundred thousand human beings died. But this is not the biggest tragedy. The real tragedy is that both the murderers and the murdered count for nothing at all. By killing a hundred thousand Hindus, Musalmans thought they had killed Hinduism but it is alive and will remain so. By killing a hundred thousand Musalmans, Hindus were happy that they had killed Islam. But those people who think religions can be hunted with guns are stupid..."

- from Manto "Saha-ay"

Manto met Abdul Bari Aleeg shortly after failing for the second time in F.A. Bari Sahib was a teacher, writer and journalist and an active member of Hindustan's new All India Progressive Writers Movement. Manto explains his devotion to him:

"Whatever I am today, the first person to make me so is Bari Sahib. If I had not met him in Amritsar and had not spent three consecutive months in his company, I would have been on some other path in life." ('Bari Sahib')

Bari Sahib quickly recognized Manto's natural intelligence and advised him to read French and Russian literature. Under his influence, Manto began to write for the newspaper Mussawat and eventually took over the film column for the newspaper. He studied Gorky, Chekhov, Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevsky and the French writer Maupassant. It was Bari Sahib's desire that Manto translate Victor Hugo's novel 'Les Miserables', but given its size Manto chose to translate 'The Last Days of a Condemned Man' instead, which he published under the name 'Sarguzasht-e-Aseer'. Bari Sahib edited it himself and helped in its publication. Manto's next translation was Oscar Wilde's play 'Vera', which is about the activities of Russian anarchists. Bari Sahib helped with this as well. When Mussawat shut down, Manto wrote for the weekly Khalq for a brief time. His first short story 'Tamasha' was published in it. He was also involved with the monthly Humayun, the monthly Alamgir and the daily Paaras, all of which were published from Lahore. Like Prem Chand, Manto had no interest in the lives of the rich. He preferred to write about the workers in their filthy tenements who went out daily to earn their living and returned, exhausted, at night to sleep.

Critics have pointed out many deficiencies in Manto's writings, such as "the total lack of any local detail whatsoever. His sense of geographical space (is) vague and undefined. He was born in Amritsar, yet the only reference you get in his stories based in Amritsar is possibly Jallianwala Bagh. Kucha and gali, lane and muhalla, street and road-everything is nameless, paved with anonymity." In contrast, when Manto is talking about a favorite character, his minute attention to details is remarkable. Witness the description of the living room of a poor prostitute:

"The room was very small in which several items were scattered around in a disorderly manner. On a small shelf, make-up products were placed. Rogue to blush the cheeks, red lipstick, powder, comb and an iron pin which she probably used in her hair.

Nearby a green parrot's cage was suspended via a long chain, in which the parrot was sleeping with his neck hidden in his feathers. In the proximity of the bed was a chair made of cane whose back was extremely dirty from repeated use. On its right was a small table, on which was placed a His Master's Voice portable gramophone. Exactly above the table, four frames were suspended on the wall with pictures of different men. A little distance away from the pictures, that is, immediately after entering the door and towards the corner of the left wall, was a colorful picture of Ganesh which was decorated with fresh and dried flowers. Beside this picture, on a small oily shelf, there was a small container of oil, which had been placed for lighting the lamp." ('Hatak' or The Insult)

In 1935, Manto moved to Bombay where he lived until 1947 with a brief sojourn in Delhi to work for All India Radio. Bombay was (and still is) a large center for film production and this was Manto's "golden" period and the happiest phase of his life. Manto wrote stories and dialogues for several feature films including 'Apni Nagarya' (Our Community), 'Chal Chal Ray Naujawan' (Walk On Young Man) and 'Aath Din' (Eight Days). Manto also wrote the story for 'Mirza Ghalib', which was released after he shifted to Pakistan and was a great success. It was in Bombay that he married Safia Begum and although Manto's life in Bombay was relatively prosperous, his inner restlessness in Bombay's socially peculiar film environment led to indiscriminate drinking. He was slowly becoming an alcoholic.

In 1947 Manto decided to migrate to Pakistan. But moving to Lahore was not a fortunate development for him. Pakistan's film industry had been decimated by the migration of non-Muslim artists to India. There was no work for Manto in Lahore and no way to earn a living. In addition, the horrible event of India's partition had affected him deeply. His psychological agitation had worsened manifold.

"Who was responsible for the blood being shed mercilessly every day? Where were they going to inter the bones that had been stripped of the flesh of religion by vultures and birds of prey?" ('Murli Ki Dhun' or Krishna's Flute). A few months after arriving in Pakistan, his short story 'Khol Do' (Open It) was published in the monthly Naqoosh and led to his first obscenity trial in Pakistan. A couple of months later, 'Thanda Gosht' (Cold Meat) was published in a special issue of Javed in March 1949 and Manto was arrested again. Even though Manto was honorably released from all these trials - he had already been subjected to obscenity trials for his short story 'Kaali Shalwar' in 1942, and for 'Bu' and 'DhuwaN' in 1944 - the latest legal proceedings were especiaslly trying for a man with no income.

Despite all his problems, in his 7 years in Lahore he wrote 127 short stories. Apart from these, two collections of essays, two collections of sketches, a collection of the account of his trials and a novelette titled 'Baghair Unwaan Kay' (Untitled) were published in this period, which shows that despite his growing mental and physical weakness, Manto's creative faculties remained intact till his last breath. Available information about Manto's life reveals that in the last few years his alcohol intake had reached dangerous levels. This was aggravated after he shifted to Lahore from Bombay. He had a literary reputation in Bombay, a good income, and many friends and well-wishers. Not so in Lahore. In his last years his economic troubles escalated along with his restlessness and distress. Often he would go to a newspaper office, write a short story while sitting there, and buy a bottle of alcohol with the money. The newspaper staff knew of this habit, so often they would hand him a cheap bottle of alcohol instead of money. He was admitted to hospital several times. His liver was badly affected and doctors declared alcohol to be a poison for him. And yet he kept drinking the poison.

Signs of madness began to appear. (Alcohol also affects the brain.) He hallucinated, saw ghostly faces and talked nonsense. His wife Safia tried to get him treated several times and even got him admitted to a mental hospital (after which he wrote his great story 'Toba Tek Singh') but all in vain. He wrote: "If an essay of mine gets published in the newspaper, and if I earn twenty, twenty five rupees based on the rate of seven rupees per column, I hire a tonga and go buy locally distilled whiskey. Had this whiskey been distilled in your country, you would have destroyed the distillery with an atom bomb, because in just one year this stuff is guaranteed to send a man to kingdom come." ('Chacha Sam Kay Naam Khat' [A Letter to Uncle Sam].) He died from inflammation of the liver soon after.

Manto and Sexuality

Sexuality occupies a central place in Manto's writing. All the trials he was subjected to were based on accusations that Manto was a pornographer. Reading Manto's stories, one is immediately struck by the unflinching treatment of sexual matters.

"Faris road is actually the name of a street but this whole area is known by that name. This is where prostitutes live. There are hundreds of shops with shutters in front where women of different colors and ages sit and sell their bodies. Different prices, from eight annas to eight rupees to a hundred rupees, you can find women of any price here. Jewish, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Bengali, Anglo-Indian, French, Chinese, Japanese, you can find any kind of woman here." ('Mamd Bhai')

"The door opened and Khushiya went inside. When Kaanta closed the door, Khushiya turned. He was taken aback to see Kaanta stark naked. Well, almost naked because she was wrapped in a towel which was not hiding much. Everything that should be hidden was in front of his eyes. "I was just about to take a bath; sit, sit. Why didn't you bring a cup of tea for yourself?" Khushiya, who had never seen a naked woman like this, all of a sudden, was nervous. He could not decide what to do. His eyes, which had encountered nudity abruptly, wanted to hide somewhere. He said, quickly, 'Go, go on, take a bath'. Then his tongue loosened. 'But if you were naked, why open the door? You should have just said so, I would have come back later, but... go now, take a bath'. Kaanta smiled. 'When you said it's Khushiya, I thought what's the harm, let him come in'." ('Khushiya')

Here is how Manto explains his focus on sexual matters: "The world's biggest problem, the father of all problems, was born when Adam felt hunger, and a lesser but equally interesting problem emerged when the world's first man met the world's first woman." ('Afsaana Nigar Aur Jinsi Masail' or The Short Story Writer and Sexual Issues)

Manto was well aware of the centrality of the sexual instinct in human life. He wanted to shake up the rigid, frozen attitudes pervading his society and unmask this truth. The uncounted cases of rape and sexual abuse that took place at the time of India's partition were a validation of Manto's belief.

What does Manto say about this? "People who believe that this new literature has created sexual problems are mistaken because the reality is that sexual problems have created this new literature. Attempts have been made in every age to traverse the distance between Man and Woman. Those who consider this obscenity should be ashamed of the barrenness of their emotions."

"Men are not so different from each other. If one man can commit a mistake, another can as well. If one woman can prostitute herself, so can any other woman in the world. But it is not humans who are at fault, but rather those social conditions, in which man sows and reaps his mistakes." ('Afsaana Nigar Aur Jinsi Masail')

Manto's writings shook up the decaying, rusty values of his age and opened the eyes of many people. Like all great artists, Manto had the last word with the epitaph that he himself wrote for his grave: "Buried here is Saadat Hasan Manto in whose bosom are enshrined all the secrets of the art of short story writing. Buried under mounds of earth, he continues to contemplate who is the greater short story writer: God or he."

(This essay was first serialized by The Friday Times to mark Manto’s death anniversary on January 18)

The writer is a psychiatrist and a trustee of the Faiz Foundation, Pakistan and Faiz Ghar, Lahore (www.faizghar.net). He can be reached at