Blunt Manto: Your sensitivities are unimportant
Manto has brutally cloistered women; recklessly wandering women, scrupulously modest women, angry vixens of women.
Saadat Hasan Manto was awarded the Nishan-e-Imtiaz on August 14, 2012. For all I know, Manto is probably uttering his favourite catchphrase, “bakwas hai” (it's all trash), over and over again from up there, while calculating the pints of liquor, which selling the award at Lahore’s Landa bazaar will procure him.
Manto, you thought the only better story teller than you was God himself? Oh, you clearly haven’t met the government.
Manto mania; that’s my disease. It results in spasms of depression when Manto’s work is spoken about condescendingly, and soaring spirits whenever I meet people who love Manto’s stories as much as I do. I never do find many of those, for navigating through Manto’s work is a cruel chore.
The journey agitates you, infuriates you, gives you sleeping disorders, causes you to hate unyieldingly and love unrelentingly─the very same things, at the very same time, till you can’t help but peruse through more of his stories, looking for an answer to God knows what.
Speaking for myself, I may assuredly say that Manto gave me a new purpose for reading stories. Before coming across his work, I read for two reasons; firstly, I read for the sorry purpose of appearing smart and well-versed, and secondly, I read to understand the world. The first motive was given up only a few years ago when I understood the futility of living in the good books of a world that shunned Manto’s books. The second motive still stands, but under the shadow of another ponderous one─that of understanding my own self.
Manto has brutally cloistered women; recklessly wandering women, scrupulously modest women, angry vixens of women─all dwell within me. I understood that I am not just one whole, but an amalgamation of several parts. I am vile like my favourite prostitute Saughandhi. I am naive like Mangu Kochwaan. I am mad like Toba Tek Singh.
Manto makes me feel that it’s okay to be human. He understands my needs, my desires, my insecurities, my fears. He tells me that there is bestiality within my goodness, and goodness within my bestiality. Altogether, I am too complex to be encaged in uniformity of any sort. Force of any kind makes me want to rebel just for the heck of it. Hunger can make me forget all moral values. Does that make me immoral? Maybe it does. But I’m fine with it.
Then come his partition scenes; gory and ghastly; poignant and piercing; blood-boiling and toe-curling. He shows it all with bitter impassiveness, regardless of how you bear the visuals. For him, the truth is the truth. Your sensitivities are your own problem.
While unveiling the horrors of the partition, he was able to put down the most awe-inspiring pieces of literature. I find Manto’s writing reflected within Bertrand Russell’s philosophy. The latter writes, thus, in "A Free Man’s Worship":
Sacredness. Vastness. Tragedy. Depth. Bingo, Manto. And congratulations, I hope you have enough whisky to celebrate.
Read more by Faiza here.
Manto, you thought the only better story teller than you was God himself? Oh, you clearly haven’t met the government.
Manto mania; that’s my disease. It results in spasms of depression when Manto’s work is spoken about condescendingly, and soaring spirits whenever I meet people who love Manto’s stories as much as I do. I never do find many of those, for navigating through Manto’s work is a cruel chore.
The journey agitates you, infuriates you, gives you sleeping disorders, causes you to hate unyieldingly and love unrelentingly─the very same things, at the very same time, till you can’t help but peruse through more of his stories, looking for an answer to God knows what.
Speaking for myself, I may assuredly say that Manto gave me a new purpose for reading stories. Before coming across his work, I read for two reasons; firstly, I read for the sorry purpose of appearing smart and well-versed, and secondly, I read to understand the world. The first motive was given up only a few years ago when I understood the futility of living in the good books of a world that shunned Manto’s books. The second motive still stands, but under the shadow of another ponderous one─that of understanding my own self.
Manto has brutally cloistered women; recklessly wandering women, scrupulously modest women, angry vixens of women─all dwell within me. I understood that I am not just one whole, but an amalgamation of several parts. I am vile like my favourite prostitute Saughandhi. I am naive like Mangu Kochwaan. I am mad like Toba Tek Singh.
Manto makes me feel that it’s okay to be human. He understands my needs, my desires, my insecurities, my fears. He tells me that there is bestiality within my goodness, and goodness within my bestiality. Altogether, I am too complex to be encaged in uniformity of any sort. Force of any kind makes me want to rebel just for the heck of it. Hunger can make me forget all moral values. Does that make me immoral? Maybe it does. But I’m fine with it.
Then come his partition scenes; gory and ghastly; poignant and piercing; blood-boiling and toe-curling. He shows it all with bitter impassiveness, regardless of how you bear the visuals. For him, the truth is the truth. Your sensitivities are your own problem.
While unveiling the horrors of the partition, he was able to put down the most awe-inspiring pieces of literature. I find Manto’s writing reflected within Bertrand Russell’s philosophy. The latter writes, thus, in "A Free Man’s Worship":
“The beauty of tragedy does but make visible a quality which, in more or less obvious shapes, is present always and everywhere in life. In the spectacle of death, in the endurance of intolerable pain, there is a sacredness, an overpowering awe, a feeling of the vastness, the depth, the inexhaustible mystery of existence, in which, as by some strange marriage of pain, the sufferer is bound to the world by bonds of sorrow.”
Sacredness. Vastness. Tragedy. Depth. Bingo, Manto. And congratulations, I hope you have enough whisky to celebrate.
Read more by Faiza here.