Once property is secured, traditional & immense generosity of Pakistani public can be appealed to for building museum.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, KARACHI: For some years, Pakistan has been making it to the international headlines for all the wrong reasons. An upcoming addition to this list is the recent sale of Manto’s house at Lakshmi Mansion, Lahore, to commercial builders. If nothing is done about saving this heritage of Pakistan from annihilation, we will have done major harm to our cultural heritage, and the land of Manto, Faiz, Iqbal and Shah Abdul Lateef will be known as the land of philistines. Apart from Manto, Mustansar Hussain Tarar, Hamid Jalal and the grandson of Mohammad Hussain Azad lived in Lakshmi Mansion.
I appeal to the Punjab government to save the fate of the house where the most brilliant short story writer of Urdu wrote such gems as Toba Tek Singh, Khol Do, Thanda Gosht, and Mera Sahib. The desk on which he wrote his stories is kept there. Perhaps, a patriotic media or business tycoon or the government could buy this property and conserve it by turning it into a museum.
Once the property is secured, the traditional and immense generosity of the Pakistani public can also be appealed to for building the Manto Museum which would celebrate not only our greatest fiction writer but also periodically pay homage to Pakistan’s best literary talent. It would be a worthy and unifying project to support.
Ameena Saiyid
Published in The Express Tribune, June 20th, 2014.
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