The return of Manto
Khalid Hasan
So finally and for reasons that do not appear to have anything to do with the prime minister, who is not exactly known for his interest in Urdu literature, a stamp bearing Saadat Hasan Manto’s face has been issued by the Pakistan post office with a face value of five rupees. This is a sum of money that might have bought a reasonable lunch in the Lahore of the 1950s, but one that no self-respecting beggar will even accept today. Like all stamps issued in Pakistan, this one too wears a washed look. It is time these people got themselves some fresh inks.
What has led to this change of heart on the part of the establishment, one does not know. Did Manto have to be dead fifty years before being acknowledged as having once lived; and not only lived but done enough to be included among the Pakistan postal service-ordained ‘Men of letters’ series? Is that all there is going to be of it? Is the establishment that has conferred all kinds of honours on all kinds of people now ready to confer on Manto the highest award that the state of Pakistan can offer? I don’t think so. Is a road or a square or a city to be named after him? I doubt that too. However, were a city to be named after Manto, it should be the one after which he named perhaps his greatest story: Toba Tek Singh.
Manto arrived in Pakistan from Bombay in January 1948. In a postscript to one of his collections, he writes, “My heart is heavy with grief today. I am overcome with a strange listlessness. More than four years ago, when I said farewell to my other home, Bombay, I experienced the same kind of sadness. I was sorry to have left the place where I had spent many working days of my life. Bombay had asked me no questions. It had taken me to its vast bosom, I, a family reject, a gypsy by temperament. And the city had said to me, ‘You can live here happily on two paisa a day, or if you wish, on 10,000 rupees. It is up to you. You can also be the most miserable man on earth while earning either of the two amounts. Here you may do what you like. Nobody will find fault with you, nor will anyone lecture you on what you ought to be doing. Every difficult task, you will have to accomplish yourself. Every important decision of your life, you will have to make on your own. Whether you live on the footpath or in a palace, it is of no consequence to me, nor will it matter to me whether you leave or stay. I am where I am and I will remain where I am. I, therefore, am a walking Bombay. Wherever I go, I will make my own little world.”
Manto writes, “After leaving Bombay, I was sad. My friends, of whom I am proud, were in Bombay. It was there that I got married. My first child was born in that city. The other one also began the first day of her life there. In Bombay, I earned from a few rupees to thousands and hundreds of thousands of rupees, and spent it all. I was in love with Bombay. I still am. The partition of the country and the changes that followed, left feelings of rebellion in me. I still have them, but in the end, I have accepted the awesome reality of what happened. I have not allowed hope to abandon me.”
I once asked Ahmed Rahi about Manto’s days in Lahore when the young Rahi was often keeping him company. They shared the powerful Amritsar link. Rahi said – and he said it in Punjabi which was very moving – “ Manto sahib te aus din toon hi marna shooray ho gaye saan jis din toon ohna Bombaii chaddy si .” (Manto began to die the day he left Bombay). Rahi said Manto never made any money in Lahore except the pittance that came to him from his writings. The Lahore movie industry was barely alive and only once did Manto get any work there. On another occasion, Anwar Kamal Pasha, whose story-line for a movie he was shooting was all tangled up, came to him for advice that the quick-witted Manto provided as soon as he had heard the question. Next day, Pasha, a gentleman, sent him a cheque for Rs 500. Other than that, Manto did not make any money. In the last years of his life, because of his drinking, his publishers were under instructions to make all remittances direct to his wife, Safia, not him. Manto, a man of the utmost independence, must have found that belittling.
Of the Lahore of those days, Manto writes at another place, “There was a strange listlessness in the air, much like that created by the forlorn shrieking of kites flying purposelessly in the skies of early summer. Even the slogans ‘Long Live Pakistan’ and ‘Long Live the Quaid-i-Azam’ fell on the ear with a melancholy thud. The airwaves carried the poetry of Iqbal on their shoulders night and day and felt bored and exhausted by their burden. The feature programmes bore weird themes. How to make shoes. How to raise poultry. How many refugees had come to the camps and how many were still there.”
Manto’s last days in Bombay were a time of great emotional disturbance. In his tribute to his best friend, the actor Shyam, he writes, “I was going out of my mind. My wife and children were already in Pakistan. When it had been a part of India, I knew it. I was also familiar with the periodic riots that used to break out; but now that its name had changed, I could not get a mental picture of it. Nor could I work out what the government was going to be like. Mentally, I could not get the new configuration in focus. August 14 was celebrated in Bombay while I watched. People were jubilant, but killings and arson went on un-interfered with. Slogans of ‘Long Live India’ and ‘Long Live Pakistan’ continued to rend the air. Congress and Muslim League flags fluttered from housetops. The streets resounded with the names of Jawaharlal Nehru and Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Still, my mind could not resolve the question: What country did we belong to now – India or Pakistan? And whose blood was being so mercilessly shed every day? And what about the bones of the dead, stripped of the flesh of religion, were they being buried or burnt? Now that we were free, who were our subjects? When we were not free, we used to dream of freedom. Now that freedom had come, how were we to view our present state? Were we really even free? There were different answers: the Indian answer, the Pakistani answer, the British answer, Every question had an answer, but when you tried to unravel them to get to the truth, you were left groping.”
Well, were Manto to return to life, he would find us still groping.