Manto and the Saint of Chakiwara
Khalid Hasan
One of the least known tributes to Saadat Hasan Manto is a memoir written by that matchless writer, Muhammad Khalid Akhtar, author of that most delightful of books, Chakiwara mein Visal , not to mention the boisterous Chacha Abdul Baqi stories. Sadly, the man who wrote about painting donkeys to palm them off as imported African zebras to a circus, died a couple of years ago, but not before he had seen the dawn of the 21st century that he was keen to see, I suppose, just to make sure that it did come in. His Manto memoir survives like the rest of his work that is now being republished in a collected edition by his friend and great admirer Ajmal Kamal of Aaj , Karachi.
The Manto memoir was published by the literary magazine Fanoon , Lahore, more than fifty years ago and as far as I know was never, for some reason, included in any of Muhammad Khalid Akhtar’s collections. It was the summer of 1951. MKA was in Lahore from his home town of Bahawalpur, staying with a publisher friend who was under contract to print some of the maestro’s books. Manto had also produced for the publisher a magnificent literary journal that folded after two issues, something which appears to be the fate of literary magazines, not only in Pakistan and India, but elsewhere in the world too.
One morning, MKA’s friend told him that Manto wanted to meet him after reading a story that the 25-year old MKA had written based on a visit to Hardawar, the city holy to Hindus. The story had been rejected by a number of editors, which had prompted MKA’s publisher friend to give it to Manto for a look. Manto had liked it but edited it brutally, in the process reducing it to one-half of its original length. This story was ultimately printed under the title Khoya huva uffaq – or the lost horizon – in Savera and, according to MKA, “I never wrote a better story.” It was Manto’s editing that had turned a loose narrative into a great story.
They arrived at Laxami Mansions, in one of whose ground-level flats lived Manto, while his favourite nephew Hamid Jalal – who was also married to Manto’s wife Safia’s younger sister, the lovely Zakia – lived in a first-storey flat. Hamid Jalal was the father of the brilliant and waspish historian Ayesha Jalal. MKA’s publisher friend knocked at the door, which was opened by a man with a large, globe-like head. From under a broad forehead protruded a pair of large eyes, that MKA recalls never having quite seen on any man’s face before. This was the great Saadat Hasan Manto. He was clad in spotless white, holding a fountain pen in one hand. He shook hands with the two visitors with great warmth, ushered them in, seated himself on a long sofa on which lay an open exercise book that contained the unfinished story he had been writing. In those days, Manto was writing a story a day for which he would be paid twenty or thirty rupees. On a table next to him, was a vase with fresh flowers and an ashtray. Manto was neatto the extent of being fastidious.
Writes MKA, “We apologised for having disturbed him when he was at work but he shrugged that off and assured us that we had done no such thing because the moment we were gone, he would take up the story exactly at the point where he had left it. He picked up the exercise book and we noticed that the last sentence was incomplete. He did not believe in there being such a thing as mood or inspiration. He told us that before he went to sleep, he tried hard to work out the plot of the story he was going to write the next day, but always without success. When he woke up the next day, he was still clueless about the kind of story he was going to write that day. But in order to survive, a story a day he had to produce. “But then an idea strikes me while I am shaving or taking a bath. A plot springs up in my mind along with its cast of characters, which is when I sit down to write it out. It is the characters who actually write the story. It is not I who create them, but they who create me. I am at the mercy of my characters,” Manto always told his friends. However, once in a sketch he wrote about himself or Naqoosh , he confessed that all that talk was “rubbish” or bakwas , his favourite word.
MKA met Manto several times after that first meeting. Once when he was suffering high fever, Manto walked into his friend’s home, pulled out a bottle of brandy from his pocket and made MKA take several long swigs from it, assuring him that the brandy would set him right. He considered brandy the sure-fire cure for all ailments, from the common cold to gonorrhea. One day, he took MKA on a round of Lahore’s film studios where everybody knew him. Another day, he took MKA to meet two friends of his who were Khoja businessmen from Chiniot and staying at Faletti’s where they mixed their own marijuana with a silver grinder, something that greatly intrigued Manto. He wanted to write a story about them but did not.
MKA recalls a meeting with Manto in the winter of 1951. They met at a publisher’s office in Lohari Gate, where Manto arrived by tonga with Ahmed Rahi in tow. He wanted to take MKA and his two friends from Bahawalpur home but thought better of it because “Africa has landed there.” By Africa he meant some relatives who had arrived from Nairobi. Safia’s family was mostly settled in East Africa. Manto, MKA and party finally ended up in Lahore Hotel where one of MKA’s friends produced a bottle of Black and White which Manto soon saw through. It was a long drunken afternoon. At one point Manto told MKA, “I have read your 200-page novel which is rubbish, utter rubbish. What you have taken all those pages to write could have been said in just six pages. Write but do not be prolix.” Better advice for a writer there cannot be. Another time he said to MKA, “Get me out of here, take me to the mountains.” Then pointing to the bottle he said, “I want to be away from this demon.”
When Manto’s great story Mozail was published, MKA wrote him a letter saying he was the greatest man alive in Asia. Manto’s answer was pure Manto. He cautioned his young admirer not to pump so much air in his balloon that he should rise to the sky and disappear in its immensity. He once told MKA that his own greatest story was Khol-do , the chilling tale from 1947 about a girl abducted from East Punjab, who is finally found by her father in a hospital where she lies in a traumatised state, raped not only by her abductors but the rescuers as well. In Manto’s world, inhumanity is not confined to a particular religion. Manto once said that a writer should not read because that puts an end to his originality. What he should read is the book of life. And, fifty years after Saadat Hasan Manto’s death, there is no question that few have read that book better than him.