Today when he is hailed as one of the greatest Urdu writers, I can’t help smiling to myself because, you see, he still doesn’t know much Urdu. He runs after words like a hunter who chases butterflies with a net. Yet they elude his grasping fingers. And that is why there is a dearth of pretty words. He is a rough and ready hammersmith; but the blows that life has dealt him, he has taken them all squarely on the neck.
His hammering is not a crude or violent sort of clobbering. He is a fine marksman and an ace sharpshooter. He is the sort of man who will never walk on the straight and narrow path; he must always walk on a tightrope. People predict that he will fall any moment, but the bugger has never ever tripped. Sometimes I wish that he falls flat on his face and never rises again. But I know that even with his dying breath he will say that he fell simply in order to put an end to the despair of not falling!
I have said before that Manto is an absolute fraud. A proof of this is that he has always maintained that he never thinks of his story; his story thinks of him. I think this is complete rubbish! Though I can tell you that at the moment of writing a story his state is a bit like a hen that is about to lay an egg. He doesn’t lay his eggs in hiding but in full view of anyone who cares to see. His friends loll about him, his three daughters run around making a din while he squats in his special chair laying his eggs, which soon become chirping-cheeping stories. His wife is almost always angry with him. She often tells him to stop writing his stories and open a shop instead. But the shop that is open inside Manto’s brain is stuffed with more stock than the glittering bangles and baubles crammed in a trinket-seller’s cart. And that is why he sometimes worries what if one day he were to become a cold storage house or a deep freezer where all his thoughts and feelings get frozen.
As I write this essay, I am afraid that Manto will become angry with me. I can take everything that Manto dishes out, but I cannot bear his anger. He turns into a devil when he is angry. Though his anger lasts only a few minutes, but God grant you mercy in those few minutes….
He throws a lot of tantrums about writing stories but I know because I am his twin — that he is a fraud. He had once written somewhere that he carries countless stories in his pocket. The truth, however, is just the opposite.
When he has to write a story, he thinks about it all night. No clear idea emerges, at first. He gets up at five in the morning and tries to suck the juice out of some story published in a newspaper; still with no success. Then he goes to the bathroom and attempts to cool his clamour- filled head, so that he is able to think clearly, still there is no success. Then, out of frustration, he picks up some needless quarrel with his wife. If that doesn’t work, he goes out to buy a paan. The paan lies untouched on his table; still the story’s plot eludes him. Finally, as though warding off an attack, he picks up the pen or pencil. Writing 786 on Babu Gopinath, Toba Tek Singh, Hatak, Mummy, Mozelle — all these stories were written in exactly this ‘fraudulent’ fashion.
It is strange that people consider him an irreligious, vulgar sort of a person and even I think that to some extent he does fall in this category. That is why he raises his pen to write on subjects that can only be called dirty and uses words in his writings that have plenty of leeway for objections. But I know that whenever he has written anything, the first thing he writes on the first page is 786 which means ‘In the name of Allah’ and this man who appears to be an atheist, becomes a believer on paper. At the same time, it is the ‘paper-Manto’ who can be crushed between your fingers like paper-thin almond shells, whereas the real Manto is not one to be broken by hammers!
And now I shall come to Manto’s personality that I can describe in just a few words — he is a thief, a liar, a traitor and a crowd-puller.
Time and again, he has taken advantage of his wife’s carelessness and stolen several hundred rupees. He would come and hand her 800 rupees, keep looking from the corner of his eye to see where she hides them and the next day one green note would disappear! And when the poor woman discovers her loss, she would begin to scold the servants!
While everyone knows that Manto is famous for his plain speaking, I, for one, am not willing to concede that. He is a first-class liar. In the early days, he managed to get away with his lies because it had a special Manto ‘touch’. But after some time, his wife discovered that all this while she had been fed lies. Manto can lie so freely and with such ease that now, unfortunately, his family thinks that everything he says is a lie. A bit like the artificial mole that a woman makes with kohl on her cheek!
He is illiterate — since he has never studied Marx. Nor has anything written by Freud ever passed his eyes. He barely knows Hegel by name. Hebel and Amis are no more than names for him. But the funny thing is that his critics say that he has been much influenced by these great thinkers. As far as I know, Manto is not one to be influenced by the thoughts of others. He thinks that those who teach him are no better than idiots. One shouldn’t attempt to teach the ways of the world to others but understand things for one’s own self. In trying to teach and explain things to himself, he has become something that is beyond both understanding and wisdom. Sometimes, he says the oddest of things and that makes me laugh.
I can tell you with complete conviction that Manto, against whom several cases of vulgarity have been initiated, is actually a very decent man. But I cannot but say that he is like a doormat that is forever dusting and beating itself.
A LETTER TO UNCLE SAM
31 Lakshmi Mansion
16 December 1951
Mall Road
Lahore
Dear Uncle Sam,
Assalam-wa-alaekum!
This letter is from your nephew in Pakistan, whom you do not know, whom probably no one does from your land that has waged seven wars of liberation.
You know well enough how my country was created, how it was cut out from Hindustan, and how it became independent. And that is why I am taking the liberty of writing this letter to you. For just as my country was cut away and freed so I too have been cut off and freed. And surely an all-knowing scholar such as you, Uncle Sam, would know the sort of freedom a bird whose wings have been clipped would know. Anyhow, let’s not get into that.
My name is Saadat Hasan Manto and I was born in a place which is now in Hindustan. My mother is buried there, my father is buried there and my first-born too is sleeping in that land, but today it is no longer my home. My home is Pakistan which I had visited five or six times before, when it was under British rule.
I used to be a great short story writer in Hindustan; today I am a great short story writer in Pakistan. Several collections of my short stories have been published. People respect me. In undivided Hindustan, I was the subject of three lawsuits; in Pakistan there has been only one so far. But, remember, Pakistan is a very new country.
The British government considered me a writer of pornography. My own government thinks the same. The British government had let me go, but it doesn’t look like my own government will do the same. The trial court here sentenced me to three months’ rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 300. I appealed in the sessions court and was acquitted. But my government thinks an injustice has been done and so it has filed an appeal in the high court to review the session court’s judgment and give me an exemplary punishment. Let us see what the high court has to say.
I deeply regret that my country is not like yours. If the high court verdict goes against me, there is not a single newspaper in this country that will publish my photograph or the story of my many encounters with the law.