Saadat Hasan Manto is most well known for his Partition-era magnum opus, “Toba Tek Singh”. However, like many others albatrossed by one of their several outstanding works, Manto’s other short stories have been confined to relative obscurity. This is a travesty since all of them combine his atypical wit with a stark tendency to unveil double standards.
Aatish Taseer brings forth several of Manto’s little-known gems in a fine translation. Not a few stories here are based in Bombay, where Manto was a film journalist before moving to Lahore. In “My Name is Radha”, a wildly popular superstar, known in Bollywood as the epitome of high morals (he even addresses his co-stars as “sisters”), is shown by Manto’s acerbic narrator to have feet of clay.
Manto’s world is a curious mix of innocence and intrigue, so that Hindus and Muslims in his stories are friends and well-wishers, still untouched by the poison of Partition. In such a politically fecund setting, Manto yet manages to throw the human element in sharp relief, showcasing the warts-ridden mortal lurking inside the seemingly divine. “For Freedom” is about a Muslim freedom fighter who, in the thrill of the moment at the historic Jallianwalan Bagh, forswears sex and pledges at his weeding to not have “slave children” unless India gains independence. The story is a clever dig at Mahatma Gandhi, who appears here as a high-minded Babaji. Narrated over many years by a friend of the freedom fighter, it a scathing attack on the pulls of self-righteousness and the havoc it can unleash.
For a writer of his time, there is a strong feminist streak running through these works. Manto’s women are sharply etched characters who persevere with their choices, at times to tragic consequences. In “Licence”, a woman must resort to selling her body because it is easier to get a licence for that than one for driving her dead husband’s horse carriage.
Rooted in a certain setting, Manto’s sure-footed stories nevertheless whisper to us across space and time.
MANTO: SELECTED STORIES
Tranlator: A. Taseer
Random House India
Rs 295
