{"id":304295,"date":"2018-10-18T05:59:31","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T05:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=304295"},"modified":"2018-10-18T05:59:32","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T05:59:32","slug":"today-the-world-needs-a-few-men-like-manto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/today-the-world-needs-a-few-men-like-manto\/","title":{"rendered":"Today the world needs a few men like Manto"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I have been in love with Saadat Hasan Manto\u2019s writings right from my teenage days when I had first read his short stories. Stark, they hit! And, as I read details to his struggles, the challenges and pains he went through, I simply marvelled the man\u2019s survival prowess. Though, to be honest, at times, I would sit wondering the contradictions attributed to him; on one hand he was portrayed as a loving husband and doting father yet his visits to prostitutes and sex workers were also played up. Somehow, something it did not seem to jell.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thankfully, some of that haze to Manto got cleared in 2005, as it was around that time I happened to meet and interview his grandnephew, Abid Hasan Minto, when he had travelled to New Delhi to attend a Progressive Writers\u2019 Meet at the Jamia Millia Islamia. A senior advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, also, the President of the National Workers\u2019 Party of Pakistan (NWP) and together with those political frills, perhaps the biggest frill \u2014 the fact that he was himself a well-known writer and critic. And, at the start of that interview, with much curiosity I asked him this crucial why- \u201cWhy did he, Abid Hasan Minto \u2014 spelt his surname differently. Why Minto and not Manto?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He had detailed, \u201cManto is a Kashmiri surname. Saadat Hasan Manto was my father\u2019s paternal uncle. The surname Manto was too closely associated with him, with one particular individual. My father had dropped the surname, but I chose to take it with a change in spelling.\u201d He had further said, \u201cWe are ethnic Kashmiris\u2026 My father\u2019s grandfather had shifted from Srinagar to Amritsar. In fact, my parents were born in Amritsar and my mother was the niece of Saifuddin Kichlu. I was born in Rawalpindi in 1932, though on the eve of Partition I was holidaying in Srinagar.\u201dOf course, I had asked him all those curiosity \u2014 laden queries about Saadat Hasan Manto-the \u2018whys\u2019 to his\u00a0 friendship with\u00a0 prostitutes in Mumbai , to his mental and emotional fragility, to his\u00a0 near-poverty existence, to all those contrasts he seemed saddled with.<\/span><\/p>\n

And, this is what he had told me: \u201cSaadat Hasan Manto was my father\u2019s <\/span>paternal uncle (chacha). I got close to Saadat Hasan Manto when I came down to Lahore around 1953 to study law. He was already living there and I had interacted with him regularly for two years \u2014 till he died\u2026. Regarding he being mentally fragile, that\u2019s just not true. No, not at all\u2026he was not mad, on the contrary very sharp and clever. It\u2019s just that he was an alcoholic and in those days there were no de-addiction centres or clinics for alcoholics, and anybody with alcohol-related problems was dumped in an asylum. And, regarding his name getting linked to prostitutes, I can say with great confidence that he was absolutely in love with his wife and greatly committed to her. They were happy with each other, happily married till the very end. She was also a Kashmiri like us and her family earlier shifted to Africa and later to Mumbai. And that\u2019s where they had met and married.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Then why those endless tales of his sexual flings with women of all shades?\u00a0 To this Manto said, \u201cMaybe before his marriage, whilst he was living in Mumbai, he mixed around with all sections and all levels of people. Also, there could be an underlying factor to it \u2014 he was taken up by the non-elite and those from the socially lower strata. But, after his marriage he was devoted to his wife and except for those alcoholic-related offshoots, he suffered from no other disease or problems. Another fact stands out: he was severely affected when his only son died as a child. Though he had three daughters but that loss played havoc and he was in deep sorrow. No, it\u2019s not the Partition chaos that affected him as much as the death of his little son. Somehow till the end he couldn\u2019t get over it and it had left him completely devastated\u2026That was Manto.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Now that we have slowly realised the genius of this exceptionally honest writer, I hope more books are written on him and several more films made on him. Of course, Nandita Das has made this wonderful film on him and the latest book on him has just been launched-\u2018Manto Saheb-Friends and\u00a0 Enemies on the Great Maverick( Speaking Tiger), yet the void stares and continues to stare\u2026There ought to be much more focus on Manto saheb.<\/span><\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it time that we salute this writer\u2019s courage… the stark idealism he carried right through, till his last day. Maybe \u2018Manto museums\u2019 are setup in the three cities in India he was associated with \u2014 Amritsar, Mumbai and Srinagar \u2014 so that the young and the upcoming writers\u00a0 get that much needed inspiration after reading his books, letters, works.<\/span><\/p>\n

In these dark times, Manto saheb is needed. Desperate and urgent need of the day. His honesty, his forthrightness, his blatant criticism of the rulers, his distrust of the system and all that it heaps on the individual, his raw emotions and passions, his utter dislike of the rich and mighty, his bonding with the commoners, his ability to see through the fake and fraudulent, need to be focused on. That ongoing and repeated focus on his works.<\/span><\/p>\n

Manto saheb has to be placed up there. On the high pedestal.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

letters@tehelka.com<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been in love with Saadat Hasan Manto\u2019s writings right from my teenage days when I had first read his short stories. Stark, they hit! And, as I read details to his struggles, the challenges and pains he went through, I simply marvelled the man\u2019s survival prowess. Though, to be honest, at times, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304305,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,2205],"tags":[5646,5647],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304295"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304295"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304325,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304295\/revisions\/304325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/304305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}