The fashionable, entirely unwarranted and uncritical classification of Manto’s corpus by social scientists and historians into stories about (a) Partition and (b) prostitutes ignores the primary function of literature. As Askari comments:
Actually, literature is indifferent to who is behaving like an oppressor and who is not. [. . .] Its business is to observe the internal and external behaviour of the oppressor and the oppressed during commission of oppression. Insofar as literature is concerned the external act of oppression and its equally external complements are meaningless. [. . .] These stories are not about communal riots (fasādāt). They are about human beings.*
Could one call Elie Wiesel’s Night a novella about the Holocaust? Is it not rather about the little Jewish boy, the elect of God, who had, as François Mauriac puts it, ‘lived only for God and had been reared on the Talmud, aspiring to initiation into the cabbala, dedicated to the Eternal’†—the boy who was condemned to witness the horror of the death of God in the depths of his soul and subsequently did not bow to Him?
The unwarranted preoccupation with society at the expense of the individual has, in my opinion, done grave injustice to Manto as a writer—injustice in the sense that socio-political analyses rarely rise above reductionist interpretations of works of literary art. What I have tried to do in my selection is to steer clear of such external determinants and see them as stories about particular individuals. This is reflected, I hope, in the way I have grouped the stories, and even more in the way Manto himself has chosen to title some of his major stories after the names of their protagonists (Radha, Janki, Siraj, Mummy, Khushia, etc.). I have tried to dispel, as best as I can, the notion that the only legacy Manto has left us is his pathological obsession with prostitutes and Partition and join those who wish to restore to his stories the dignity of a world created with love, immense imagination and humanity.
Manto’s major stories, and recently some minor ones, have been translated so often that yet another translation would perhaps seem unwarranted. Initially I was hesitant to undertake this project. Would it be possible to transport into the target language in a readable way, without making too many compromises, the particular ambience of some of his stories and their cultural specificity? Would I be able to tone down, suppress, add or subtract, rearrange content or rewrite simply as a concession to the sensitivities of the English reader? And I also did not think that it would be right to clutter a book of short stories with cultural notes in order to make a story properly glow and resonate for the reader. Some Manto characters breathe in a fictionally recreated cultural space of the Punjab. The swear words they use stubbornly resist translation and whatever may be found by way of their English equivalents sounds not just unnatural but grotesque. Take, for instance, ‘santokh sar ke kachhve’, ‘Oaye Bābā Tal ke karāh parshād’ or ‘Oaye khinzīr ke jhatke’ in ‘The Last Salute’. Or the pun on the word ‘kār’ (car) and the compound ‘kār-sāz’ in ‘Babu Gopinath’, which does not mean ‘car-maker’ but rather one, usually God, who is able to find a way, put things right, or make something unexpectedly come true for you. I have therefore left them in the original. If I were to translate the sentence ‘He heard her clear her throat and then start to sing the ghazal by Ghalib which begins with the line ‘Nukta-chīñ hai gham-e dil . . .’ (‘Kingdom’s End’) as ‘He heard her clear her throat, then in a very soft, low voice she sang him a song,’ wouldn’t the omission of this inconspicuous little detail about Ghalib and especially about the particular ghazal result in the loss of the allusion that has a bearing on the story? This verse of Ghalib indirectly suggests a lot about the state of the woman’s mind and her emotions because in her culture women are not supposed to be so open and direct about their feelings for men. The generic word ‘song’ fails to summon up this complexity for the reader. It also suppresses another fact: Manto’s enduring fascination with Ghalib, whose poetry he often quotes in his stories and his non-fiction pieces. Maybe all this is less important for the reader. For me it was not. I decided to bite the bullet. But, of course, I might have done a better job. I have tried to remain as close to the original as I possibly could. As for my failures, which are many, I beg the reader’s indulgence.
Besides stories and non-fiction, Manto also wrote radio plays and at least one stage play, Is Manjhdār Mein (In This Maelstrom), for which he chose the subtitle ‘A Melodrama’.
It is puzzling why Manto called it a ‘melodrama’, which it is not for a number of reasons. Eric Bentley, after rehabilitating ‘tears’ (which only reflect our anxiety not to appear vulnerable in this modern age) as a perfectly natural phenomenon and part of the human condition, defines the main ingredients of melodrama as pity, fear of villain and exaggerated or elevated language.* While there may be some pity for the central character Amjad—though pity alone does not, indeed should not, qualify a work as melodrama—there is no fear of the villain. The villain is just not there, let alone being superhuman or diabolic. Though melodramatic vision is paranoid† one does not have to be persecuted by a real flesh-and-blood villain; even the landscape can sometimes oppress and persecute. Manto’s landscape, though, is invested with breathtaking beauty. More importantly, this beauty is not presented as axiomatic. It derives dialectically from the generally positive manner in which the characters react and respond to it. Then again, while a typical melodrama rarely moves beyond pity and fear, In This Maelstrom is not defined by this attribute. Although we do feel a certain sense of pity for Amjad, we feel greater sympathy for his wife Saeeda and wish for her beauty and youth, now hopelessly wasting away, to blossom.
The characters, too, are not the stock characters of a melodrama. Neither cast according to the ‘Progressive’ formula, nor defined by bourgeois moeurs, they vibrate with a life all their own. They are imbued with remarkable individuality and amazing independence of will, and reveal a complex psychology in their thoughts, feelings and actions. Thus Amjad, who has picked Saeeda from among countless other women to be his wife, knows that his choice amounts to no more than the impulse to pick up the finest thing in the market. As for loving her—that, he freely admits to the maid Asghari, he does not. Still this does not stop him from wondering: ‘I can’t understand why I want to keep her shackled in chains whose every link is as uncertain as my life.’ Well aware of the illicit love between his wife and younger brother, he appears to be strangely free of the slightest trace of jealousy, so unlike, one might almost say, most men.
I do not agree with Mumtaz Shirin’s contention that Saeeda is less a character than a ‘symbol of beauty’.‡ Surely she is an aesthetic attribute, but she is also much more. She is both attractive and aware of her tremendous attraction for men. Nothing so extraordinary perhaps. However, where she parts company with a stereotypical young South Asian Muslim woman is when she ‘unabashedly’, though not without disarming directness and honesty, mentions to Asghari the desires raging inside her, and catalogues her frustrations. She says:
I’m young. I’m beautiful . . . numberless desires surge inside me. For seventeen long years I’ve nurtured them with the nectar of my dreams. How can I stifle them? [. . .] Call me weak . . . cowardly . . . immoral. [. . .] I confess before you that I cannot ravage the garden of my youth, where the vein of every leaf and flower throbs with the hot blood of my unfulfilled desires . . .
And Asghari, the maid: her frequent caustic jibes at the crippled Amjad, in spite of knowing the extremely brittle state of his mind; her scathing, abrasive wit; and, above all, her hesitation in accepting Amjad’s love even though she is in love with him herself—all these raise her above the meek and obsequious world of a South Asian domestic to the plane of a fairly complex personality.
Although Majeed is not fully developed as a character, in coveting the wife of his own brother he, too, appears to be refreshingly less typical.
Melodrama is often characterized by its use of an exaggerated—a heightened, lyrical—form of language. A declamatory, excessively rhetorical style of sp
eech is no doubt noticeable in a couple of long-winding speeches by Amjad addressed to Saeeda at the mid-point in the play and to Asghari at the end, and in a single piece where Saeeda addresses Asghari. But in these instances the elevated language appears called for by event and situation, which it dialectically supports and enhances. It does not appear tired, crude or otherwise logically non sequitur. Moreover, ‘Intensity of feeling’, as Bentley says, ‘justifies formal exaggeration in art’ (p. 204). A brief sequence of emotionally charged utterances would be inadequate ground to place the work in the category of melodrama, or sob-stuff.
Finally, one thing is sure: We certainly do not get a ‘good cry’ or a good laugh out of the play. What we do get instead is the calm of a sobering moment in which our temporarily frozen senses—because of two suicides at the end—gradually thaw out to a sense of beauty and blossoming optimism towards life’s continuity and renewal which is far in excess of our initial shock at the twin suicides. We come to accept, almost as a necessity, the suicides as the price life must pay to remain ongoing and whole. Thus the very subject of the play argues forcefully against its being a melodrama.
Manto, of course, is not interested in celebrating promiscuity per se, here as elsewhere. He, therefore, neither jeers at the invalid husband for the loss of his sexual prowess, nor, on the other hand, helps initiate the lovers in the ways of pleasure. By avoiding any explicit or implicit reference to actual sexual contact—though not to the fact of sexual attraction—between the lovers, he seems to give us a clue to his deeper purpose, which is to transcend the confining circumstances of self-indulgent sensual love itself and give it a creative, complementary role integral to the wider scheme of things.
Except for a few pieces, the balance of Manto’s work presented here is taken from his collected works published in five volumes by Sang-e-Meel Publications of Lahore (1990–95 and 2004). Where this is not the case, the source has been cited in the footnote with the piece in question.
Generally, non-Urdu words (personal names, titles, etc.) have been spelled according to common sense and South Asian custom. Diacritics have been used sparingly in the Preamble and the three article towards the end of the book.
This book of translation owes a great deal to R. Sivapriya of Penguin. Her constant encouragement helped me overcome my initial hesitation to undertake yet another translation of Manto’s stories. I would like to thank Moazzam Sheikh, who collaborated on our translation of the short story ‘Barren’, and my former students Wayne R. Husted and M. Azam Dadi for their collaboration in translating the play In This Maelstrom well over three decades ago. I would also like to thank Jane A. Shum for going over the manuscript and offering valuable suggestions for improvement. Shatarupa Ghoshal has a special claim to my deepest gratitude for her most careful editing of the manuscript and I acknowledge it with the greatest pleasure.
Muhammad Umar Memon
5 January 2015
My Name Is Radha
I am talking about a time when there was absolutely no hint of war anywhere. It happened eight, maybe nine, years ago, when, quite unlike today, madness had method and tumultuous events followed a predictable course. Today—well, tumultuous events occur without rhyme or reason and throw everything upside down.
I was then employed in a film company at a monthly salary of forty rupees. Life was chugging along smoothly. I would show up at the studio at ten, feed the villain Niaz Muhammad’s two cats two paise worth of milk, write banal dialogues for a banal film, joke around for a while with the Bengali actress, ‘the nightingale of Bengal’ as she was called in those days, fawn over Dada Gora, the greatest director of his time, and return home.
Like I said, life was chugging along smoothly with the usual ups and downs. The proprietor of the studio, Hurmuzji Framji, a whimsical man of Iranian origin with big fat ruddy cheeks, was head over heels in love with a middle-aged Khoja woman. Feeling up the breasts of every newly arrived girl was his habitual pastime. There was this Calcutta whore, a Musalman, who was carrying on with her director, sound recordist and storywriter all at the same time. Carrying on meant that the tender affections of all three would remain reserved only for her.
The shooting of Ban ki Sundri was in progress. Every day, after feeding the villain Niaz Muhammad’s cats the two paise worth of milk—God only knows what kind of impression he expected to create on the studio-wallahs by keeping them—I would write dialogues for the film in some unfamiliar language. I knew absolutely nothing about the film’s story or its plot because I was merely a munshi—a pencil-pusher—in those days and didn’t pull much weight. My work only involved writing on a sheet of paper in mutilated Urdu whatever I was ordered to and what the director could understand, and hand it over. Anyway, the shooting of Ban ki Sundri was under way. Rumour was rife that Hurmuzji Framji was bringing an entirely new face from God knows where for the part of the vamp, while Raj Kishore had been assigned the role of the hero.
Raj Kishore, a native of Rawalpindi, was a handsome and healthy young man. It was widely believed that his body was very manly and had a graceful shape. I thought about his body often. It was certainly athletic and well proportioned, but I found nothing else appealing in it. Maybe that was because I myself am frightfully gangly, look more dead than alive and, besides, am given to wonder rather too much about my kind of people.
I didn’t hate him; I’ve rarely hated anyone in my life. Let’s just say that I didn’t much care for the man. The reason will reveal itself as you go along.
I absolutely loved his pure Rawalpindi accent, his language, his manner of speaking. Only in the Rawalpindi dialect of Punjabi can you find the sweetest, most endearing cadence. It has a strange kind of rugged femininity, at once sweet and mellow. Should a Rawalpindi woman talk to you, it would feel like having mango juice dribbled into your mouth. But I’m not talking about mangoes; I’m talking about Raj Kishore, whom I liked much less than that heavenly fruit.
As I mentioned, Raj Kishore was a good- and healthy-looking young man. Well, had the matter ended there, I’d have had no cause to grumble. What was worse was that he was also overly conscious of his physique and good looks. And this I could scarcely stomach.
Being healthy is a good thing, but to inflict one’s health on others like a disease is something else again. Well, Raj Kishore suffered from this disease. He never lost an opportunity to flaunt his health and his well-proportioned and shapely limbs before those less healthy than he was.
Doubtless, I’m a frail and chronically ill man. One of my lungs can hardly pump enough oxygen into my body. But as God is my witness, I have never ever put my weakness on display, although I know that one can exploit one’s frailty as much as one’s strength. But I believe one should not do that.
To me, true beauty is the kind that you quietly admire in your heart, not broadcast with your tongue. I consider such beauty an affliction that hits you with the impact of a rock. All the beauties that a young man should have, Raj Kishore had them. But, regrettably, he also had the nasty habit of exhibiting them in the crudest fashion, such as by flexing his arm muscles while talking to you; or worse yet, praising them unabashedly himself. Or, in the midst of a discussion on some serious issue, such as swaraj, unbuttoning his khadi kurta and measuring the unusually wide span of his chest.
Ah, yes, khadi—it reminds me: Raj Kishore was a staunch Congressite. Maybe that’s why he wore khadi. But the thought that he didn’t love his country as much as he loved himself never ceased to peck at my heart.
The majority of people thought that my opinion of the man was grossly unjust. This was because, whether in or out of the studio, everyone admired him for his beauty, his thoughts, his simplicity, and his language with its perfect Rawalpindi accent, which I also loved.
Unlike most other actors, he didn’t keep to himself. You were sure to find him in any and all Congress rallies, as well as literary gatherings. Regardless of how busy his life was, he always found time to share in the joy and sorrow of his neighbours, even t
hose with whom he had only a nodding acquaintance.
Every film producer regarded him highly on account of his celebrity and his spotless character. And not just them, even the public knew all too well that Raj Kishore’s life was free of scandal. It’s not easy to be part of the film world and remain squeaky clean. That Raj Kishore was a successful hero further jacked up his stature in everyone’s eyes.
I spent part of my evenings at Shamlal’s paan shop in Nagpara. Here, people often gossiped about actors and actresses, none of whom was free of some scandal or other. Not so with Raj Kishore. Whenever his name cropped up in a conversation, Shamlal asserted proudly, ‘Manto Sahib, Raj Bhai is the only actor who’s not easy on his zipper.’
I didn’t know why Shamlal had started calling him ‘Raj Bhai’, nor was I too surprised by it because every little thing Raj Bhai did soon became public knowledge as a veritable achievement. How much he made, how much he gave to his father every month, or donated to orphanages, or spent on himself—people knew these details as if they had been singed into their memories.
One day Shamlal told me that Raj Bhai was exceptionally nice to his stepmother. When times were hard and he had no source of income, both his father and his father’s new wife had put him through all manner of hardship. But remarkably, Raj Bhai never shirked from his duty and welcomed them all with open arms. Now his father and his stepmother sat majestically on their canopied bed and ruled the roost. And Raj Bhai went every morning to touch his stepmother’s feet and joined his hands before his father, ready to carry out immediately any order the old man might give him.
Please don’t mind if I say that every time I came across such overblown praise for the man, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy. I don’t know why. God forbid, I didn’t hate him, as I’ve said before. He had never given me cause to despise him. Then again, at a time when we munshi-folk counted for nothing, worthy neither of respect nor importance, Raj Bhai would talk to me for hours. So, while I can’t say why, the thought that all of this was only so much posturing, that his life was an absolute sham, never failed to flash in some dark corner of my mind. The problem was, no one shared my opinion. So while everyone else worshipped him like a god, I stewed in my own juice.
My Name Is Radha Page 3