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Why I Write: Essays
by Saadat Hasan Manto
Reviewing Manto is only an excuse to read him again. Unarguably one of the greatest storytellers and writers of the 20th century, Saadat Hasan Manto’s work still remains relevant in the socio-political-cultural contexts of the subcontinent. A century after his birth, Manto is yet holding up a mirror to us and our times. The book is a collection of non-fiction writing, translated from Urdu by Aakar Patel, who says in his introduction that it’s important to read Manto because he is ‘an Indian trapped in Pakistan’, which was not just Manto’s misfortune but ours too. Born in Samrala to a Kashmiri Muslim couple, Manto lived in Amritsar and later migrated to Bombay to become a journalist and naturally found his way to the film industry. Here he made several friends, wrote a few scripts for rather unsuccessful films and most significantly, composed his magnificent short stories. He would have us believe that these came out of experiences and not out of flashes of genius or inspiration. He would write stories while settling his children’s quarrels or while tossing a salad or playing a host to people who might drop by. The force (if not the muse) behind the stories, he tells the reader, was his wife who insisted that he needed to put food on the table for his family. In his own words, he does not ‘actually write the stories…They write themselves.’
How honest this writer was! Could it be arrogance that when he wrote, he’s so unflinching in his piercing gaze or was it his love for truth? Whatever it was, he was steadfast in his forthrightness. His stories remain unsettling because these delve into the shadowy corners of our inner selves. But these also suggested a way to redemption. In fact, Manto’s stories and essays before Partition were playful and light. For example, in the essay Beautiful Girls will be Harassed, he talked about the chhed-chhad between young men and women, not in the sense of harassment or molestation, but in a pleasant, teasing fashion. In How Arms Control Works, he talked about how countries became vehicles of potential mass destruction. Doubtless, Saadat Hasan Manto was one of the greatest raconteurs of the 20th century. ‘Why I Write’ is a collection of the writer’s non- fiction writing, competently edited and translated by Aakar Patel, veteran journalist and columnist. Every essay is preceded by a short note by Patel, giving a brief background that helps contextualise the piece. ‘In Saadat Hasan Manto, Bombay has its finest chronicler,’ says Patel. We tend to agree.
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The remarkable thing
about Manto’s work is that he could write about the most commonplace
things or most disturbing events with equal candour and brilliance.
Whether it is an essay about the 13 type of people who buy cigarettes
from unsuspecting cigarette owners or about the glittering façade
that surrounds the dark reality of cinema and people associated with
it or about politics and partition, these are all gems for the reader
to savour. No wonder, he came to be known as the Maupassant of the
sub-continent. If there was to be an anthology of the best short
stories of the world, it is unlikely that Toba Tek Singh, Khol Do,
Thanda Gosht, Bu (stories for which Manto was charged for
obscenity) would be excluded from it.