Selected Short Stories by Saadat Hasan Manto

Saadat Hasan Manto

Popularly known as Manto, this short story writer is one of the greatest, as well as the most controversial, writers of India (shifted to Pakistan after Partition, so became popular as a Pakistani writer). His stories, originally written in Urdu, are simply narrated, having an essence of lyricism, metaphors and deep insight into human nature. This collection of stories has been  carefully translated by Aatish Taseer, and done in a way that is said to have maintained Manto's original style and its effect. 

Title: Selected Short Stories by Manto

Translated into English by Aatish Taseer

Published: 2008 by Random House India

Pages: 158

Find it at: Amazon

This collection has twelve translated stories, covering a variety of themes including partition, dogmas, women and society, sexuality, politics, and religion. The book begins with the author's introduction, which is a must-read if you are (like me) a first-time reader of Manto's stories, and wish to get an insight into the relationship between his Urdu stories and its translations. He has talked about his own experience and the declining fate of Urdu language. It greatly enhanced my reading experience as it gave a glimpse into Manto's literary life, influences and ideas. I have personally been fascinated with short stories that narrate stories worth telling in a novel, in just a few pages. Those stories have memorable characters, places and habits that come back to you at a later time. Manto's stories have that quality, and a lot more that's hard to describe in words.

The first story, Toba Tek Singh, is a well-known story. People in an asylum have spent years together in that enclosed space, and have absolutely no idea about what's happening outside. They don't know about the partition or what it means, so when a ridiculous proposition comes for some of the inhabitants to leave the asylum and go to 'India', they're pained by the thought of leaving home. It's the story of a man in the asylum who mutters a distinct string of words ending with random phrases, who cannot find his identity. Imagine my surprise when I mentioned the story's title to my dad, he immediately narrated the distinct phrase used by that man! 

Another story that struck me the most was For Freedom, that describes the travails of young blood during the freedom struggle, the hopelessness of politics and what it meant to the common man. Khaled Mian is one story that struck me as intense, cleverly invoking deep and hidden fears in the reader as it implicitly brings out the deep fears (fear of a loved one dying, or coming to harm, for example) in the main character and make him act the way he does. There are other such stories, all of which have been written in simple, yet metaphorical language that you would want to read slowly, word by word, because each word has meaning. This is one of the amazing things that good short stories do. To add to that, the impressive way in which Manto seems to understand human sentiments at the basic level, and is able to narrate those around a gripping, simple story, is sure to make you want to read more of him. That's because he doesn't talk about human sentiments like others, he chooses the most basic ones, and ones that many writers shy away from. He's also true in his stories, for not many have 'happy endings'. He tells a story as it is. 

Manto has been called a storyteller of Bombay. That was the city he supposedly loved the most, and wrote about the most. Capturing the essence of the place and the people, he has written numerous stories, a small portion of which have been translated and presented in this collection. Another thing that strikes you is that while India and Pakistan remain bitter about the partition, Manto's stories (as well as those of other writers like Ismat Chughtai and Parveen Talha) evoke the real feeling of loss that real people suffered. 

Saadat Hasan Manto has been tried for obscenity in his stories numerous times, but his open acceptance of human nature, choice of equality over orthodoxy, and compelling stories of people who identify themselves as humans, has always won over those issues. These stories are certainly powerful and inspire a reader to think. I admit to not really understanding the real meanings of some stories as they ended, or understanding the meanings of implied language, but that led me to look up Manto on Google, and am I impressed or what! If you'd like to make a foray into Urdu literature, old Indian stories, Manto is a must-read. Some stories are suitable for everyone, while some I would categorize into the mature category.  

 "What I have learned is that going against nature is in no way, under no circumstance, bravery. It's no achievement to kill yourself through abstinence, or to endure it. To dig your grave and get in it, holding your breath for days, to sleep for months on a bed of sharp nails... - stunts like these would bring neither God nor freedom. And from what I understand, the only reason India is still not free is that we've had too few leaders and too many stuntmen... They've found a politics that stifles truth and goodness of character and it's this same politics that has made the struggle for Independence so blinkered."

Thank you Random House Publishers for this book! :)

The Quilt and Other Stories by Ismat Chughtai

Sometimes as readers, we’re so enamoured by stories, books, themes and writing styles that are foreign to us, and to our culture, that we spend less time digging into the literary scene of our own country. Perhaps that’s because we choose those contemporary books that go super-popular and have snazzy titles, but later realize that they’re not even close to our preferences. So we avoid it altogether, not trying too hard to experiment. But then in between those rare trials, we find a book(s) that’s not on a bestseller list in the present scene, but is relatively well-known to a small section of people who’ve read it. We realize that digging deep and experimenting aren’t all that bad, and we give it more chances, and most of the times when we’ve got a hang of the kind of thing that’d be good for us, we come across more such titles and stories. We love them!

Ismat Chughtai

One such book I read is called The Quilt, Stories by Ismat Chughtai. She was a courageous Indian Urdu writer who was also a fierce feminist, and in her stories, explored themes of female sexuality, middle-class gentility and other areas of social reality.  

This collection has ten short stories, nearly all of them centred on feminism or having female characters bravely depicted just as they really are. These stories do not create fantasies or promote wishful thinking, but are descriptions of people and life as we all might have seen around us. One might think that the absence of a ‘happily ever after’ would make the stories depressing or non-hopeful, but the effect is opposite. You would be left thinking about them for a long time afterwards, and probably would feel even more close to them, just for the realness of them.

Be it the story of a child bride, getting beaten up and abused by the in-laws, yet having her own innocent ideas, or that of a woman scared of childbirth; be it a story of a woman who spent thirty years not getting over the man she loved, or that of a domestic worker thinking of the Englishman as her man – the stories do not shy away from presenting stories of people who’re very much real, very much messed up and whose stories are looked down on.

The beauty in Ismat Chughtai’s stories is in the writing style and the realism, the frankness and light-heartedness with which they’ve been narrated. If the translation manages to make a reader love those stories, no doubt the original Urdu version would be amazing! I’m finding it a little hard to describe the writing style. It’s simple, yet the stories are narrated in a way that you just cannot stop reading! Half the things are not direct, but implied, and that makes this narration just so unique.

One of my favourite stories in this collection is called Roots, and is about two families from different religions, living next to each other with utmost friendship that spanned three generations. That was a time when partition was limited only to a joke, but then it started becoming a reality, extended family and relatives started flocking in to the two houses, and a deep chasm was created in between them. After many, many years when the lady of the house refuses to leave for Pakistan along with her children, the story reflects her pain, confusion and memories associated with the place. Where is home? What is this stupid thing called ‘our land’? Is it not here, where she was married, where her children were born and where her husband lay buried after fifty years of marriage? This, and other stories like these do not talk about politics or superficial ideas, but the small lives of real people who just want to live a love-filled and happy life.

I’d recommend this book if you’re interested in stories that explore women and their lives, Urdu literature, popular classical authors, or Indian stories. It’s a light-read that would definitely leave you with something to remember.

Find it at: Amazon

Translated by M. Asaduddin in 2001. Published by Penguin Books in 2011.
Recommended to me by a super-duper friend!