The man said: ‘No, sir, that fellow referred to himself as a drunk.’ Anyway, apparently they were given seats elsewhere and we were rid of them.
The journey to Karachi was disgusting, even in second class. The compartment was full of dust. It was only thanks to the beer that the ride was tolerable.
I had wondered about a hotel to stay in but, as usual, had no money. In any case, my wife had insisted: ‘You must stay with my brother.’ I pondered over the line: Saari khudai ek taraf, joru ka bhai ek taraf. So I set aside the whole world and went to the wife’s brother.
He was a decent man, had a good job and an enormous flat. He welcomed us with great warmth and gave Nasir and me the flat next door to his.
Now I had no desire to stay in Karachi. After fifteen years in Bombay, this place had nothing new for me. The next morning, we went to the magistrate’s court. It was an ordinary building in which sat the additional district magistrate in a smallish room.
I’d faced courts in Lahore and was familiar with their customs and culture. That is to say, I knew they were places where there was absolutely no culture.
I stood before the magistrate with hands crossed in front. He saw me and asked: ‘What do you want?’
I was astonished by his politeness. I said: ‘Sir, my name is Saadat Hasan Manto. You’ve summoned me for my essay “Oopar, Neechay aur Darmiyan” on the charge of obscenity under Section 292.’
He said: ‘Take a seat.’ I wasn’t sure whom he had asked to sit and so I remained standing.
When he noticed this, he said: ‘Please take a seat, Manto saheb.’ I took a chair facing his desk. After a while he said to me: ‘Why didn’t you come all these days?’
I said I had been unwell.
‘You could have sent a medical certificate surely,’ he said.
I lied: ‘I was too unwell to even do that.’
He heard me and was silent. Then he said: ‘What is it that you’d like done here?’
What I obviously wanted was to be rid of this damn problem. I also thought of Mr Tufail, who had put up my bail and had to safeguard it by showing up early in the morning with two second class tickets.
I said to the judge: ‘Let me off. I want to go back home.’
He replied: ‘That can’t happen immediately. I have yet to read your essay. Inshallah, I’ll read it today and decide tomorrow.’
Nasir and I said goodbye to him and went off to have a few beers. We took a motorcycle-rickshaw, which I liked. Fut-fut it goes, taking minutes for a journey that might have taken hours. It wasn’t even that expensive.
The next day we returned to court. The judge responded to my greeting and asked me to sit. This time I sat on the bench. He pulled out a paper and said: ‘I’ve written the order.’
He looked at his assistant and asked: ‘What’s the date today?’ The assistant replied: ‘Pacchees.’
I’m a little hard of hearing and thought he had fined me that sum. A twenty-five rupee fine meant I couldn’t appeal, and the sentence against me would stay. ‘Sir, a twenty-five rupee fine!’ I said to him.
I think he had actually fined me five hundred rupees but when he heard the alarm in my words, he smiled and changed it to twenty-five.
Nasir pulled out the money from his pocket, saying: ‘You’ve got off lightly. This appeal-shapeal business would have only brought more trouble. Remember the trial for Thanda Gosht?’
I remembered — and trembled at the memory. I thanked god for letting me off easily in this case.
As we were leaving, the judge said: ‘When are you going back?’
I replied, ‘Probably today.’
‘Don’t go today,’ he said, ‘I’d like to meet you.’ I became worried. Why did he need to meet me now?
‘I can wait till tomorrow,’ I said. He asked where we could meet at 4 pm.
I gave him the names of the bars we had been drinking at, but he wasn’t a drinker and so we settled on Coffee House. We showed up fifteen minutes late. The judge was already there. We chatted. After a while, he said to me with great affection: ‘Mr Manto, I think of you as one of the great writers of our time. I don’t want you to think of me as unsympathetic to you.’
I was amazed. ‘Then why did you fine me?’
He smiled: ‘I’ll tell you after a year.’
It’s been some months now, and a few months remain. Let’s see what the magistrate, who appears to be a man of his word, reveals.
— (Originally published as Paanchvan Muqaddama (II)
in Naqoosh magazine, March 1953)
The Background
Manto’s stories about prostitutes and barbarism and necrophilia did not go down well in Pakistan. He became a target for moralists. Angered by days spent in courtrooms where he was treated poorly, and once also convicted for obscenity, he tore into his critics by contrasting their morality with his in this piece. His frustration and bitterness was evident, and that was unusual for Manto. He also took a swipe at Jinnah’s Muslim League, and he was amongst its first and most devastating critics. I’m not sure if someone actually published this piece in a journal or whether it was just found in his papers, written for himself one drunk afternoon, and sent for his collected works.
‘Have you heard the latest?’
— From Korea?
‘No, not that.’
— About the Begum of Junagadh?
‘No…’
— Some sensational murder again, is it?
‘No, actually about Saadat Hasan Manto.’
— Why? Did he die?
‘No, he was arrested yesterday.’
— For obscenity?
‘Yes. They searched his property too.’
— Did they find any cocaine? Some contraband booze perhaps?
‘No. The newspapers say nothing illegal came to hand.’
— The bastard’s existence is itself illegal, I’d say.
‘True.’
— Then why did they not charge him with that?
‘We should leave that to the government. It knows how to fix people like him.’
— No doubt, it does.
‘So what do you say? This time Manto must hang for sure.’
— I hope he does. That’ll shut the bastard up once and for all.
‘You’re right. After what the high court said about Thanda Gosht, he should have hung himself.’
— And if he’d failed in the attempt…
‘He would be charged with attempted suicide and locked up anyway.’
— I think that’s why he didn’t try it. Else he’s quite an extreme fellow.
‘So you think he’s going to keep writing his pornography?’
— Yaar! This is the fifth case against him. If he wanted to behave, he’d have stopped after the first case and taken up something respectable.
‘True. Become a government servant perhaps, or he could have sold ghee. Or, like Ghulam Ahmad from Mohalla Pir Gilaniya, he would have come up with a miracle cure for impotence.’
— Yes. Many respectable things are open to him. But he’s a godless man. Mark my words — he’ll go back to writing pornography the moment he can.
‘Do you know what will come to be finally?’
— I foresee something quite bad.
‘There will be six cases against him in Punjab, ten in Sindh, four in the North West Frontier and three in Pakistan. He’ll go insane just from the proceedings.’
— He’s already gone mad twice, the newspapers reported the other day.
‘That was him being farsighted. He was rehearsing so that when he actually does go nuts he can spend his time in the asylum at ease, already accustomed to it.’
— But what will he do there?
‘He’ll try to bring the lunatics to their senses.’