— Is that a crime?
‘Not sure. Only a lawyer can say if there’s a section in Pakistan’s Penal Code for this. I think there should be. Bringing the insane to their senses is punishable under Section 292.’
— In its judgment on Thanda Gosht, the high court said the law has nothing to do with the writer’s intent, or what his character is. It must only see if there is filth in his writing.
‘That’s precisely why I was saying that whatever the intent be in bringing the lunatics to their senses, the unnatural aspect of the whole thing should be considered.’
— These are legal things, sub-judice as they say — we should stay away from them.
‘True. It’s good you reminded me. I think it’s a crime even to discuss them in private.’
— Tell me, if Manto really does go mad, what happens to his wife and children?
‘They can go to hell! What has the law to do with that?’
— Yes, but do you think the government will step in to help them?
‘The government should do something. It should tell the newspapers it is considering the matter.’
— And by the time they’ve “considered”, the thing will be settled. Brilliant.
‘Obviously. That’s how it has been, always.’
— Let Manto and his family go to hell. Tell me this, how will the high court ruling affect Urdu literature?
‘Let Urdu literature also go to hell.’
— Don’t say that! I’m told that literature and culture are a nation’s assets.
‘I only consider cold cash an asset — something physical and lying in a bank vault.’
— That’s a clever way of putting it. But if this is so, then Momin, Mir, Ahsan, Zauq, Saadi, Hafiz etc — will all of them be wiped out through Section 292?
‘I believe so. Else why should the law exist?’
— All the poets and writers should come to their senses and take up respectable professions.
‘Join politics, perhaps?’
— Only the Muslim League, right?
‘Of course. That’s what I meant. To join another party is to spread obscenity.’
— Absolutely.
‘There are, of course, other respectable things they could do. Put their writing talent to use by sitting outside post offices and writing letters on behalf of other people. In chaste language, naturally. Or they could scrawl advertisements, you know those random ones that walls are full of. It’s a brand new nation with thousands of vacancies. They could fill some of them.’
— Yes, there’s also much vacant land they could till.
‘I hear the government’s thinking of setting aside some of it on the Ravi River, and banishing all the hookers and whores there. Far from the city. Why not include these poets and writers and pack them off there as well?’
— Splendid idea! They’ll certainly be at home there.
‘What do you think will happen?’
— What else? They’ll rot there. Wallowing in the filth.
‘It’ll be fascinating. I think Manto will be delighted with all the material around him.’
— But that fellow will write about the whores rather than sleep with them. He’ll give us their stories.
‘True. What he sees in the wretched of the earth, why he insists on ennobling them, I have never understood. The rest of us see them with contempt and disgust. How can he bear to embrace them?’
— His sister Ismat* says that he’s fascinated by things that repel other people. It’s true. Where everyone is dressed in spotless white, he wants to go covered in mud and slime and make a nuisance of himself.
‘His brother Mumtaz Hussain says he sets off every morning looking for goodness in the stomach of such a person as you might never expect.’
— That’s quite obscene if you ask me. To expect goodness instead of intestines.
‘And what about spreading muck on those clothed in pure white?’
— Obscene too.
‘Where do you think he gets so much slime from?’
— No idea. He finds it somewhere.
‘Let’s pray that god deliver us from his contemptible filth. This might be good for Manto also.’
(They pray)
‘Lord! You’re merciful and gracious. We’re both sinners but we ask that Saadat Hasan Manto, son of Ghulam Hasan Manto, a good and pious man, please be taken away from this world.
‘He has little use for it. He eschews the fragrances of Your world and runs towards its odours.
‘He shuts his eyes when faced with light and goes in search of dark corners. He wants to see the raw and the naked. Sweet things he dislikes, he delights in the bitter.
‘He finds nothing of virtue in housewives and seeks the company of sluts.
‘He bathes in filth. When we cry, he giggles. When one is meant to laugh, he howls.
‘He insists on wiping soot from the blackened faces of the immoral and on showing their faces to us.
‘He’s forsaken You, Lord, and worships the devil.
‘O Master of the universe! Rid us of this man who insists on making evil normal. He loves mischief — the courts’ proceedings are proof of this. Try him in Your eternal court so that justice may finally come to him.
‘But be careful, Lord! He’s very wily. Make sure You’re not snared by one of his wiles. Of course, You know it all, but we’re just reminding You.
‘We only ask that You remove him from our world. And if he should remain, then remain as one of us — we who hide the world’s filth and carry on like all is pure.
‘Amen!’
— (Originally published as Pasmanzar)
* Ismat Chughtai, the renowned Indian writer
The Great Pothole Mystery
India’s writers have a strange problem. Why doesn’t anything work here? Why are things they notice not noticed by the others? Manto migrated to Pakistan and, out of work from Bollywood, began to wonder about such things. This is a piece he wrote to express his bewilderment with what was happening around him.
You know me as a writer of fables. The courts know me as a pornographer. The government sometimes refers to me as a Communist, and at other times as one of the nation’s great literary figures.
Sometimes the doors of employment are shut to me. Other times they are opened. Sometimes I’m classified as an “unwanted person” and evicted from my house.
Then they turn around and say: ‘No, it’s fine. You can keep your place.’
I have wondered in the past, and still do today, what exactly it is that I am. This nation — the “biggest Islamic state on earth” as we are often reminded — what’s my standing in it?
This country, which we call Pakistan and which is very dear to me, what’s my place here?
I haven’t found it yet. This makes me restless. This is what has sent me sometimes to the lunatic asylum, and sometimes to the hospital.
Whatever else it may be that I am, I am quite certain that I’m a human being. Proof of this resides in the fact that I have a good side to me and a bad one. I speak the truth, but sometimes I lie. I don’t do namaaz, but I am familiar with the act of bowing.
If I see a wounded stray dog, I am disturbed for hours. But I’m not affected enough to take it home and nurse its wounds. When a friend is in trouble for want of money, I am inevitably troubled and saddened. But often I have desisted from offering help.
This is because I need money to buy whisky. When I meet a handicapped, legless girl I think hard about what her life must be like. I consider if it will change in case I were to marry her. But the thought flees soon after I mention it to my wife.
I am, as I said, a teller of stories. My imagination soars, true, but it plummets in the face of reality and I think to myself that if I had to ultimately fall, why was it that I even soared in the first place. But I continue to be disturbed by small things.