Daily Times

In recent years, the work of Saadat Hasan Manto, short story writer, journalist, playwright and essayist, has seen a revival in Pakistan. Long proscribed for supposed obscenity, Manto’s work is today being re-evaluated as an honest, poetic and uniquely candid body of work describing life in pre-partition India with a visceral wit and pathos that is truly rare. Manto’s sublime observational skills were the result of his moral candour and ability to see beyond people’s words and actions to discern the motives that drive them. His descriptions of partition and its attendant madness bear the sheen of a man driven to write after witnessing barbarity and greed masked as patriotism. It is to discern the man behind the poignant picture painted by his words that Mujahid Eshai translated this collection of essays and columns in which Manto addresses himself on numerous occasions, describing himself in the same sardonic tone that he does everything else. The book also includes several essays about Manto from some of his contemporaries, including Krishan Chander and Bari Alig as well as letters from Manto’s friends.

Staying true to the author, Eshai has kept his style simple and direct, making it accessible to people who are unable to read Urdu, though the lyrical quality that runs through Manto’s work suffers in translation. With a combination of florid punctuation and modest aims, Eshai stays true to the work’s substance and conveys simply the deep sentiments in Manto’s work. Where the book succeeds is in the conceptualisation that consequently leads to the choice of materials. The selection, whether of Manto or his contemporaries, shed a personal light on an elusive figure who has received inadequate attention in Pakistani literature. The greater criticism is that there simply was not enough of it.

The book is short and provides a good introduction to Manto the man, partly in his own words, but does not convey why these particular works were important or what bearing they have on our understanding of the author. They appear more to be what the translator could reasonably acquire and, though they may have more meaning for literary experts or people very well acquainted with Manto’s entire body of work, for average readers the theme in the selection may be difficult to discern. Any book about Manto intended for English audiences should have a brief historical and social introduction to the society in which Manto lived and worked. This is something the publisher and author will want to address if a second edition is approved. The publishing quality of the book leaves something to be desired and the price in this regard seems excessive. There is no bibliography to speak of and almost no citations or sources. None of the selections are prefaced and at first glance it appears haphazardly organised.

Nonetheless, Eshai does a creditable job of providing us with a work that is clearly a labour of love. For audiences in English, the job of reading Manto suffers from a lack of knowledge about the author, which is what Eshai attempts to provide. The selections in the book are highly entertaining. Beginning with a longer essay entitled ‘Shadows across the radiant moon’, the book introduces us to and establishes Manto’s keen observational skills and unique perspective. In ‘Why do I write’, we see how Manto extended his critical faculties to himself, his motives and his spiritual understanding in a brief one-page column. The translator does well in capturing the logic of Manto’s argument and how he uses the paradox of his existence to explain his reasons for living and working. “I write because I have to say something. I write because I must earn in order to be able to say something,” is a sentence that at once encapsulates Manto’s logic and his understanding of the humility behind creating objet d’art. Here the translator deserves credit for providing the reader with easily reconcilable terminology to explain what might otherwise become verbose and stuffy prose. Similarly, the other essays and columns also prepare the reader for what comes next. ‘Why do I write’ is followed by a lengthier piece simply titled, ‘Manto’.

What is striking about Manto’s work is that his focus is not the grandiose or the creation of literary or heroic drama. It remains on the insinuated reality implied by the minuscule actions of those around him. Manto’s reality was not limited to what people said or did on the surface. Similarly, one cannot judge Eshai’s book without noticing the implications of his choices and the understanding he attempts to illuminate, which needs to be made clearer in the organisation and bibliographic style of the book. Eshai clearly wants Manto to be understood for being more than just a writer and to give us a glimpse of the passionate and serious humanist who worked much and slept little, and whose attempts to enlighten people, whether through plays or columns, were always resisted by the powerful. He does well to give us glimpses of the tremendous respect that Manto’s peers had for him. In this, one can only fault that the translator perhaps gives to Manto a moral stature that the author himself might have refuted. In arguing for Manto as a conscience he perhaps forgets what Manto himself might have said of the idea of “a fraud of the first order” being considered a moral authority. Eshai’s book is an interesting addition to a growing body of work around this special writer and its faults are not terminal. Manto On and About Manto is an easy read that helps one understand a faithful, witty and empathetic chronicler of a turbulent and emotional time in our history.

The writer is an Assistant Editor at Daily Times