Two or three years after Partition, the governments of India and Pakistan decided that just as there had been a cordial exchange of prisoners, there should now be a similar exchange of lunatics. That is to say, Muslim lunatics housed in Indian asylums should be repatriated to Pakistan, and Sikh and Hindu lunatics, in turn, handed over to India. It’s hard to be sure of the wisdom of the idea. But in line with the wishes of intellectuals, a high-level conference was held, and at last, a date for the transfer was scheduled.
…
Several officers came to see the man, who had been on his legs day and night for fifteen years, lying face down on the ground. There, behind barbed wires, was India. Here, behind barbed wires, was Pakistan. In the middle, on a nameless piece of earth, lay Toba Tek Singh.” (from the story Toba Tek Singh)

Few other stories would rival Manto in bringing out the futility, irony, and pain of the partition of the Indian subcontinent. So it is with all the stories of Saadat Hasan Manto—the fewest possible details conveying all the necessary messages in the starkest possible manner. His frugality with words, his deep understanding of the vulnerability of human nature, and the poignancy of his themes undoubtedly make him “the undisputed master of the Indian short story,” according to Salman Rushdie. His apparently Spartan short stories couldn’t have been intrinsically philosophically more ornate.

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Saadat Hasan Manto (11 May 1912 – 18 January 1955) was born in Ludhiana and was active in British India but decided to settle in Pakistan after the 1947 partition of India. Writing mainly in Urdu, he is acknowledged as one of the finest 20th-century writers. Manto was strongly opposed to the partition of India, which, to him, was an “overwhelming tragedy” and “maddeningly senseless”, as reflected in the opening quotes that are taken from his story Toba Tek Singh (the opening story in the Selected Short Stories of Manto, translated from Urdu by Aatish Taseer). His life is as much remembered for the unforgettable stories it produced as for the controversies that dogged him throughout.

Manto’s translator, Taseer, writes in the introduction, “He wrote about prostitution, religious superstition, adolescent anxiety, sex, the Partition of India, and Bombay cinema in the 1930s and ’40s… There is something euphoric in the writing; it is easy to sense the writer’s joy in the newness and variety of life.”

For example, The Dog of Tithwal, the second story in this collection, dwells on the tragic fate of a dog who runs between two mountains on opposite sides of a valley, one of which is occupied by Pakistani soldiers and the other by Indian soldiers, and both armies claim the dog to be their own. In Ten Rupees, Manto depicts the carefree “ness” of a young prostitute, who loves travelling in cars with the breeze on her face like any young girl would. Blouse depicts the sexual arousal of a young boy working as domestic help by seeing the young daughters of his master take measurements for stitching a blouse. Ram Khilavan once again delves deep into the havoc. Partition played with the emotions and relationships of people who otherwise lived alongside each other happily. It portrays the relationship between the narrator and Ram Khilavan (the dhobi) and how, in a drunken state, the dhobi (who is otherwise unusually devoted to the narrator) tries to attack him during a Hindu-Muslim riot after the partition. And the unspoken regret and pain that Ram Khilavan feels thereafter.

In the story Licence, Manto narrates how people fall victim to circumstances, and in spite of all efforts to stay honest and upright, societal norms can force people down the path of decadence. In the story, the protagonist, Nesti, after her husband, Abu, dies and leaves her with his horse and carriage, tries to earn an honest living by driving it. But society still doesn’t accept and approve of a woman driving a horse carriage, and hence, she is ultimately given a ‘licence’ to sell her body. In Smell, the protagonist is enamoured by the smell of a working-class Marathi girl, so much so that he doesn’t feel aroused by the ‘milky white body’ of his wife. “In the deathly scent of henna, he searched for the smell that in those same days of rain, when in an open window the peepal’s leaves were washed and wet, he had inhaled from the dirty body of a Marathi girl.”

A contemporary and very close friend of Manto was Ismat Chughtai, a very acclaimed Urdu writer herself. But while Manto decided to settle in Pakistan after the partition, Chughtai decided to remain in India. Ismat Chughtai (21 August 1915 – 24 October 1991) wrote extensively on themes including female sexuality and femininity, middle-class gentility, and class conflict, often from a Marxist perspective. With a style characterised by literary realism, Chughtai established herself as a significant voice in the Urdu literature of the twentieth century, and in 1976 she was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India.

Chughtai’s writings were no less stirring than Manto’s and often left the entire strata of the Muslim world in utter disarray. No wonder a 2009 collection of her short stories (translated from Urdu into English by M. Asaduddin) is titled Lifting the Veil. Manto and Chughtai often faced trials for obscenity together. Asaduddin writes in his introduction, “But the story that Ismat Chughtai is best known for is The Quilt, or ‘Lihaaf’), which jolted the Urdu reading public out of their complacency by daringly depicting female sexuality in a manner not attempted before in modern Indian literature. This treatment of homosexuality and lesbianism lends itself to fruitful feminist readings, even as it provokes indignant reactions among the conservative public … The dexterous use of the quilt as both object and metaphor creates the ambiguity and tension that arises between calm exteriors and treacherous undercurrents.”

In the story In the Name of Those Married Women…, Chughtai recounts her experiences when she and Manto were tried for obscenity. The story, My Friend, My Enemy, is again a personal recollection of her tumultuous friendship with Manto, now flowing, now ebbing, especially after Manto’s decision to migrate to Pakistan. She writes, “I learnt that a lawsuit had been filed against him and he had been thrown in jail. All sat idle and impassive. No one protested against it. In fact, the general feeling was, ‘Good that he has been thrown in jail. Now he’ll come to his senses!’ There was no conference, no meeting; no resolution was passed.”

Both Manto’s and Chughtai’s stories are extremely honest and powerful and reflect on human nature and its shortcomings in the myriad hues of life and its circumstances. The stories leave one with questions about the sanity of institutions, societal norms, gender stereotypes and barricades, the expectations and possibilities in relationships, the decisions of the powers-that-be, the overarching presence of goodness and love, and the infinite hope that dwells in the smallest of gestures. Far from having any moralistic and judgemental undertones, the stories draw heavily from real life in all their often sad and dark desires and perceptions.

Manto and Chughtai are no longer amongst us, but they wrap us in their yarn of words ever more vibrantly and forcefully, especially in these troubled times. Leading us while letting us fall and stumble, often picking us up and nudging us, shoving us from bittersweet truths and ironies, sometimes darkening our vision, while at times blinding it with a burst of light, making us laugh and cry, and in the end helping us feel one with millions of others across times and spaces who are all sharing this amazing journey of life with us. As Tagore unforgettably wrote of short stories, even when the stories end, they never do.

The writer is associate professor, Economic Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata