What commonly known about him is
that he was 35 years older than Pakistan, wrote neutrally about India-Pakistan partition
and had freaked out the “nobles” with his “filthy” works like کھول دو ;Open
it - and ٹھنڈا گوشت
;Cold Meat – and died at age of 42 suffering
from Cirrhosis and poverty. His often quoted reply to his critic, “If you
cannot bear these stories then the society is unbearable. Who am I to remove
the clothes of this society, which itself is naked. I don't even try to cover
it, because it is not my job, that's the job of dressmakers.”…
Frankly, I am not in a position
to write about Saadat Hassan Manto because I am not familiar with all of his
works. As a coincidence, I read some of the Manto’s stories when I was reading
Khalil Gibran’s works and I found them very close to each other in the
sense that both were detached from their
birthplaces, lived in poverty, somewhat tried to demystify the human characters
but were very slow in their descriptions of their experiences (at least in
stories that I read… and it is just my personal judgments and my judgments
might be very partial ) and all these things cumulatively made me not to follow
their works anymore. I feel that the main reason for my decision was that at
those times, I was feeling a big gap in human achievements regarding human mind
and other sciences. To me, mankind had failed to understand themselves in
systematic manners as they have understood and organized their knowledge of Physics,
Chemistry, Biology, Economics, History and Social Sciences. The absence of a
systematic understanding of human’s behaviors in general and human mind
specifically have kept the doors of mystery still open. The patchy insights
scattered through works of writers with good observations were leaving me with
a choice to go after writers with more direct, simple but condensed
observations. I didn’t have the patience to skim through thick piles of works
to get some insights. So I was skipping writers with prolific use of words but
with less condensed insights. Hassan Manto and Khalil Gibran were falling in this
category for me…
OK, if I had not developed an
interest in reading Manot then why am I describing him now?
 |
| People are rediscovering Manto |
Two weeks ago, I was with my other classmates in the microscopy room to observe live anaerobic bacteria that we had cultured over almost in a month in the tubes with headspace of nitrogen to avoid oxygen exposures. Oxygen is poisonous to anaerobes. After placing a drop of culture on slide, we were observing the anaerobic bacteria freaking out by exposure to oxygen and were running randomly here and there. Observing this on the large screen, it was first time I was feeling sorry for those bacteria and meanwhile revisiting my perspective about the discoverer of Penicillin (weapon of mass destruction for bacteria)…
Pakistan soon after independence
intentionally moved towards making the Pakistani society anaerobic
(conservative) and writers like Saadat Hassan Manto, whose stories were making
holes in this bubble were freaking out those who were considering oxygen (a
direct and demystified observations) toxic for society in general. Now, that
society have totally run out of oxygen and people are suffocating… there are
some strong desires to make some oxygen available. But oxygen is already so scarce.
Saadat Hassan Manto died on spring
of 1955 just when Pakistan was only 8 years old. This year (2012), Hassan Manto has become
100 years old and Pakistan has become 65 years old. It is no surprise that, why
Pakistan has failed to produce another Hassan Manto in more than half a century
after his death? The answer is simple. In a society that “self-deception” is more
than welcomed and contradictions are rationalized under name of honor and
loyalty, one can’t expect the blossom of healthy and courageous minds. Manto
was able to observe and write in the earlier days, when Pakistani society still
had the spirit and openness of British India but that unfortunately didn’t last long.
I see mushrooming of articles, audio and video reports in English newspapers and on BBC Urdu and I understand the strong desire for come back of Manto but the chances look bleak unless the present bubble of “self-deception” bursts and people once again breathe in an open atmosphere…
BBC Urdu celebrates Manto's 100 birthDay
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