He couldn’t be resting in peace. Today, he’s a legend. During his all-too-short lifetime, his writing was charged with obscenity in his birth-land India, as well as in Pakistan where he had migrated following the partition of the sub-continent.
At the age of 42, Saadat Hasan Manto whose 105th birth anniversary falls today (11 May), passed away of cirrhosis of the liver.
Indeed, the story of the Ludhiana-born Urdu writer who covered the jagged beat of human sufferance in the style of a compassionate reporter, is perfect material for a biopic. One has been completed in Pakistan, documenting the seven years spent in Lahore by the author of scores of short stories, essays, stage and radio plays, and film scripts. At home, actor-director Nandita Das, has been researching the manifold facets of Manto, a project which will hopefully find enlightened funding.
Not many of Bollywood’s present-day heavyweights are aware of the literary virtuoso’s tryst with cinema, or of the pen-portraits of charismatic film personalities whom he knew up close and personal. Translated from Urdu to English, these essays are contained in the slim paperback Stars From Another Sky, besides forming a section of Bitter Fruit: The Very Best of Saadat Hasan Manto.
Manto’s takes on the denizens of show business were catalysed essentially during his freelancing stint as a film writer. He wrote prolifically for films, including Kisan Kanya (debatably lored to be India’s first colour film) revolving around rural oppression, Chal Chal Re Naujawan fired by the spirit of nationalism during the British Raj, and the biopic of Mirza Ghalib released in 1954.
Plus there were Apni Nagariya, Begum, Shikari, Jhumke and Eight Days, on which precious little information is accessible.
Screen stars weren’t the only ones who interested Manto. Babu Rao Patel, the editor of the strident magazine, FilmIndia is remembered to this day as a terror, particularly for his rabidly communal editorials. Yet Manto conceded that the “foolish and sometimes frivolous” Patel had a soft corner for the poor. Around then, postmen weren’t allowed to use elevators at high-rise buildings. Patel wrote so belligerently on this snooty practice that it was finally discontinued.
Casual sex, the impermanence of love, indifference to an incalculable number of women, booze binges, Buicks and imported Craven A cigarettes flashed as status symbols, and nights soaked in sher-o-shairi, here’s a world which Manto lights up with a powerful battery of words.
The evergreen hero was a doting friend. But when Manto was asked by another writer to leave a meeting which was discussing the script for Dadamoni’s film Majboor, the writer told himself, “Manto bhai this street will lead you nowhere…so I took the side lane that brought me to Pakistan where I was soon tried for obscenity for writing a story called Thanda Gosht.”
Nargis is showcased as a shy girl, not a classic beauty, who longed for girl pals of her own age. And so chattered away with the young women in Manto’s family.
The concluding lines on Nargis, described as the Narcissus of Undying Bloom, touch emotively upon her parents:
Uncharacteristically, Manto is scathingly rude about the yesteryear vamp Kuldip Kaur, especially so about her on and off liaison with the then upcoming Pran. Sitara Devi, is chauvinistically portrayed as a man-eater.
By comparison Naseeem Banu the ‘fairy queen’ gets off lightly. She is caught in her vulnerable moments: her husband Ehsan had asthma and she had a permanent cold. She would avoid green chillies. They would have light arguments over their meals “but when you caught them looking at each other, you detected love.”
Unbridled regard is reserved for the light-eyed actor Shyam who died following a fall from horseback while shooting for the film Shabistan. Manto wrote, “He is still alive in the person of all those women whose stoles of silk and muslin once brought shade to his loving heart. And he is alive in my heart, which grieves because when he was dying, I could not stand over and shout, ‘Shyam zindabad’.”
Come to think of it when Saadat Hasan Manto died, not many cried, “Saadat zindabad.”
(This story is from The Quint’s archives and was first published on 11 May 2016. It is being republished to mark Saadat Hasan Manto’s birth anniversary.)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)