Caution: Toba Tek Singh film will rouse interest in Manto again
Ketan Mehta’s latest film, Toba Tek Singh, starring Pankaj Kapur in the lead role, is based on Saadat Hasan Manto’s Partition-era magnum opus about a man broken by the horrors of 1947.
Such is the power of "Toba Tek Singh"'s legacy that the story has attracted interest from other mediums, notably film.
A perennial favourite of film students and amateur filmmakers, the story’s uniquely tragicomic vision has been captured on screen many times, as in the short film below.
(Video courtesy: Ajay Kannaujiya)
Yet, even the best of these are unable to fully articulate the halting cadences of the original.
Manto, who was born into a Kashmiri Muslim family that migrated to Lahore after Partition, was an Urdu writer of redoubtable breadth.
He found his métier in the short story, producing 22 collections that sparkle with an unerring understanding of South Asian ethos.
He started writing in a syncretic time when nationalism had not reared its head and terror was a word best used to evoke the first stirrings of romance.
By the end of his life, however, his work, informed by the savagery he had witnessed, turned grim.
"Toba Tek Singh" was a product of this bleakness.
Like many other writers albratrossed by a few of their several outstanding works, Manto’s short stories, other than "Toba Tek Singh" and "Thanda Gosht", remain confined to relative obscurity, shared eagerly only among enthusiasts.
This is a travesty since the real charm of Manto’s work is not its blatant politics, important as that is, but its amalgamation of a nuanced wit with a stark tendency to unveil double standards.
While translations of Manto’s work are readily available, their quality is uneven.
In his 2009 book, Manto: Selected Stories, Aatish Taseer brought forth several of Manto’s little-known gems in a fine translation.
Before moving to Lahore, Manto was a film journalist and screenwriter in Bombay.
 |
| Pankaj Kapur as Toba Tek Singh. |
For his collection, Taseer selected some stories from this time, roughly the period from 1941 to Partition. Set in the city of dreams, these stories are a window to a nascent Bollywood.
And not an entirely different Bollywood it is too!
While technical finesse may be a distant destination, scandal is very much the order of the day.
In "My Name is Radha", a wildly popular superstar, known in the industry as the epitome of high morals (he even addresses his co-stars as "sisters") is shown by Manto's acerbic narrator to have feet of clay.
Manto's world is a curious mix of innocence and intrigue, so that the Hindus and Muslims in his stories are friends and well-wishers, still untouched by the poison of communalism.
In such a politically fecund setting, the writer yet manages to throw the human element in sharp relief, showcasing the warts-and-all mortal lurking beneath the seemingly divine.
"For Freedom" is about a Muslim freedom fighter who, in the thrill of the moment at the historic Jallianwala Bagh, forswears sex and pledges at his wedding to not have "slave children" unless India gains independence.
The story is clearly a dig at Mahatma Gandhi, who appears as a high-minded babaji here.
Narrated over many years by a friend of the freedom fighter, it is a scathing attack on the pulls of self-righteousness and the havoc it can unleash.
For a writer of his time, there is a refreshing feminist streak pervading these works.
Manto’s women are sharply etched characters who persevere with their choices, at times to tragic consequences.
In “Licence”, a woman must resort to selling her body because it is easier to get a licence for that than for driving her dead husband’s horse carriage.
In addition to tackling serious themes, Manto had an eye for the humorous detail.
His story “Muftnosh” lovably skewers his friends' penchant for going to great lengths to bum a smoke off him. This video adaptation is a fitting tribute to this story:
Manto's brilliant touch is evident in all his stories, hop as they do from a moment of child-like, unadulterated joy to the sudden onset of tragedy. Rooted in a certain setting, these stories nevertheless whisper to us across time and space.
The latest "Toba Tek Singh" film will re-energise interest in Manto but readers must seek beyond the obvious.
70 years after Partition, the master wordsmith can still rouse us with his accomplished takedowns of violence, hypocrisy and other all-too-human failings.