Bitter Fruit by Saadat Hasan Manto

“I feel like I am always the one tearing everything up and forever sewing it back together.”

One of the most read storyteller of the modern Indian sub-continent, Saadat Hasan Manto’s short stories discuss topics that continue to be considered too seditious even today. Born in India, he moved to Lahore, Pakistan after Partition in 1948. Blatant, rebellious and uncensored in his writings, he opposed the Partition of the country- that turned out to be the most brutal and bloody event in the pages of history. His rebellion finds place in his writings- both fiction as well as non-fiction. Manto chronicled not only the brutal Partition of India and Pakistan, but he also chronicled the hypocrisy that lies in the heart of the society. His short stories like those of Ismat Chughtai covers many dimension of a society, especially those that could/can be categorized under as taboo.

His stories: short, crisp and satirical questions not the morality of a society but the “show” of morality that prevents the society to recognize its own sins. Often making the readers uncomfortable, his stories mirrors actions and atticities that was done and repressed in the society: Tetwal ka Kutta, Toba Tek Singh talks about the division of geographical land and human psyche as the Partition unfolded, Thanda Gosht and Kali Salwar intricately plumbed into the workings of the mind during unprecedented violence, whereas stories such as Bu explored female sexuality.
An edgy man his stories never confirmed to the accepted notions in the society. No wonder he was charged with obscenity six times. Politically sharp, his stories were often a brutal satire of all that was going on then. In his works of non-fiction, especially in his letters, he predicted much of what is happening around right now. Prophetic and brutally honest his works paints especially the psychological canvas of a society that retorts to violence. He is best described in The Pity of Partition by Ayesha Jalal: “Whether he was writing about prostitutes, pimps or criminals, Manto wanted to impress upon his readers that these disreputable people were also human, much more than those who cloaked their failings in a thick veil of hypocrisy.” Manto for most of his life lived on the fringes of society and maybe that is why he saw the rottenness more clearly.

His writings- stories, essays, letters as well as court cases that were levied against him explored the multifaceted notion of society- that was wounded and bleeding. He did not write stories to heal or preach, rather he wrote stories to document the undocumented, to make sure that the brutality of numbers assigned to the dead is not lost in the footnotes of history. He wrote to document the madness and the division that violence can carve on the parchment of a civilization. History might be written from the position of privilege, but literature such as Manto’s continues to discuss the reality of those that remained unseen.

“When we were enslaved, we could imagine freedom, but now that we are free, how will we imagine subjection?”