Saadat Hasan Manto
Pinching rhetoric and blinding prose. Not in a very good way either. Manto makes you aware of your darkest recesses painfully. It is like a fix, you know it is going to hurt you but cannot stop doing it all the same."Thanda Gosht" (Cold Meat)..the title is enough to send shudders down the spine. So is the story, of the Sikh who abducts a girl during the partition only to realize it is a dead body. Many such stories later, you wonder what this man was made of.
Tried for obscenity half a dozen times (never convicted, though), Manto holds up a mirror in more ways than one. Maybe the blazing riots of the partition have died down and maybe life is smoother now. But are we really past the darkness or is it just that the animal in us doesn't have enough opportunity to come out any more?
Manto leaves us with these uncomfortable questions every time you read his work. He seems to have looked deep, deep into the psyche with a lamp that illuminated the murkiest crevices. The sight is not pretty. Not at all pretty. What is more, will it ever change? Here's to you Manto, for realising the truth early on.
posted by Anupama. @ 8:48 pm
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