I am now deprived even of cruelty, oh God
Such enmity towards your devoted lover!
As I was saying, as you know, before Shahjahanabad, the Mughals had their capital in Akbarabad, or Agra. Jahanpanah Akbar went to Agra in 1558. Are you really going to enjoy history lessons now? There are plenty of history books for that purpose. King Bahadur Shah had assigned me the task of writing a history of the Mughals; I couldn’t progress beyond the first volume. I grew up listening to stories, Manto bhai, could history possibly show me the way to heaven? On the contrary, we have been burnt to cinders in the hell of history ever since 1857.
Still, I must tell you a thing or two about Agra. The first love of my life is mingled in its dust. The current of the Yamuna used to talk to me. I used to roam about in Chaharbagh and in Moti Mahal. The Bulandbagh was situated right next to Zafar Khan’s memorial; it was an extraordinary garden. To tell the truth, Manto bhai, Agra was a city of gardens. And it had innumerable taverns, sarais. The one next to the Taj Mahal, named the Taj-e-Mukaam, was where we would gather every day. You could say the Taj-e-Mukaam was our garden of stories. Every story was succeeded by another; gusts of laughter rose skywards like a swarm of kites. It was there that I heard the story of Mir Sauda. I had never considered Sauda much of a poet, but one had to admit his skills when it came to writing qaseedas. There was something rather amusing that Sauda used to say, though all this was hearsay, for I had never seen him. Apparently he used to say, ‘It’s true I’m no flower in the garden, but then nor am I a thorn in anyone’s flesh.’ I might as well tell the story. Sauda wrote this amusing tale about Mir Hasan’s father Mir Zahid. Food made Mir Zahid forget everything else in the world. There wasn’t anything in the universe that couldn’t yield something for him to eat. You’ll roll with laughter when you hear the story, Manto bhai. One day, Mir Zahid was staring open-mouthed at his Begum’s angia. You know what an angia is, don’t you—underclothes to cover the breasts. The Begum was astonished; how brazen he was, why was a man gaping at her angia this way?
Embarrassed, she asked, ‘Anything wrong, janab?’
— No.
— Then why are you …
— I’m looking, Begum.
— At what?
— What’s inside the angia, Begum?
— What can there possibly be, janab?
Pouncing on her and cupping her breasts, Mir Zahid shouted, ‘Roti hai, Begum, we have rotis here, as soft as velvet.’
— Ya Allah, ejaculated the Begum, about to faint. On other days, he would insert his hand into her petticoat and ask, ‘What’s in here, Begum? So soft, and yet so warm. This is a freshly baked roti, Begum. Why are you hiding it from me? Give it to me Begum—this roti has a special taste.’ Ha ha ha, Manto bhai, just imagine the conversation at the inn. So many people passed through the city every day—familiar faces and strangers—there were more people in Akbarabad than in London at the time. This was Akbarabad, a tapestry woven with coloured threads—no, why call it that, it was more like a portrait gallery, where we had been painted with God’s own brush. I am reminded of Hafiz sahib’s sher, Manto bhai:
I still remember those days, when our friendship
Brought us together, do you still remember those days?
In 1637 Emperor Shahjahan went away to Dilli. Agra’s portrait gallery collapsed. As Mir sahib had written:
The fragrance of the rose, the song of the nightingale,
And my life—how quickly all of them ended
Then began the work of building Shahjahanabad. Emperor Shahjahan had asked for a site to be identified somewhere between Agra and Lahore. This spot by the Yamuna was finalized for the purpose. You do know that a horoscope was drawn up for the city? Astrologers had determined the correct moment to begin. Construction was started on May 12, 1639. The story I’m about to tell you, Manto bhai, is the story of the beginning before this beginning. How a city gradually grows on a foundation of the dead, the same dead people whose spirits had surrounded me that night.
I was standing before the Qila-e-Mualla after my arrival in Dilli. There was no moon in the sky; the fortress appeared to be a gigantic ghost. And I felt people gathering around me, their breaths rank with the stench of rotting flesh.
— Asad. Someone called out to me.
I looked around but couldn’t see anyone. I had arrived in Dilli very recently, who could possibly know me hereabouts?
— Who are you, I asked apprehensively.
— Qutub.
— But I don’t know you. Where are you? Why can’t I see you?
— We cannot be seen, Asad.
— Why?
— They have wiped us out.
— Who?
— Those who are building Shahjahanabad. They had handpicked us.
— And then?
— They killed and buried the whole lot of us. It’s on that ground that Shahjahanabad stands today.
— Why were all of you killed?
— I didn’t want to give them an inch of my land. So they got rid of me. There can be no greater crime against the emperor, they said. They branded me a vile criminal, keeping me imprisoned in an airless gaol for days on end.
— Asad bhai …
— Who are you?
— I am Yusuf.
— What did you do?
— I merely set eyes on her.
— On whom?
— I don’t even know her name. She was standing in the balcony of the haveli. I only saw her eyes above her veil. Do you know what those eyes were like, Asad bhai? Like a pair of nightingales. I used to visit the haveli every day to see those nightingales. But I never saw them again. Still they took me away in chains and forced me inside a dark pit. And then one day …
— You went to your grave too, Yusuf?
— Yes.
— Didn’t anyone protest?
— Who would raise his voice? Love is profane, love is hell. Who would say a word, Asad bhai? We don’t have love in our lives, do we?
— And I just used to wander around the streets.
— Who are you?
— Hasan. Why did I wander around, Asad?
— Why?
— In search of dust.
— Dust? Why? What dust?
— The dust with which Allah had made Adam. Someone or the other must search for it, mustn’t he?
— And so they took you away?
— They said, you’re looking for dust? You want to create Adam from dust? You want to be Allah? The maulvis tore my clothes off. They stoned me to death. I didn’t say anything to them, Asad bhai. I stood up to them fearlessly. Beat me as much as you can, pluck my eyes out, cleave my flesh from my body. Even in heaven I will search for dust. What will you do to me then? I shouted, beat me as much as you can, stone me as much as you can, I am Al-Hallaj. They had stoned Al-Hallaj too, hadn’t they? Al-Hallaj had said, I am Allah, it’s no one else but me. I had only wanted to create Adam from dust, Asad bhai. Does this make me a hypocrite, a munafiq?
All night I listened to these spirits, Manto bhai, who had been proven guilty on one pretext or another, and then killed and buried. The foundations of Shahjahanabad were built on the earth covering their graves. I had gone to Dilli with the dream of being a famous shair. On hearing my ghazals at mushairas, wealthy people would exclaim, ‘kyabaat, kyabaat, marhaba, marhaba!’ But what city of wandering spirits had I arrived at instead? All night long I listened to the stories of their lives. None of them was a criminal, but they were branded that way. Because, to build a city, it was necessary to find criminals to kill and bury without reason. Sadiq mian’s spirit had once asked me, ‘You plan to write ghazals, Asad sahib?’
— I’m not good for anything else, mian.
— Aren’t you going to write about spirits like us?
— I will.
— No one will understand your ghazals in that case Asad sahib. Sadiq had laughed.
— Why?
— They will only get the stench of death.
— Do you know what will happen after that? Sadiq mian asked, laughing.
— What?
— You will die like a street dog.
The spirits were absolutely right, Manto bhai. But even if I was a street dog, I was handsome once. Some people even used to want me. Mughaljaan, Munirabai and the other girls used to love me. Then, one day, I saw that I was turning mangy, I had become infested with worms. All my fur fell off eventually, leaving only a few bones beneath the roasted skin. Sprawled in the diwankhana, I would stare at this bundle of bones endlessly before the sheer fatigue of the activity made me drop off. And I would dream that Dilli was disintegrating, turning into crumbling sand, just sand; I was sinking beneath the dunes in the desert. Just think of the number of ancient spirits whose hands I took to arrive in Dilli, Manto bhai.
10
My heart is so bereft that I cannot tell whether
Anyone ever lived here, or whether it has long been empty
ustakhi maaf, Mirza sahib and my friends, it’s time to hear about the ill-fated Manto. Words are bubbling up within me, they will not be held back. Whenever I spoke, Ismat would only laugh and suck on an ice cube—how she loved eating ice—and I would just keep talking, talking like a mad man. Shafia Begum would show up from time to time to cover my mouth with her hand and giggle. I know they couldn’t tolerate me speaking for any length of time, I swore all the time, I couldn’t talk without adding a ‘bastard’ before and after every sentence; what could I do, just like Mirza sahib, my life too had passed on the streets, in tea shops and coffee houses; I had had no one besides my mother to look after me.
There’s nothing much to say about my father, Mirza sahib. He was an important person, a government official in Samrala in Ludhiana. He had married not once but twice. I was his second wife’s son. He never even spared me a glance. All my games and mischief were with my mother, whom I used to address as ‘bibijaan’. And there was my blood sister Iqbal. My father was like a shadow of a djinn, Mirza sahib, a shadow that I could not escape all my life. Much later, I was startled when I read Kafka’s short story ‘Judgement’. In this story too there was a father, a father like a demon, who caused his own son to jump into a river and commit suicide. In all my stories one character or another appeared like a demonic father, Mirza sahib, and I wanted to kill him off.
My father Maulvi Ghulam Hasan had his three sons by his first wife educated properly. He sent them abroad and made sure that they were well settled. But as for this Manto, he was turned loose on the streets—get out, you swine, wander around like a stray dog, eat the scraps and bones left behind by people. Muhammad Hasan, Sayeed Hasan, Saleem Hasan—his three sons by his first wife—were in England, Mirza sahib. And I was on Samrala’s roads, doing what? Watching performing monkeys and people walking through flames. I gave up studies after my matriculation—who was going to pay for higher studies? After all, Maulvi Ghulam Hasan had to ensure that his three sons in England became important people. What else was there for me to do, Mirza sahib? So one day I entered a drinking dive. The police beat me all the way into jail. I was even released a few days later, I have no idea how. I began to drink regularly after this. That was how I started stealing money from Bibijaan’s box. I would sleep after drinking, and dream in my sleep; do you know who appeared in my dreams? Maulvi Ghulam Hasan, the son of a bitch. I would throw rocks at him, fling shit and mud, and still the man would laugh at the top of his voice, besharam aadmi, that was how shameless he was. He was Khabish, Mirza sahib, nothing but the evil spirit of my life. Do you know how he’d look at me? As though I was a cockroach which had just scurried out of a drain and into the room. Do you know what he’d say to my mother? ‘Why do you love this loafer so much, bibi, he should actually be tried in court.’
Trials, yes, my entire life passed in trials, Mirza sahib. I had to stand on trial over and over again simply for the stories I wrote. From childhood, a coil of fire closed in on me. Do you remember Mir sahib’s sher, Mirza sahib?
I couldn’t save my heart from the heat of separation
I saw my home burn but I couldn’t put out the fire
I had passed through just such a blaze in my childhood. Ever since then, Mirza sahib, I became a resident of fire. Or would you rather call it an aag ka darya, a river of flames? Whatever you’d like to call it, I spent forty-three years roasting in this blaze. Shafia Begum would say, ‘What have you got by burning away this way, Manto sahib?
— Qisse, Begum. Stories.
— Stories about whom?
— About them, there they are, standing across the road, can’t you see them? They’re hidden in the spirals of smoke.
— Who?
— Manto’s spirits.
Let me tell the story of the fire first, Mirza sahib. Let me tell you, my brothers, it was Manto—Saadat Hasan had died long ago—who walked through fire. That’s the truth, without a speck of falsehood in it. Manto doesn’t know falsehoods, never knew them; that was why they dragged him to court again and again. When did Manto ever learn to write, questioned the big shots of literature. The communists didn’t spare him either. That bloody Manto, that son of a bitch, spreading garbage masquerading as art. The very people who claimed to be my friends were the ones who laughed at me, saying I was a cynic, a reactionary. Apparently I even stole cigarettes from the pockets of dead people. I had nowhere to go, Mirza sahib, except the fire through which I walked as a child. You wrote such a long time ago:
What medicine besides death for the agony of living, Asad?
The lamp must burn in different hues till dawn
Let’s say, if I was born in 1918—provided of course Maulvi Ghulam Hasan acknowledges this—then I was a cur of ten or twelve at the time. None of you knows this, but that year Master Khuda Buksh had created a sensation in London’s Piccadilly Circus, driving a car blindfolded. What acclaim he received! As though we had become the goddamned masters of the world. Then, you know what, something happened. It was like a message from God. You know, Mirza sahib, a single incident can change life like the ocean on a full moon night. Like Begum Falak Ara in your case. I know you will never talk about her again; it was you who taught me what ishq is. It was you for whom Hafiz sahib had written:
We came together once, the heady memories
have vanished now
The enchantment and desire have dwindled on their own
Yes, some of these things have to be buried in the deepest shrine within the heart, which is like a place of pilgrimage, a heaven inside one’s own body. That’s where I buried Ismat—how she loved sucking ice. There was no Shafia Begum in this dargah of desire. What if there wasn’t? What could I do about it, Mirza sahib? We cannot decide who will be admitted and who will be turned away from our own jannat and jahannum, can we? Al-Fatah decides for us. You accept that, don’t you?
Pardon this impoverished man, my brothers. Manto keeps disappearing from his own stories. This was my nature. If you had read my stories, you’d have realized that Manto kept giving everyone the slip; he was perpetually on the run, like the soul of an infidel. There was no option. Saadat Hasan could never confront Manto. Saadat Hasan was full of affectations—such elegance, the clothes must be just so, anything but Lahori shoes was out of the question, he had to possess at least a dozen pairs of sandals from the Karnal Boot Shop in Anarkali bazaar; there was no end to his fancies and demands. And Manto would grab him by his ear, shake him, and say, you fucking son of a bitch, you think you’re a fucking aristocrat, do you even know the fate of what you’re writing? They will blindfold you and gag you and throw you into a pit. All of Hindustan will reek with the stench of your stories. You bastard, you swine, you dare write Thanda Gosht? Is there no limit to your defiance of our religion? Have you heard what they say? All you write about are relationships of the flesh between men and women, is there anything besides red light areas in your stories? I accept it, Mirza sahib, there really wasn’t anything else; there was murder, there was rape, there was necrophilia, there wer
e strings of profanities—and behind all these images were a few specific years in time—-years swept away by blood—1946, 1947, 1948—there was No Man’s Land, the area between the two countries where Toba Tek Singh died. None of you has heard of Toba Tek Singh. How could you have heard of him? He was nothing but a lunatic.
No, don’t panic, my brothers, the story of the fire will begin now. I’m not going to spin a yarn about Toba Tek Singh. But you know what, people have tried to understand Manto in different ways—who was this son of a bitch, really?—was he a lunatic, or a maniac, or a mental patient, or an angel? I wanted to piss on this attempt to understand everything. How would you understand, you bloody fools, did you ever see the sunset the way I did? How would you understand, then, why the first thing I would look for in a woman was her feet? So give up your attempts; if you must discover Manto, read his stories—all those men and women you see, on the streets, in the slums, at the whorehouses, in the movie studios of Bombay—you might just find Manto among them. Are these stories or shit, they would ask. For heaven’s sake, if you can’t understand the times we live in, read my stories, and if you cannot bear to read them you’ll know that you cannot bear to live in these times. But what’s the use of saying all this? They singed Manto with flaming rods; what kind of a writer is he anyway, he’s just a pornographer, he deals only with the seamy side of life. Yet, whenever I started a new story, I never forgot to write the number 786 and Bismillah’s name before beginning. All this was my reward for walking on burning coal, my brothers.
You remember the exploits of Master Khuda Buksh, don’t you? The one who had demonstrated the art of driving blindfolded in London’s Trafalgar Square. After him, a performer named Allarakha appeared in Amritsar, claiming to be Khuda Buksh’s teacher. Digging a hole in the road, he lit some coal in the pit he had made, and then proceeded to walk on the fiery lumps. The crowds swelled every day to watch Allarakha sahib’s magic. Many stories, many legends, began to spread about him. I used to sit there quietly, watching him. How does a man walk on burning coal? After he had walked on them, he would show us the soles of his feet to prove there were no blisters. I had heard the story of Al-Hallaj from Bibijaan. Once he took a lot of people across the desert to Mecca. The travellers were weary with hunger. Can we not get some dates to eat, pir sahib, they asked Hallaj.
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