This month marks the 75th anniversary of the partition of British India into two countries: Hindustan and Pakistan. Some years ago we featured Rajinder Singh Bedi’s Lajwanti, a Partition story from an Indian viewpoint. In honor of the occasion, we are pleased to provide this story from the Pakistan side by controversial writer Saadat Hasan Manto. This is not your usual Partition story of mass displacement and violence. Instead, it is a clever satire of the governments of the two countries, as reflected in a decision several years later to exchange institutionalized lunatics. Themes: insanity, separation, religious segregation, nationality, confusion, belonging. More…
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The Dog of Tithwal
This story from Saadat Hasan Manto takes place during the first Indo-Pakistan (Kashmir) War, which commenced just two months after the 1947 formation of the two countries. The war was a form of “Mexican standoff”. This is reflected in the plot, where soldiers break their boredom with occasional shots towards the enemy camp that have no chance of hitting anyone. The treatment and killing of Jhun Jhun for “refusing” to take sides is symbolic of the suffering of civilians caught up in the conflict. Themes: natural peace and harmony vs. mankind’s propensity for violence, futility, innocence, distrust, cruelty, human suffering. More…
Open It / Khol Do
Set in the aftermath of India’s Partition, this story by Saadat Hasan Manto highlights how a total breakdown in law-and-order led to many predatory attacks against women. A father, separated from his seventeen-year-old daughter as they fled after his wife was disembowelled in front of them, desperately searches for her in a refugee camp for “Indian” Muslims evacuated to Pakistan. Some camp volunteers agree to look for the girl. They are successful, but do not return her. When found, her corpse displays a shocking conditioned reflex. Themes include displacement, chaos, gendered violence, depravity, fatherly love, despair. More…
Smell / Bu
In this story by Saadat Hasan Manto, a refined Indian man sees a factory worker sheltering under a tree outside his apartment during a rainstorm. He invites her up to dry off and, consensual or otherwise, they have sex. As she spends the night he notices that every part of her body emits an at once foul and sweet-smelling odour. This enchants him so much that sex with other women, including the henna-smelling upper-class wife he marries years later, is less satisfying. Themes include social class/ethnicity, exploitation (rape?), promiscuity, sensuality, smell as an agent for memory and desire. More…