Manto’s life comes alive on stage

Aparna Banerji

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, October 28

Mujh jaisa bewakoof... dimaag khali hota hai – jeb bhari hoti hai – aur khud ba khud koi afsana uchal ke bahar aa jata hai Uss lihaaz se (khud ko) afsana nigaar nahi balki jeb katra samjhta hun..jee haan Babu Gopinath saare afsane isi fraud se likhe hain....

(A half wit like me, the brain’s empty, the pocket filled – and a tale jumps out of its own accord. By that consideration, I think of myself not as a talebearer but a pickpocket. Yes...Babu Gopinath, Toba Tek Singh all tales were written by this fraud.)

Muses Saadat Hassan Manto about himself, as he terms himself an ‘Awwal darje ka fraud (a fraud of the highest rated kind) while deliberating on the dilemma which gave birth to his legendary stories. The play, ‘Ek Mulaqat Manto Se’, the title of which means a meeting with Manto, was staged during the ongoing Yuvaa Rang Utsav, brought to Jalandhar by the Actors’ Cult, in association with the Theatre Garage Project.

It was enacted by acclaimed theatre artiste and film actor Ashwath Bhatt at the Saigal Memorial Hall here on Saturday. When satire and Urdu join hands, you get magic. While the same was true of Manto, the same remains true of the play which pulls off a earnest, diligent feat of bringing alive the writer’s classy wit and the irony of his troubled times — of society vehemently flogging the truth tellers (an irony which haunts society, as aggressively, even today).

The eternal sceptic and rebel that Manto was, the play enlivened the life of the rebel writer - airing his unbridled musings. While Manto was tried several times for obscenity in both India and Pakistan, the play also constantly made one question the harsh judgment his works and views were subjected to, though they remain refreshingly true, witty and contextual after all these years.

While Bhatt, who’s been deftly playing Manto for the past over a decade, dressed in a white, kurta pyjama and grey shawl, mouthed them in chaste Urdu, the play’s classy mellow rhetoric was both a delight and a pleasant cultural shock for the audience, bred on a steady stream of contemporary expletives constantly blurted out in songs and on television.

An enternal sceptic, Manto’s reveries of streets of Pakistan (suffixed with a Zindabaad) – his making note of its inherent ironies through signboards, goods on sale and the behaviour of vendors earned applause several times from the Jalandhar audience.

As Manto runs through shops and signboards (read: Bimaar kapron ka haspatal, shop signs reading ‘Maa hazir’ – meaning taiyar khana (prepared food), ‘Paapohshiana’  – meaning juton ka ashiana or juta gar (a house of shoes) and Zamhareer – meaning bahut zada thandi (zaroor kulfiyon ki dukaan hogi) (very cold, must be a kulfi shop) choicest Urdu terms are thrown at an unsuspecting audience grappling to absorb them.

The play ended with a stimulating couplet, ‘my Daag Dehlvi’.

It was heartening to see Bhatt end the play with an exhortation to the city audiences to read Manto to truly understand him and also to discern for themselves whether he could be as obscene as popularly accounted for. Penned by Bhatt over a period of four years, the play has been written using the texts, articles and stories of Manto which include - ‘Manto’, ‘Main Afsana Kyun Kar Likhta hoon’, ‘Khol do’, ‘Kal Sawere Jo Meri Ankh Khuli’ and ‘Deewaroon Pe Likhna’.