About the Book Naked Voices, Stories & Sketches is one of the most authentic collections showcasing the best of Saadat Hasan Manto as a great storyteller and an honest commentator of all times. In this collection of sixteen stories and three sketches, Manto brazenly celebrates the warts of a seemingly decent society, as well as its dark underbelly - tired and overworked prostitutes in The Candle's Tears or Loser All the Way; ruthless as also humane pimps in The Hundred Candle Watt Bulb and Sahay; the utter helplessness of men in the face of a sexual encounter in Naked Voices and Coward; and the madness perpetrated by the Partition as witnessed in By God! and Yazid. In one of the three sketches, which form part of this collection, the author brilliantly reveals himself to the world in a schizophrenic piece titled Saadat Hasan, calling Manto the Writer a liar, a thief and a failure! And in another titled In a Letter to Uncle Sam, Manto superbly couches his anti-imperialistic views in an innocent letter from a poor nephew to a capitalist and prosperous uncle in America. About the Author Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-55) is one of the finest Urdu short story writers. Provocative, outrageous, scandalous, sometimes even blasphemous, Manto was the original enfant terrible of Urdu literature. Cocking a snook at society, literary norms and most notions of propriety, Manto touched the hearts of many with his convincing and utterly original portrayal of human fallibility. Rakhshanda Jalil has edited two collections of short stories: an anthology called Urdu Stories and a selection by Pakistani women called Neither Night Nor Day. She has published five works of translations: Premchand's short stories, titled The Temple and the Mosque; a collection of satirical writing in Hindi by Asghar Wajahat titled Lies: Half Told; thirty-two satirical cameos by Saadat Hasan Manto, titled Black Borders; nazms by Urdu poet Shatryar, called Through the Closed Doorway; short stories by Intizar Husain called Circle and Other Stories; and a collection of Premchand's short stories for children called A Winter's Tale and Other Stories. Her translations have appeared in a number of journals and magazines; she has also co-authored, with Mushirul Hasan, Partners in Freedom: Jamia Millia Islamia and written Invisible City, a collection of essays on the little-known monuments of Delhi. She contributes regularly on issues of faith and community to major English newspaper and journals; co-edits Third Frame, a journal devoted to literature, culture and society; and works as Media & Culture Coordinator at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Earlier, she taught English at the universities of Delhi and Aligarh. ROLI BOOKS This digital edition published in 2014 First published in 2008 by The Lotus Collection An Imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash- II Market New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 40682000 Email: [email protected] Website: www.rolibooks.com Copyright © Saadat Hasan Manto © Rakhshanda Jalil, 2008 All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, print reproduction, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Roli Books. Any unauthorized distribution of this e-book may be considered a direct infringement of copyright and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Cover design : Supriya Saran eISBN: 978-93-5194-016-6 All rights reserved. This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published. To Mamu, Siddiq Ahmad Siddiqi NAKED VOICES STORIES AND SKETCHES CONTENTS Introduction STORIES 1 Bismillah 2 By the Roadside 3 Comfort 4 Sahay 5 The Candle Tears 6 The Maker of Martyrs 7 Sharifan 8 Naked Voices 9 Loser All the Way 10 A Day in 1919 11 Coward 12 The Rat of Shahdole 13 The Hundred Candle Power Bulb 14 By God! 15 Yazid 16 Sliver and Silvereens SKETCHES 1 Saadat Hasan 2 A Letter to Uncle Sam 3 Zehmat-e-Mehr-e-Darakhshan INTRODUCTION I n an impudent epitaph written for himself a year before his death, Saadat Hasan Manto wrote: ‘Here (Manto) lies buried – and buried in his breast are all the secrets of the art of story-telling.’ Immodest, yes, but by no means outrageous, for it is true that whatever the merits of Manto’s style and craft, he was a storyteller par excellence. He had the rare gift of being able to narrate the most blood-curdling events with faithful accuracy and an unsparing eye for detail. Dismissed variously as a voyeur, a purveyor of cheap erotic thrills, a scavenger of human misery, a compulsive scraper of the wounds of a sick and ailing society, or at best a mere rapporteur and no more, Manto upset every conceivable notion of literary propriety and license. An under- achiever all through school and college (he even flunked in Urdu!), Manto drifted through various jobs in All India Radio and the Bombay (now Mumbai) film industry before he found his true calling as a storyteller. Like his near contemporary, Ismat Chughtai, he too loved to handle bold and unconventional themes that had so far been taboo in Urdu literature. However, unlike Chughtai’s homely and colourfully idiomatic language, Manto chose a stark, spare, almost staccato style, unembellished and unaffected, deliberately shorn of all appendages of style and convention. Never one to impose his own interpretation of events, Manto could look at people and events with a consciousness uncoloured by notions of nationalism, religion, morality, least of all sentimentality. He wrote what he saw and felt, and wrote compulsively and prodigiously. In the forty- three years that he lived, he published twenty-two collections of short stories, one novel, five (some say seven) collections of radio plays, three collections of essays and two collections of sketches of famous personalities (one called, rather evocatively Bald Angels!). Though much of his writing was in the nature of ‘command performances’ – to feed the twin demons of drink and acute, chronic poverty – there is still a great deal in his vast and variegated oeuvre that is touched by greatness. Of his various