Why I Write (Essays by Saadat Hasan Manto)

Author: Aakar Patel

• The most important reason is that I’m addicted to writing, just as I am to drinking. When I don’t write, it feels like I’m unclothed, like I haven’t had a bath.

• The most important reason is that I’m addicted to writing, just as I am to drinking. When I don’t write, it feels like I’m unclothed, like I haven’t had a bath. Like I haven’t had my first drink.

• I don’t actually write the stories, mind you, they write themselves.

• The story I’m working on is never on my mind or in my thoughts. It is always in my pocket, unnoticed.

• I’ve always been focussed on today. Yesterday and tomorrow hold no interest for me. What had to happen, did, and what will happen, will.

• As she left, she turned back: ‘But look! Make sure you cut your hair before you come.’ I didn’t get that haircut.

• Whatever I had omitted to reveal in my own candid session, Mother had fulfilled in hers.

• If not the ecstasy of union, then the sorrow of unrequited

• If not the ecstasy of union, then the sorrow of unrequited love.

• War has brought inflation even to the graveyard.

• When these leaders shed tears and wail, “Mazhab khatre mein hai” (Religion is in danger), it is all rubbish. Faith isn’t the sort of thing that can come into danger in the first place.

• And remember — there’s no shame in poverty. Those who think there is are themselves shameful.

• cause was the same as it always is — mandir, masjid… you know it well.

• The cause was the same as it always is — mandir, masjid… you know it well.

• In the end, what was feared, happened. The gathering at the sabha mandap produced vitriol and the air over Bombay soured.

• I’m exactly as much interested in politics, as Gandhiji is in cinema. Gandhiji doesn’t watch movies, and I don’t read newspapers. Both of us are wrong in doing

• The reasons were the same — mandir and masjid, cow and pig. Mandir and masjid — to me only stone. Cow and pig — to me only flesh.

• Religion used to be felt in the heart, but now, in the new Bombay, it must be worn on the head.

• In the shop I noticed that the fan was on, but turned away from both customers and the owner. I was curious and asked why it was so. The owner glared at me and said: ‘Can’t you see?’ I looked. The fan was pointed in the direction of a poster of our great leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. I shouted, ‘Pakistan Zindabad!’ and left without the lassi.

• Allama Iqbal died in 1938, a decade before Partition, but he is seen as a Pakistani poet. Iqbal was the writer of the poem, Tarana-e-Hindi, commonly known as Saare jahan se achcha, and was also one of the ideologues of a separate state for Muslims.

• One night I was settling the account after having a couple of drinks when I spotted this line on the bill: “Life must be lived with danger.”

• The French philosopher, J J Rousseau was troubled by this question: when man is born free, why is he in chains everywhere?

• Questions produce themselves automatically whether halal or haram.

• Every morning’s paper is filled with details of cruel acts.

• What happened then is done and there’s little gain in analyzing it. But it’s absolutely essential that we examine its fallout.

• I’m no supporter of the death penalty. Indeed, I’m not even in favour of jail. I don’t think jail reforms people.

• Thank the Lord, there is no more “literature” and no more writers in Pakistan. No more essays are published, praise Allah. In fact, even newspapers are not to be found. When the government needs to tell us something, they print a few pages. God alone knows best.

• The first four short stories that attracted the law’s attention were as follows: Kali Shalwar (Black leggings) Dhuan (Smoke) Bu (The Odour) Thanda Gosht (Cold Meat)   And an essay: “Oopar, Neechay aur Darmiyan” (Above, Below and In-between).

• would die soon after the trial. The piece was published after Manto was dead. In a previous issue of Naqoosh (February-March 1953) I had begun to write on

• Whatever else it may be that I am, I am quite certain that I’m a human being. Proof of this resides in the fact that I have a good side to me and a bad one.

• If I see a wounded stray dog, I am disturbed for hours. But I’m not affected enough to take it home and nurse its wounds.

• When a friend is in trouble for want of money, I am inevitably troubled and saddened. But often I have desisted from offering help.

• I am, as I said, a teller of stories. My imagination soars, true, but it plummets in the face of reality and I think to myself that if I had to ultimately fall, why was it that I even soared in the first place.

• It is said that this sort of behaviour is the product of illiteracy. If this is so, and certainly it seems universally accepted as being so, why is it that education isn’t made universal? Does it not show that those in charge of society and its laws are themselves illiterate?

• The intercourse between State and citizens (it will be appropriate to call it forcible intercourse) also produces offspring as a marriage does. But frightening ones, like the “Safety Act and Ordinance”. Offspring that resemble their father, the State, more than the citizenry.

• I can understand the aggressive capitalism-loving nationalism of America. I also understand the real meaning of Russia’s hammer and sickle. But what happens here, in Pakistan, is beyond me.

• Now here’s the first thought that came to me: Pakistan’s finest short story writer has been saved. I thought of the nation at this point, not my wife or my three little girls.

• Prostitutes are not born, they are made. Or they make themselves.

• If a thing is in demand, it will always enter the market. Men demand the body of women. This is why every city has its red light area. If the demand were to end today, these areas would vanish on their own.

• To be an actress, a woman must be familiar with the fine and the less fine aspects of life. Whether she is from a brothel or from an eminent family, to me an actress is an actress. Her morality, or her immorality, doesn’t really interest me. Her talent and art are not related to the kind of human being she otherwise might be.

• These absurdities are called social films, just as our actors refer to themselves as ”artists”.

• If there are many among us who like cheap entertainment, it is the doing of our producers.

• In the silent era, Hollywood’s stars came from anywhere — hotels, factories and offices. Now, in the time of talkies, the supply ended because more skill was required. Here in India, stars came from the stage or the brothel.

• Here in India, stars came from the stage or the brothel. In

• Directors: the biggest problem of Indian cinema is the lack of stylish directors. All storytelling requires a certain sense of style. It is this which separates the work of one writer from another. It is no different for films and their directors. In the absence of this individualism, films will resemble one another.

• If an Ernst Lubitsch film is shown without credits, we can still identify it from the comic scenes and the smallest details.

• Similarly, Eric Von Stroheim’s love for realism cannot be hidden.

• In India, such a director is a rarity. Only two come to mind, Debaki Bose and V Shantaram.

• I want to know the reason for such stupidity in the movies. When we are sad, do the city’s sadhus and beggars announce it through their songs?

• Literature and film in my opinion are like saloons where bottles have no labels. I want to taste each one myself and figure out which is what.

• The other thing I find idiotic is how all our heroes look the same. Handsome, young, brave, kind and so on.

• To me, a hero must be a character I’m able to accept. For whom I have sympathy, who is human with all the traits that humans have.