Manto was a great writer who had a number of negative personality traits
EVEN those who condemned Manto for the carnal and lewd contents of his short stories could not deny his greatness as a short story writer. Manto was the greatest Urdu short story writer and his equal is yet to appear on the literary horizon. His acute observation, psychological insight into his characters, courage to write what he observed, graphic expression and the simplicity of his narrative brought him at par with any great short story writer in any language, may it be Maupassant, Gorky, O. Henry, Chekhov or Maugham.
Though Manto is primarily known as a short-story writer (he wrote more than 250 of them), he also wrote more than 100 plays and some 22 life sketches. His short stories such as Hatak (Insult), Babu Gopi Nath, Naya Qanoon, Toba Tek Singh and life sketches Murli ki Dhun (about Shayam), Bari Salib, Teen Goolay (about Meeraji), Mayra Sahib (about Quaid-i-Azam) are world class. Undoubtedly, many of his stories dealt with the seamy side of our society — prostitutes, drunkards, pimps, etc — but a large part of his literary corpus contains material which is not sexually explicit. Unfortunately, it is ignored by his detractors. They read only the ribald part of his writings, as Manto was fond of saying, to derive morbid gratification.
He was a great writer and a tenderhearted and compassionate human being. But he had a number of negative personality traits. He was arrogant, extremely touchy, self-centred and short-tempered. His greatest weakness, however, was alcohol. The intent of this piece is to examine the circumstances which drove Manto to alcoholism and not to evaluate, despite almost compelling temptation, the merits of his work.
Saadat Hasan Manto was born in May 1912, to a family of Kashmiri descent. His father, Ghulam Hasan, belonged to a respectable upper middle-class background and reached the status of a sub-judge before retirement. He married twice and sired a large family consisting of four boys and eight girls. Manto was born of his second wife. He had three stepbrothers, all of them were highly educated, cultured and prosperous. Two of them were Bar-at-Law from England. By the time Manto was born, his father was touching 50. By that time, his innate disposition of being a disciplinarian, a stickler for rules and a fiery-tempered person was further reinforced. Like the patriarchs of his times, he refrained from any show of love or affection. Given his disposition and Manto’s lacklustre scholastic performance, the latter never experienced fatherly love, affection or patronage. This bitter memory never left Manto even to his last days. As a child, he experienced love only of two persons: his mother who loved and protected him as far as she could and his real sister who was a few years older to him.
Psychologists point out that experiences in one’s early life make or mar a person’s character and personality. The total absence of fatherly love led Manto to revolt against what in psychology is called ‘father figure’. A father figure is a person, institution, concept, belief, authority, community and sometimes mankind itself which acquires the attributes of a father. They collectively or severely fulfil the functions of and take up the role of the father. All the experiences and emotions of love, fear, hate and terror originally associated with the real father are transferred to the father figure. Stimuli, even distantly and vaguely related to the father, elicit the same responses the individual had for his father. As a rebel against his father, Manto rebelled against all the norms of society and also against any embodiment of authority.
For a better part of his life, Manto’s stepbrothers, who were older to him, never owned him, much less helped him in his dire need. They held him in contempt for his waywardness, rebellion against the society, profanity, poverty, inconsistency and his lewd writings. No one is strong enough to bear the filial scorn. The wounds inflicted by one’s kith and kin are the deepest and seldom heal. Neither did Manto’s. They are the two major experiences of Manto’s early life which left an indelible mark on his psyche.
Manto was never a good student. He did not show much interest in his course books. Because of his lack of interest in his studies, his antics and tomfoolery, the teachers never liked him. He passed his Matriculation examination in the third attempt in third division. Whatever little interest he had in his studies vanished with this result. He made half-hearted attempts to continue his studies and even took admission in Aligarh University. Soon, he left the university because of his lack of interest and ill health. During his stay at Aligarh, he was stricken with TB. In order to recuperate, Manto spent some time in a small town of Kashmir.
On his return to Amritsar, he led a life of aimless wandering. He became a rake, profligate and a gambler. At this stage, he was introduced to the potion which would poison his life in varying degrees from then on.
However, Manto was no ordinary waster. He was extraordinarily intelligent, extremely observant and highly sensitive. His bohemian lifestyle failed to satisfy him, and he remained restive and edgy, unwittingly knowing that he was not destined to lead a life of vagrancy. Roughly at this time, he had the good fortune of meeting eminent literary figures such as Bari Alig, Atta Mohammad Chishti (Editor of Musawaat), Akhtar Sheesani, etc. For a while, when he took admission in MAO College, Amritsar, he studied under Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Sahibzada Mahmood-ul-Zafar. And when he joined Aligarh Muslim University, poets like Majaz, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Juzbi and Ali Sardar Jafri were his contemporaries. The companionship with such literary figures sharpened Manto’s latent literary talent. However, his greatest mentor was Bari Alig. He introduced him to the writings of the French novelist, Victor Hugo, whom he thought to be a great novelist. Manto’s foray into writing started with the translation of Hugo’s novel Last Days of a Condemned, which was published under the name of Sargezisht-i-Aseer. From here started an illustrious career in writing which will remain unique in its contents and spread.
Alcohol consumption in a large section of our society, specially in the middle class, is considered immoral and sinful. It, therefore, follows that a person who partakes of alcohol exposes himself to some degree of condemnation. Naturally, he has to have some strong reasons to break the taboo. The reason in case of Manto, as we have already seen, was the rebellion against the father figure. This rebellion left him with scant respect for the accepted norms of middle-class morality. Another important factor which led him to drinking was his anxiety-ridden existence. Barring a few years of his life, Manto was besieged by financial troubles. Besides, most of his life he believed that he was not given his due recognition and reward. His arrogance and bloated ego never allowed him to develop a lasting friendship devoid of tension. Whenever he developed a genuine friendship with a person, it had to be on his terms.
Manto and Shayam had a deep and abiding friendship as long as the latter was a struggling actor. But once Shayam became a popular star, Manto could not stomach his popularity and left him right in the midst of a function arranged in his honour while the former was visiting Lahore in 1950. Opindar Nath Ashk, in his article on Manto (Manto Mera Dushman), dwelt at length on his irascible and querulous nature. Their dislike started with the former’s adverse comments on one of Manto’s short stories Khoshya. The article also depicts Manto’s over-sensitivity and defeatism, which are illustrated by the following incident: Ashk and others in All-India Radio, Delhi, conspired against Manto and had some parts of one his plays altered. They also had the sympathy of the Director Programmes who happened to be Noon Meem Rashid at that time, and had his own scores to settle with Manto. On finding that his play was partly altered, Manto was flabbergasted and insisted that either the play be broadcast in its original shape or not at all. He was overruled and the play went on air with the alterations. Manto was so hurt that he left AIR in a huff the very next day and went to Bombay. All these idiosyncrasies are sure to generate anxiety. Consumption of alcohol reduces anxiety, at least momentarily. Under such circumstances, Manto’s indulgence in, what psychologists call ‘insobriety’, is not surprising.
Soon after Partition, Manto decided to migrate to Pakistan. His wife and children were already in Lahore. But more than his desire of reunion with his family, the decision to leave Bombay was the result of a hurt ego. At that time, Manto was working at Bombay Talkies. After having worked for a number of years in the film industry, he had acquired a highly developed expertise of writing for movies and was respected by his contemporaries. One of his screenplays was under consideration at the Bombay Talkies. But the stories written by Ismat Chughtai (filmed as Ziddi) and the one written by Nazeer Ajmari (filmed as Mujboor) were preferred over his. Preference of those whom he considered second-rate writers was too much of an ignominy for a proud Manto to bear. So, once again, he escaped from a humiliating situation.
Before Manto left Bombay, he had acquired everything he desired; country-wide fame, prestige, money, fairly good standard of living and an affable circle of friends who shared his love for the drink. He migrated to Pakistan with the hope of acquiring all the attributes of a good life, doubly enhanced. Alas, his dreams were destined to be shattered.
There was no film industry worth the name in Pakistan at that time. Earnings from short story writing were merger to support his growing family and his dependence on the bottle. His criticism of the government of the time and of growing influence of Mullahs did not go down well. To make the situation even worse, three of his short stories were considered obscene (Khol Dou, Dhanda Gosht and Ooper, Peechay aur Darmian) and lawsuits were instituted against him. He was also banned from Radio Pakistan. Manto now was at the end of his tether.
Prior to his migration, Manto was a heavy drinker, but not an alcoholic yet. He suffered from what psychologists call the pre-alcoholic symptomatic phase.
But the catastrophic circumstances referred to above turned Manto into a debased alcoholic. Everyone abandoned him, even his fellow writers. No one raised a voice in support of freedom of expression, if not in support of Manto, when he was being prosecuted in the courts of law. Manto, friendless and extremely sick with liver cirrhosis, was hospitalized a number of times, was even confined to the mental asylum once (degrading though the experience was, his stay there produced a masterpiece Toba Tek Singh). His liver had almost completely packed up, and he would often spit blood.
In such desperate circumstances, Manto died on January 18, 1955. His last intake was a spoonful of whiskey, according to his nephew and famous writer, Hamid Jalal, narrated in his article Manto Mamoon ki Maut.
Manto suffered both financial and emotional adversity, but produced a enormous corpus of short stories, plays, life sketches and essays, which will remain a joy to readers for times to come.
The epitaph on Manto’s grave sums up his life. Paraphrasing Ghalib’s verse, the epitaph reads: This is the grave of Saadat Hasan Manto who still believes that he was not the repeated word on the tablet of time.
Manto was a great writer who had a number of negative personality traits 
