Culture: Manto lives
It is said that Manto once told his wife Safia, “Saadat Hasan will die; Manto will live!” Although Saadat Hasan Manto opted to leave the place of his birth and migrated to Pakistan, he still has a lot of following in the subcontinent even today. Born in a village near Ludhiana in Indian Punjab, the turning point in Manto’s life came at the age of 21 in 1933 when he met Abdul Bari Alig, who encouraged him to write. Later, he started his career at the All India Radio and then moved to ‘Bombay’ (now Mumbai) in the ’30s to make his mark in the film industry as film journalist and story writer. He wrote about the private lives of the men and women of the Bombay film industry in ‘Stars From Another Sky’— Manto’s Bollywood ‘confidential’ — a mixture of drunken memoirs and scabrous gossip.
Since he knew Bombay as a multicultural hub, as nexus between India’s colonial past and industrial future, the gritty realism and overt sensuality of Manto’s stories is evoked through an unadorned, colloquial voice.
Many a time, he was criticised for and even had to face legal problems for his bold and obscene writing both in India and Pakistan.
Is Boota pehlwan more famous than Manto?
On Manto’s birth anniversary several Indian cities organised drama festivals where plays based on his stories not only in Hindi, but also in Bengali were staged.
Upcoming director Ayetullah Khan’s theatre group Rangrez Sarokar successfully staged a play based on Manto’s life, Badnam Manto, to packed audiences in both Hyderabad and Mumbai. The theatre group has been approached by several promoters who want to stage the play on a pan-India scale.
The story behind the conception of the play is interesting.
Manto is buried in the Miani Sahib Ka Qabristan in Lahore. But unfortunately few people are aware of Manto’s grave or even Manto himself. Surprisingly people are aware of the whereabouts of Boota Pehelwan’s tomb. As Boota’s grave lies next to Manto’s, one has to first ask and search for Boota’s grave in order to find Manto’s.
“Famous Indian Bollywood writer, Atul Tiwari, a great lover of Manto’s writings, wanted to offer prayers at Manto’s grave during his visit to Lahore. Tiwari spoke to one of Manto’s daughters and expressed his desire to go to the graveyard, on which she told him to ask for Boota Pehelwan’s tomb and the grave next to Boota’s is of Manto. Tiwari asked some of the shopkeepers outside the graveyard gate, but nobody could direct him to Manto’s grave. But when he said it was next to Boota Pehelwan’s grave, everybody knew about it. Tiwari was upset that an author and writer who inspired people with his writing and who was also decorated with Nishan-i-Pakistan was less known than a wrestler. He also heard that a number of people by mistake offer prayers and place flowers on the grave of Boota Pehelwan instead of Manto’s grave.