Catagory: Literature & Fiction

For the first time ever, it had dawned on him that women who sold their bodies could have such shapely figures.’

Kanta and Khushia were part of the same profession. He was her pimp, and, in a way, one of her own. All of twenty-eight, Khushia was quite a businessman. While he knew all the girls in his circuit through and through, what he didn’t know was that one day Kanta Kumari would stand naked before him and throw him into the greatest turmoil of his life.

Manto’s characters are known to vehemently resist categorization, and this is especially true in the case of Khushia and Kanta who don’t behave as they are expected to. Read on to revisit one of Manto’s most fascinating takes on human behaviour.

“If you killed a bad man, what you would have killed was not his badness, but the man himself.”

As Mumtaz prepares to leave for Pakistan—a concept that in itself seems strange—Juggal can’t shake away the feeling of guilt. His closest friend, his confidante was leaving because of what he said and the strange thing was, Juggal wasn’t sure whether his guilt had to do with the fact that Mumtaz was leaving or the fact that he’d meant what he said: “I would kill you.”

Partition will forever be that one event that created and destroyed so much in its wake for India and Pakistan. Lands, homes, lives, and relationships suffered, turning neighbours into strangers, friends into foes. Even as Mumtaz bids a reluctant farewell to Bombay, he can’t stop thinking of Sahae, the pimp with a heart of gold, a man who lived a life of contradictions until his very last breath.

Manto’s genius lies in telling stories whose characters forever remain a suspect to conventional morality. With Sahae, he also manages to show us how his thinking was way ahead of his times. Powerful and heartwrenching, this is short fiction at its best.

The difference between a good dhobi and a bad dhobi is that the latter definitely makes his presence felt. However, Manto was lucky that Ram Khilawan was of the former kind. Because not only was he good at his job but he’d seen Manto through his impoverished days and his days of prosperity with equal enthusiasm; never insisting on getting paid as he really didn’t know “what account is”.

However, when you’re faced with circumstances that are out of your control, the strongest relationships sometimes crumble in the face of it. But is there anything that can threaten Manto and Ram Khilawan’s bond?

Incredibly moving and innately Manto, Ram Khilawan is everything you expect from a Manto story, and some more. Read on.

Meet Babu Gopinath: world’s number one gullible fool, a home-wrecker known for wrecking his own home, and a recent immigrant to Bombay. He’s brought along with him a Kashmiri ‘kabutri’—a weak-looking young woman—Zeenat Begum, who is as uninterested as she is unambitious. While this kind introduction was given by his friend Abdur Rahim Sando, Manto soon realized that not everything was actually as it seemed.

We handle things in our lives based on our past experiences and our assumptions about how things will work out, but it’s almost like the laws of reason and the world never seem to apply to Manto’s characters. As Manto gets to know Babu Gopinath and his world a little better, he takes us along this journey of discovery, to reach a destination neither of us are prepared for.

It is generally the women in Manto’s stories who are enchanting and intriguing, but Manto’s Babu Gopinath is equally, if not more, fascinating. Read on.

Ever since Sultana had moved to Delhi, business had slowed down. Unlike her time in Ambala, not a single gora had visited her so far. Even Khuda Bakhsh, her lucky charm wasn’t bringing her any luck. Times were so bad that she didn’t even have any money to buy black mourning clothes for Muharram.

Lonely and idle, Sultana felt as if she was wasting her days away. Until she met Shankar. Confusing, intriguing and unlike any other man she’d ever met—and she’d met more than her share of men—Shankar was just like her and yet nothing like her. What she didn’t realize though was that with a curious exchange and the promise of a black salwar, hers and Shankar’s lives were about to be entangled in ways she could never have imagined.

Written in Manto’s typically engaging style, The Black Shalwarand its surprising twist at the end is as bewitching as Sultana and as unexpected as Shankar.

When a movie is being made, there is usually more drama happening behind the scenes than on screen. And Manto got to experience this first hand when he was employed with a film company whose current production was Ban Ki Sundri. While Raj Kishore, the hunk from Rawalpindi, was cast as the hero—a man Manto had had long-standing reservations about—there were rumours about getting a new girl for the part of the vamp. As if on cue, in walked Miss Neelam, a charming new face.

As a writer with not much to do on a film set and as an actor who has to wait for long hours, Manto and young Neelam developed an instant friendship, talking about everything and nothing. Things, however, took an intriguing turn when Neelam confessed to the ‘silliness’ she seemed to be developing for her very married, very chaste co-star Raj Kishore.

The women in Manto’s stories have always been fascinatingly complex and Neelam is no different. Charming, entertaining, and way ahead of its times—as most of Manto’s stories are—My Name is Radha is a classic Manto.

Manjula Padmanathan often gets asked to write short pieces for different publications around the country. This means, working with different kinds of people for different kinds of readers, an altogether enriching experience. However, when the brief is to write “something upbeat” in an almost impossible period of time for a publication that doesn’t quite lend itself to Padmanabhan’s typically macabre themes, her tongue-in-cheek humour takes the form of An Upbeat Story.

A dark yet touching story about a man with Down Syndrome and a woman confined to a wheelchair, told within an imagined conversation between a ‘writer’ and an ‘editor’, and written in Padmanabhan’s impeccable style. Funny, audacious, and tender, An Upbeat Story makes writing under duress seem effortless.

“When she looked into his eyes, she could see every thought of his, strung out like washed shirts flapping on a line.”

Gautam is already a little high-strung because of his sister’s wedding when he meets Bahaar, the groom’s cousin, who claims to have “arranged” this meeting of theirs. Gautam, who is struggling with his possessive feelings for his sister and his doubts over the suitor, who in his opinion isn’t all that suitable, gets increasingly peeved with every sentence that Bahaar utters. Not only does she seem to possess supernatural powers, the likes of which he has never experienced before, but she also seems to be weirdly obsessed with him. After all, it isn’t everyday that a weird girl with superpowers asks you to have sex with her while their families are socializing with each other.

Needless to say, Gautam is speechless. But Bahaar still has one more trick up her sleeve. Can Gautam handle it?

Originally written to appear in a magazine, The Girl Who Could Make People Naked is in the author’s view, a cheeky look at Delhi’s strait-laced, uptight social milieu that sometimes takes itself a little too seriously. Weird, wonderful, and almost absurd, this is Manjula Padmanabhan at her finest.

Since the discovery of a decaying corpse in their backyard, the members of the Bajaj family have experienced a host of emotions from shock to disgust to exasperation to fury. But when the young CID officer Vasant arrives at the crime scene, he can immediately tell that the Bajaj family may not be as innocent as they seem.

However, seeing as Mr Bajaj is the additional secretary to revenue and has a meeting with the prime minister in a couple of hours, Vasant has no option but to speed up his investigation. But he is not worried. The “still alive” corpse has just started talking and Vasant is all ears.

Subversive, exciting, and revealing, with a twist you actually won’t be ready for, Manjula Padmanathan’s Body in the Backyard is as compelling as it is well-written.