Saadat Hasan Manto Quotes

Here in Manto's own words that he wanted to mark his grave with: "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful Here lies Saadat Hasan Manto and with him lie buried all the secrets and mysteries of the art of short-story writing.... Under tons of earth he lies, still wondering who among the two is greater short-story writer: God or He.

If you cannot bear these stories then the society is unbearable. Who am I to remove the clothes of this society, which itself is naked. I don't even try to cover it, because it is not my job, that's the job of dressmakers.

Hindustan had become free. Pakistan had become independent soon after its inception but man was still slave in both these countries -- slave of prejudice … slave of religious fanaticism … slave of barbarity and inhumanity.

If a man has to make a woman the center of his love, why should he integrate animality into this sacred human emotion?...Is love incompelete without it?...Is love the name of physical excersize ?

I feel like I am always the one tearing everything up and forever sewing it back together.

...and it is also possible, that Saadat Hasan dies, but Manto remains alive.

He catches the thieves that lie in the hearts of their pure and respectable wives. And he compares them to the purity in the heart of a whore in a brothel.

We’ve been hearing this for some time now — Save India from this, save it from that. The fact is that India needs to be saved from the people who say it should be saved.

To tell you the truth, the world seemed full of sad people – those who slept on the uncovered stoops of shops as well as those who lived in high-rise mansions. The man who walks about on foot worries that he doesn’t have decent shoes to wear. The man who rides the automobile frets that he doesn’t have the latest model car. Every man’s complaint is valid in its own way. Every man’s wish is legitimate in its own right.

You would have realized that it wasn't Mumtaz, a muslim, a friend of yours, but a human being you had killed. I mean, if he was a bastard, by killing him you wouldn't have killed the bastard in him; similarly, assuming that he was a Muslim, you wouldn't have killed his Muslimness, but him.

Her pores were like those of an orange, its skin filled with juice, which, if you applied the slightest pressure, would squirt up into your eyes. She was that fresh.

ज़माने के जिस दौर से हम गुज़र रहे हैं, अगर आप उससे वाकिफ़ नहीं हैं तो मेरे अफसाने पढ़िये और अगर आप इन अफसानों को बरदाश्त नहीं कर सकते तो इसका मतलब है कि ज़माना नाक़ाबिले-बरदाश्त है। मेरी तहरीर(लेखन) में कोई नुक़्स नहीं । जिस नुक़्स को मेरे नाम से मनसूब किया जाता है, वह दरअसल मौजूदा निज़ाम का एक नुक़्स है। मैं हंगामा-पसन्द नहीं हूं और लोगों के ख्यालात में हैज़ान पैदा करना नहीं चाहता। मैं तहज़ीब, तमद्दुन, और सोसाइटी की चोली क्या उतारुंगा, जो है ही नंगी। मैं उसे कपड़े पहनाने की कोशिश भी नहीं करता, क्योंकि यह मेरा काम नहीं, दर्ज़ियों का काम है ।

I wondered why people consider escapism so bad, even the escapism on display right then. At first it might appear unseemly, but in the end its lack of pretension gives it its own sort of beauty.

... इधर-उधर से कई अफ़सर दौड़े आए और उन्होंने देखा कि वह आदमी जो 15 बरस तक दिन-रात अपनी दाँगों पर खड़ा रहा था, औंधे मुँह लेटा है-उधर ख़ारदार तारों के पीछे हिंदुस्तान था, इधर वैसे ही तारों के पीछे पाकिस्तान ; दरमियान में ज़मीन के उस टुकड़े पर जिसका कोई नाम नहीं था, टोबा टेक सिंह पड़ा था.

War has brought inflation even to the graveyard.

Manto had earlier been prosecuted in Lahore for obscenity, and one of the words alleged to have been obscene was, “breasts

I'm interested in things women do that aren't spoken about. Manto's stories let me breathe. They make me feel like less of a monster.

For me, remembrance of things past has always been a waste of time, and what’s the point of tears? I don’t know. 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.

A man remains a man no matter how poor his conduct. A woman, even if she were to deviate for one instance, from the role given to her by men, is branded a whore. She is viewed with lust and contempt. Society closes on her doors it leaves ajar for a man stained by the same ink. If both are equal, why are our barbs reserved for the woman?

خالی پیٹ کا مذہب روٹی ہوتا ہے۔

Look this is hardly fair. You sold me impure petrol at black-market price and not even one shop could be put to the torch.

Dear God, master of the universe, compassionate and merciful: we who are steeped in sin, kneel in supplication before your throne and beseech you to recall from this world Saadat Hasan Manto, son of Ghulam Hasan Manto, who was a man of great piety. Take him away, Lord, for he runs away from fragrance and chases after filth. He hates the bright sun, preferring dark labyrinths. He has nothing but contempt for modesty but is fascinated by the naked and the shameless. He hates sweetness, but will give his life to taste bitter fruit. He will not so much as look at housewives but is in seventh heaven in the company of whores. He will not go near running waters, but loves to wade through filth. Where others weep, he laughs; and where others laugh, he weeps. Faces blackened by evil, he loves to wash with tender care to make visible their real features. He never thinks about you but follows Satan everywhere, the same fallen angel who once disobeyed you.

To those men who say that women from “good families” must come into the world of cinema, I have this question: What is it that you mean by “good?” A woman, who honestly puts her wares on display, and sells them without an intention to cheat, is such a woman not virtuous?

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. If I'm denied this by labelling, then my entertainment is considerably lessened.

The field that cannot feed even its tiller Burn down every stalk that stands on it.

Manto's take on Ismat: "Ismat’s pen and tongue both run fast. When she starts writing, her ideas race ahead and the words cannot catch up with them. When she speaks, her words seem to tumble over one another. If sheenters the kitchen to show her culinary skill, everything will be in a mess. Being hasty by nature, she would conjure up the cooked roti in her mind even before she had finished kneading the dough. The potatoes would note yet be peeled although she would have already finished making the curry in her imagination. I feel sometimes she may just go into the kitchen andcome out again afer being satiated by her imagination.

Literature is a symptom of the state of a society

Engulfed by a sudden emptiness, she was reminded of a train which after discharging passengers at various stations, has finally come to rest, empty at a railway shed.

Writers rarely set out to be national writers. They need small, intimate worlds, full of details; the macro scale of countries, especially those as wide and various as India, cannot be their direct material.

Allah sends down natural disasters to control population explosion. He encourages us to go to war, He creates Pakistan and Akhand Bharat. In doing this, He teaches humans new and innovative methods of birth control.

He ate off dirty plates and was unfazed. His pillowcase was soiled and stank, but he never thought of changing it. Hamid thought long and hard, but he couldn’t understand him. He often asked, ‘Babuji, why aren’t you revolted by dirtiness?

thought a glass of lassi would be refreshing. 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. In front of a shop, a man

As a writer I find the relationship fascinating. Consider it. There is tension, and often unpleasantness, in both the union of man and woman, and of State and citizen. There is a great deal of hypocrisy too, but the relationship is not ever severed. 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.

She could crowd a thousand thoughts into her head, but it was, at that moment like a strainer -- the more she tried to fill up every little corner, the more emptiness there was.

میرے شہر کے معززین کو میرے شہر کی طوائفوں سےزیادہ بہتر کوئی نہیں جانتا۔

I thought that the Hindus and Muslims would busy themselves in this war and their blood, which did not mix in mosque and temple, would finally mingle in Bombay’s drains and gutters. I

that ugly truth about Manto, the man: that for all his love of Indian multiplicity, he went to Pakistan. He even tried convincing Chughtai to go. ‘The future looks beautiful in Pakistan,’ he said to her, ‘We’ll be able to get the houses of people who’ve fled from there. It’ll be just us there. We’ll progress very quickly.’ When I read this, I had trouble holding the two Mantos in my mind. It seemed impossible that the creator of Manto, the narrator and fictional presence, so immersed in the variety of India, seeming so much to rejoice in it, should also be the author of that remark, with its sly wish for homogeneity, for the place where ‘It’ll be just us.’ Chughtai, for other reasons, was also disgusted.

मगर आप थे कि ‘परों’ पर पानी ही नहीं लेते थे।

When we were enslaved, we could imagine freedom, but now that we are free, how will we imagine subjection?

Today we are called new writers. The coming tomorrow, considering us old, will lock us in closets, but that does not mean we have lived in vain.

मैं चूँकि ज़्यादा पीने का आदी हूँ, इसलिए मैं ज्यों का त्यों बैठा था।

A little ahead was a shop burnt in the riots. A man now sat inside with two large slabs of ice on the floor. A thought came to me: ‘At last the poor shop has the chance to cool itself.

His last years were beset with financial troubles; he drank heavily; he wrote to Chughtai on more than one occasion, pleading with her to find a way for him to come back to India. She was surprised to learn that far from large protests and signed declarations on his behalf, many in Pakistan felt he deserved to be punished. He died on January 18, 1955 in Lahore at the age of forty two.

If you are not familiar with the time period we are passing through, read my stories. If you cannot bear these stories, that means this is an unbearable time. The evils in me are those of this era.

When Hamid dropped Lata off at her house at nine that night, he felt hollow. The touch of her soft body was sheared from him like bark from a tree, and he spent the entire night tossing and turning.

If there is a God, I implore him -- for God's sake destroy the laws of men, demolish their prisons and make your own prisons in the heavens. Punish them in your own courts, because if nothing else, you are at least, God.

God commands worship but doesn't five it. After having spent a few moments with nothingness, he gave life to existence ... but where is nothingness now? Like a mother it gave birth to existence and then died in childbirth.

Saugandhi lived in her brain. But when a man spoke to her gently, she descended and spread to all parts of her body. Although her mind abhorred the physical relationship between a man and a woman, her body hungered for it. It yearned for exhaustion and forgetfulness, the wondrous sleep that takes over after the body has been wracked, the peace which follows after the body has taken a beating, the bones aching and loose. You forget you exist and in those intervals of being and nonbeing you feel you are high up in the sky, surrounded on all sides by nothing but air. Stifling in that atmosphere would be joy.

वह तो ऐसी किश्ती की तरह थी जिसका न बादबान (ऊपरी कपड़ा) हो न कोई पतवार और बीच मँझधार में आ फँसी है।

वह सख़्त हैरान थी कि लोग अमीर और ग़रीब क्यों होते हैं, जबकि हर इन्सान एक ही तरह माँ के पेट से पैदा होता

आह, बड़ा होने पर इनका भी यही काम होगा...फिर मुझे छः जानों का डर लगा रहेगा...

दर्दनाक आवाज़ में कहने लगी, “आह, तो उन बोसों का जो जिस्म को राहत बख़्शते हैं...और माँ की मुहब्बत, गीत, तबस्सुम (मुस्कुराहट), हँसी और नाच का एक ही अंजाम है...क़ब्र...आह मेरे ख़ुदा!

लाश के पहलू में दो बच्चे सो रहे थे—उसने महसूस किया, लाश के सीने में एक आह कुछ कहने को रुकी हुई है और पथराई हुई आँखें झोंपड़ी की ख़स्ता छत को चीरकर अँधेरे आसमान की तरफ़ टकटकी लगाये देख रही हैं, जैसे उसे कोई पैग़ाम देना हो।

काश कि उसके जीवन की पुस्तक उसकी अपनी जेब में होती, जिसे खोल कर वह तुरन्त इसका उत्तर पा लेता। परन्तु

बम्बई जो यूँ भी जश्नों की दुल्हन कहलाती है नयी नवेली दुल्हन की तरह सज गयी।

मुझे नफ़ासत तलाश करने में असफलता मिली है, लेकिन गन्दगी तो मेरे चारों तरफ़ फैली हुई है।

हर खयाल एक नश्तर बन गया

औरत, जो आधी औरत हो और आधी कुछ भी न हो।

नाक, जो इससे पहले खुशबुओं की तलाश करती रही है, अब बदबूदार और गलीज़ चीज़ें सूँघने के लिए बेताब

यह महज़ वहम है और असलियत से इसका कोई रिश्ता नहीं। लेकिन फिर भी उसके कदम रुक जाते

गन्दी मोरी से गलाज़त निकालने वाले पम्प की तरह दिन–रात चलती रहती

तहज़ीब के सन्दूक में ताला लग जाये।

Two or three years after the 1947 Partition, it occurred to the governments of India and Pakistan to exchange their lunatics in the same manner as they had exchanged their criminals. The Muslim lunatics in India were to be sent over to Pakistan and the Hindu and Sikh lunatics in Pakistan asylums were to be handed over to India. It was difficult to say whether the proposal made any sense or not.

Writers are not prophets. We see one thing, one problem in different conditions and from different angles, and whatever we understand we present to the world, and we never force it to accept it.

I am not seditious. I do not want to stir up people’s ideas and feelings. If I take off the blouse of culture and society, then it is naked. I do not try to put clothes back on, because that is not my job.

Saugandhi lied in her brain. But when a man spoke to her gently, she decended and spread to all parts of her body. Although her mind abhorred the physical relationship between a man and a woman, he body hungered for it. It yearned for exhaustion and forgetfulness, the wondrous sleep that takes over after the body has been wracked, the peace which follows after the body has been wracked, the peace which follows after the body has taken a beating, the bones aching and loose. You forget you exist and in those intervals of being and nonbeing you feel you are high up in the sky, surrounded on all sides by nothing but air. Stifling in that atmosphere would be joy.

Saugandhi wished she could spend all of her life in a box like that so that those on the outside could continue looking for her. sometimes the should be able to find her, so she could in turn become the seeker. The life she had led these last five years also constituted a type of hide-and-seek. Occasionally she found someone and often someone found her -- her life continued to progress in this manner and she was happy. Every night there was a man by her side on the large teak bed ans she, show knew many tricks to keep a man at bay. she who had resolved not to let any man take advantage of her, she, Sangandhi, overcome by emotion, would find her resolve diminishing and would begin to flow with her emotions and this remain, to the end, a woman insatiated.

She carried herself with the thought that she was a decent person and she often wondered why the men in her life were not decent too

They both were liars. Both led lives camouflaged in artifice. But Saugandhi was happy. Someone who cannot afford real gold will gladly settle for artificial jewelry.

These fragments that have helped shape your fulfillment are a part of my being; is there no connection between these and the rest of my person? Can the rest of me dissociate itself from these fragments? You have made yourself whole, but you have done so at the cost of my integrity. Is this what I defied you for?

A man is not responsible for the crime he commits, his circumstances are.

In God is Gracious, a satirical essay published in 1954, the writer Saadat Hasan Manto envisaged a Pakistan in which poetry, arts and music were silenced by accusations of blasphemy. His words proved prophetic