Mottled Dawn - Saadat Hasan Manto - ★★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Saadat Hasan Manto

TRANSLATOR: Khalid Hasan

GENRE: Partition Fiction, Short Story Collection.

PUBLICATION DATE: February 1, 2012

RATING: 4.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A compelling short story collection from one of the Indian subcontinent’s finest and most respected Urdu writers. All the stories, originally written in Urdu, are set during the Indo-Pak partition, which makes this a tough book to read. Heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, devastating. A genuine voice of those who lived through that ghastly period. Recommended if you can stand reading about the inhumaneness of humans.

Most avid Indian (and I bet, Pakistani) readers know the name of Saadat Hasan Manto. Born in 1912 in the Punjab province (Then British India, present-day India), Manto was known for his powerful short fiction. He didn’t hesitate to include historically controversial topics such as lust and sex in his work. Many of his female characters are shown enjoying the act of intercourse, which might have created a furore amid conservatives those days.

Manto moved to Pakistan after the 1947 partition as he, a Muslim, found his writing skills less in demand in India. Unfortunately, he wrote screenplays in the film industry, and as the Pakistani movie industry was fledgling at that time, Manto struggled to find employment even in Lahore. This difficult period led to two things: a severe addiction to alcohol, and an immensely productive period of fiction & essay writing.

The introductory note by Pakistani-American author Daniyal Mueenuddin is the perfect way of getting to know about Manto and his life. Mueenuddin’s essay is eloquent and honest, sparing no efforts to let us know why Manto is so acclaimed. I simply loved this write-up. I wish I could say the same about the next write-up by Khalid Hasan, who translated these stories from their original Urdu. While his article is also strong, he includes spoilers for many of the stories. It would have been better if his note had been included at the end of the book. I stopped reading it after some paras because I didn’t want to know the endings of so many stories. I would suggest returning to Hasan’s note only after you complete the collection if you don’t wish to affect your reading experience.

This book has fifty entries, of which twenty are short stories, and the rest are micro-fiction sketches from Manto’s collection titled ‘Siyah Hashye’ (Black Fringe.) Most of the stories are on the briefer side. My paperback is only 170 pages long.

While there are many books that come under ‘partition fiction’, Manto’s voice is unique because he actually lived through the partition and even felt its aftermath, through the distancing he felt in India after the country was split so brutally. An informed reader might expect a greater emotional intensity to the narratives, focussing more on the Pakistani or Muslim experience, and pointing fingers at “the other side”. However, Manto isn’t reputed without a reason. His depiction of the partition is, without a doubt, the most brutal I have ever read, but it is also the most impartial. His stories depict the internecine massacre without any partiality or emotional involvement. His characters suffer, period. Whether they are Muslims or Hindus or Sikhs – the three primary parties connected to the partition violence, their fate is the same: suffering, destruction, loss, death. By focussing more on the people than on the places or beliefs, Manto ensures that we see the characters as humans instead of by their religious or national identities.

It goes without saying that the above approach leads to a stomach-churning experience. As it is, I find it tough to read partition fiction. I can’t believe the horrors that took place during an event worse than the holocaust in so many ways because the brutalities were committed not by the state network but by ordinary citizens. Imagine your neighbour turning into your foe overnight, just because certain idiots decided that cutting a country into three chunks merely by religion was a brilliant idea! Manto’s narratives depict the horror of those days without a filter, so if you think you would also want some positive stories of hope set during the partition, this isn’t the book for you.

I felt utterly traumatized after reading this collection. I knew beforehand I wouldn't be able to read too many stories from this set at a go. So I decided to read this simultaneously with another short story collection, which was a set of Christmas-themed horror stories. The fact that this book chilled my heart more than a gory horror anthology did, should speak volumes about the content.

As per my usual method, I tried to rate the stories individually. However, it is difficult to give star ratings when they are supposed to indicate our enjoyment of a story and I didn't "enjoy" any of the tales in this book. So my ratings are based more on the impact a story had on me. Some of the stories had the partition as an incidental idea or were a bit too lewd for my liking – these didn’t fare that well with me.

These were my top favourites of the twenty short stories:

🩸 Toba Tek Singh: One of Manto's best-known stories, I had always been curious to try it. Reading it proved why it is his most acclaimed work. It started off as a normal tale, but ended in a way that left me stunned and heartbroken. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

🩸 The Return: How is it possible to give 5 stars to a story that filled my heart with dread? This was tragic on every level. Brilliant writing, distressing plot. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

🩸 The Assignment: The first story that made me wonder, "What have I got myself into!?" This messed up my head big-time. Can't remember the last time an ending alarmed me so much. I took a break of three days from the book after reading this tale. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

🩸 The Last Salute: Captures the confused identities of the citizens of the two nations so well. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🩸 A Girl From Delhi: A story proving that humans are humans, regardless of religion. And corruption is corruption, regardless of religion. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

🩸 The Great Divide: A different take on how to view the enemy. Thought-provoking! - ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

🩸 Bitter Harvest: Broke my heart. Wish such things didn't happen, but humans, being creatures of passion, are often blinded by it, and this story proves it. 😔 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

🩸 A Believer's Version: Written in the form of a confession, this stands out from the rest of the narratives. Not a typical partition story, but nonetheless, one filled with equal measures of passion and pain. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

The thirty micro-fiction tales that come after this are also mostly disquieting. They might be just a page long, and at times, even be a tale of just a couple of sentences, but they encompass a variety of moods such as sarcasm, irony, and tragedy. I loved most of these, but my favourite ones were ‘Division’, ‘The Benefits of Ignorance’, ‘For Necessary Action’, ‘Miracle Man’, ‘Mistake Removed’, ‘Warning’, ‘Losing Proposition’, and ‘The Garland’. Not going into individual story reviews as these are too tiny to be reviewed without spoilers.

All in all, an impactful OwnVoices story collection that is brutal, honest, unbiased, and tragic. Not to be picked if you are easily triggered. But a definite must for those wanting a potent collection on one of the worst geo-political decisions ever made and its devastating aftermath, the repercussions of which echo till date.