NEW DELHI // For nearly a decade now, Abhinay Banker, an Ahmedabad-based theatre director, has staged dramatisations of the short stories of the Urdu writer Saadat Hassan Manto.
Over most of that period, Mr Banker estimated, only a fifth of his audience knew about Manto or his work at all.
“But of late, I find, that has begun to change,” Mr Banker said. “People come to find me backstage now, telling me that they’ve read something about Manto or that they recognised what they were watching.”
Manto died in 1955, but within the repertory of Indian theatre — particularly in Mumbai — and within the world of Urdu letters, his acid, cynical fiction has been kept alive.
Naseeruddin Shah, one of India’s most famous actors, has staged many adaptations of stories such as “Bu,” in which a man recalls the particular odour of a woman he had known decades earlier.
“What’s happening now is, outside of these theatrical circles, people who don’t read or know Urdu are also becoming aware about his writing,” Mr Banker said.
Manto’s birth centenary was commemorated in 2012, and the subsequent years since have seen a flurry of new translations of his work into English and a spate of literary criticism surrounding it.
In Pakistan, a new biographical television serial titled “Main Manto” (or “I, Manto”) is in development.
It is only the English-speaking world that is discovering Manto, most of his translators are quick to point out.
The journalist Aakar Patel, who has just released “Why I Write” an English translation of Manto’s essays, said: “He was pretty obscure till the 1980s. His daughter Nighat Patel told me she had no idea, growing up, what a big writer her father was.”
Manto was born in the British Punjab in 1912 and died in Lahore, in Pakistan, but some of his best work came during his stay in Mumbai
(formerly Bombay), between 1936 and 1948. Here he worked in the film industry, writing scripts, magazine articles and short stories.
His non-fiction sketches dealt lightly with everyday life: “people who bummed cigarettes, on the debate over Hindi and Urdu, on potholes, on the mindlessness of Indian ways,” Mr Patel said. Manto’s fiction was dark and funny, and he revelled in writing about the seamier side of Mumbai life; over the course of his career, he was tried for obscenity six times.
“In the South Asia of half a century ago, he’d just have been dismissed as a reprobate by even his fellow writers,” Chandrahas Choudhury, a New Delhi-based literary critic, said. “While today, young people can read him and see that to see life clearly, first one has to blow away the fog of a hundred moralistic assumptions.”
When the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan in 1947, Manto wrote vividly about the pain and violence of that partition. Perhaps his best known story, “Toba Tek Singh” revolves around a Sikh inmate of a psychiatric asylum who was torn between India and Pakistan.
Manto moved to Pakistan in early 1948, and his observations about that newborn state resonate particularly strongly today.
“In the last few years, for Pakistanis, Manto has become prophetic,” Mr Patel said. “He traced the trajectory the Islamic state would take more accurately than [the poet Muhammad] Iqbal and [the politician Mohammad Ali] Jinnah, its two proponents. That makes him not just relevant but indispensable.”
Aatish Taseer, a New Delhi-based novelist who translated a selection of Manto’s short fiction in 2008, is not fond of the partition stories. “I found them too pat, full of false equivalences,” Mr Taseer said.
But he was drawn to Manto’s range. “I was dazzled by him,” Mr Taseer said. Apart from the partition stories, “I loved the rest: the stories about cinema, about prostitutes, about the independence movement, the careful observation of certain street types, a feeling for economy.”
Manto has been particularly interesting to him, and to others of India’s English-speaking world, Mr Taseer said, because of “how culturally arid the English world can feel in India. There is so little writing in which we get that sense, as we do with Manto, of a writer deeply immersed in his material, writing out of his material, as it were.”
Some say Manto’s translators have not always served him well. Matt Reeck, an American writer who was studying Urdu in Lucknow some years ago, read Manto first in the original Urdu and then in translation.
“I felt I could translate the dialogue better and in general render translations that would better capture the stories’ youthful, vital energy,” Mr Reeck, who lives in New York, said. “Also, almost all of the translations that had been done hadn’t been edited so as to provide one perspective on his work.”
Mr Reeck latched on to Manto’s love for Mumbai, collecting his best stories about that city. “Bombay Stories” was published in India in 2012.
Mr Choudhury noted that Manto’s works spoke particularly to the younger readers in India and Pakistan. Manto wrote bluntly of his
distaste for religious zealotry, sympathy to prostitutes, and earnestly about personal freedom. “To strive for freedom is fine. I can even understand dying for it,” Mmanto wrote in one essay.
“I think two wonderful things about people of our generation are that we are sceptical of the grand theories of nationalism and religion, and much more clear-eyed about sex and freedom,” Mr Choudhury said. “Manto speaks to all these things.”
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
SPECS
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Brief scores:
Manchester City 3
Bernardo Silva 16', Sterling 57', Gundogan 79'
Bournemouth 1
Wilson 44'
Man of the match: Leroy Sane (Manchester City)
SPEC%20SHEET%3A%20APPLE%20M3%20MACBOOK%20AIR%20(13%22)
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EProcessor%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Apple%20M3%2C%208-core%20CPU%2C%20up%20to%2010-core%20CPU%2C%2016-core%20Neural%20Engine%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDisplay%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2013.6-inch%20Liquid%20Retina%2C%202560%20x%201664%2C%20224ppi%2C%20500%20nits%2C%20True%20Tone%2C%20wide%20colour%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EMemory%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%208%2F16%2F24GB%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStorage%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20256%2F512GB%20%2F%201%2F2TB%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EI%2FO%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Thunderbolt%203%2FUSB-4%20(2)%2C%203.5mm%20audio%2C%20Touch%20ID%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EConnectivity%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Wi-Fi%206E%2C%20Bluetooth%205.3%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EBattery%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2052.6Wh%20lithium-polymer%2C%20up%20to%2018%20hours%2C%20MagSafe%20charging%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECamera%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%201080p%20FaceTime%20HD%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EVideo%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Support%20for%20Apple%20ProRes%2C%20HDR%20with%20Dolby%20Vision%2C%20HDR10%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EAudio%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%204-speaker%20system%2C%20wide%20stereo%2C%20support%20for%20Dolby%20Atmos%2C%20Spatial%20Audio%20and%20dynamic%20head%20tracking%20(with%20AirPods)%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EColours%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Midnight%2C%20silver%2C%20space%20grey%2C%20starlight%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EIn%20the%20box%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20MacBook%20Air%2C%2030W%2F35W%20dual-port%2F70w%20power%20adapter%2C%20USB-C-to-MagSafe%20cable%2C%202%20Apple%20stickers%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EPrice%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20From%20Dh4%2C599%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Paatal Lok season two
Directors: Avinash Arun, Prosit Roy
Stars: Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Lc Sekhose, Merenla Imsong
Rating: 4.5/5
THURSDAY'S FIXTURES
4pm Maratha Arabians v Northern Warriors
6.15pm Deccan Gladiators v Pune Devils
8.30pm Delhi Bulls v Bangla Tigers
How does ToTok work?
The calling app is available to download on Google Play and Apple App Store
To successfully install ToTok, users are asked to enter their phone number and then create a nickname.
The app then gives users the option add their existing phone contacts, allowing them to immediately contact people also using the application by video or voice call or via message.
Users can also invite other contacts to download ToTok to allow them to make contact through the app.
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Brief scores:
Day 1
Toss: South Africa, field first
Pakistan (1st innings) 177: Sarfraz 56, Masood 44; Olivier 4-48
South Africa (1st innings) 123-2: Markram 78; Masood 1-4
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Women & Power: A Manifesto
Mary Beard
Profile Books and London Review of Books
WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?
1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull
2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight
3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge
4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own
5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 420hp
Torque: 623Nm
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)
On sale: Now
Electric scooters: some rules to remember
- Riders must be 14-years-old or over
- Wear a protective helmet
- Park the electric scooter in designated parking lots (if any)
- Do not leave electric scooter in locations that obstruct traffic or pedestrians
- Solo riders only, no passengers allowed
- Do not drive outside designated lanes
