First Letter To Uncle Sam

these letters are timeless. i look forward to reading more.

Brilliant, timeless, incredible.


There are so many passages to savor and enjoy - here are two of my favorites.

1 - How I wish he had been born in your country. He would have been carried to his grave with great fanfare and over his resting place a skyscraper would have been built. Or were his own wish to be granted, his dead body would have been placed in a pool of glass and people would have gone to view it as they go to a zoo.

2 - What it adds up to is that your dogs are better off than us. Die here today, you are forgotten tomorrow. If someone in the family dies, it is a disaster for those left behind who often can be heard wailing, “why did the wretch die? I should’ve gone instead.” The truth is, uncle, that we neither know how to live nor how to die.

Brilliant.Moving.In my opinion, the words of a gentlemen and a scholar.If the translation is true to the last word I WANT MORE OF THE SAME.Begone all the other trite, hackneyed articles and peurile immature rants.This is the best.I WANT MORE OF THE SAME.If i ever visit pakistan i will pay my respects to Saadat Hasan Manto.

khalid:

what more can i add about the letters?

a welcome to chowk...over the years i have enjoyed reading your profiles ...look forward to more from you

rgds

t

i wish i could read the urdu original. not easy being a writer or an artist in a poor society. or any society. the great Van Gogh could not sell a single painting in his entire life, lived a life of poverty, chopped off and mailed in his ear in frustration at one time - and now people make tens of millions of dollars from his paintings.

while Ghalib may have been concerned with infamy after death, I wonder what he would have say about fame after death: is it worth the misery??

This translation retains the flavour of the original. Needless to say, Manto is Manto.

rahul-capri:6

Too original.

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Example:

....``May there be dust in my mouth``, ...[ Meray munh meiN khaak or KhaakUm b`dehn]

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I do not want spend more time in post-editing or conducting a post-mortem of this dead-piece. More so because he won`t be showing up here to benefit from it.

All I can say is...Allah Pakistan ko Ba Ba Blacksheep sey mehfooz rkhhay.

My head is eating circles and I have not taken and kept a contract to straighten my owl.

Khalid Sahib:

Manto`s empathy with Ghalib was natural. Like Manto, Ghalib was always short of money. Although he was connected with Zafar Shah`s court, he seldom received his dues in time and sufficiently. All his life, he struggled to get his `pension`, which he believed rightfully belonged to him but the East India Company shortchanged him. Like Manto, he craved for his drink.

Muft kee peetay thhay maiy aur yeh samjhtay thhay keh ha`an
Rung laigee hamari faaqa masti ek din

And like Ghalib, Manto excelled in his own art of story telling and writing sketches (Gunjay Farishtay).

Manto was sick of his critics who looked down at him and believed he was a porn writer. Ghalib thanked his stars that not many people understood his verse.

Nah sata`yesh kee tammanna nah silay kee parwah
Gar naheen haiy meray a`asha`ar mein ma`ani nah sahee, and

Gar khamushi sey fa`aida ikhfa`ay haal haiy
Khush hoon keh meri baat samjhana mahaal haiy

Khalid Sahib, your translation is superb.

Mohammad Gill

I must apologise for a mistake that I made inadvertently in writing one of Ghalib`s lines. The correct line reads as following:

Qarz kee peetay thhay maiy aur ......

Instead of ``muft``, please read ``Qarz``. I wrote the verse from memory, which faulted me.

Mohammad Gill

I did not know that there are a full nine such letters!

Absolutely brilliant...

May God bless his soul. He was a good man treated poorly by lesser men.

nhk

Well Well Well

Mr Khalid Hasan.. I knew... it will be irressistable for you to stay quiet for long...
The last time you mentioned.. these letters in your article in `` The FridayTimes ``
I requested you to share them with the readers... and in response I was told...to
Find and Buy them in Pakistan.
But I am a patient Man... and I knew it will be irressitible for you ....not to share them..
So ... Like they say.... `` Meyra Sabar Rang Laya....``

Thanks ... for sharing them with Us

Khalid Hasan sahab I have your ``Translation`` of all the letters... interesting reading. Hope you will make yourself available for discussion here on this forum.

Wow!!

Of all the years I`ve been coming to Chowk; this article made me sob like a baby! This Manto guy was an absolute GENIOUS!!!! I never realised until I read this article, how powerful a writer he was! If he could make be sob like a baby when I read only a TRANSLATION.; I can only imagine how powerful his stories would be, if only I had the aptitude of reading & understanding urdu!

Its no wonder, ylh, you chose to be inspired by Manto; & took on his nick. This guy is in the same class as all the nobel prize winners of literature in the last 100 yrs & the Pultizer prize winners.

And what about this guy...Ghalib!! WOW!!
That guy must be in the same category as Socrates & Aristole...but he died humbly & in total anonymity...except in the mind & hearts of Pakistanis & Indians (esp North Indians)

Yaaro, all this time I had no appreciation of how GREAT a poet/philosopher Ghalib was. I humbly apologise for my wretched ignorance!

When I was growing up in India; when people were jumping up & down to hear Urdu shairis , I would secretly groan--cos I can barely speak hindi, let alone some hi-falutin` language like urdu. So when someone said some bloomin hi-falutin urdu shairi, I would also say ``wah!! wah!! lajawaab!``--along with every other guy in the room (who pretended to understand its deep, philosophical & metaphorical meaning). I was too ashamed to admit that those bloomin` hi-falutin sharis were total greek to me & would pray nobody would ask what that shiari meant! .....cos my only honest answer would be
``fukifIknow!!``

Now before you Pakis & Northies shake your head at me & go ``tsk, tsk,tsk``, please understand I`m NOT a Northie & hindi is a second language & not my mother-tongue. I`m..a.. what they say...a Westie...very very humble hindu brahmin from Bombay. NEVER MIND that we humble hindu brahmins from Bombay consider the rest of India an intellectual blackhole! All TRUE Bombayites feel that way...or ought to feel that way!:)))

But ...seriously, yaar... you muslims of ``British India`` are truly blessed with many titanic personalities who contributed so immensely to our culture (both Indian & Pakistani)...there are not many hindus who have been such towering culture icon/genius(s)...I may be wrong...

ylh...
please dont have any kittens when I say this ( I hope marriage has matured you)...but I wish Partion never had happened. I wish guys like Jinnah had lived longer & had opted to stay in India. If Jinnah led 1 party & Nehru led another party, India would be one of the greatest democracy in the world today. It was not to be ....& I DONT want to start another masterbation session about whose FAULT that was.

Please understand... most Indians alive today do NOT want Pakistan back...Allah ki kasam! In fact, please believe me that most Indians wont accept Pakistan back if she wanted to...on her knees! (not that THATS ever going to happen!!!)....

OTOH, should that prevent some of us older nostalgic fools from wondering...what if we were one country today?!...

Ghalib can be proudly proclaimed by Indians & Pakistani (pardon my bad Bombay hindi)...``whoo to aapna hi aadmi hai!``

but Manto....he`s true blue Pakistani....I envy you bloomin Pakis....how I wish he were Indian
Peace

PS--Romair,
Youre right...when youre right; youre right!
We Indians know squat about Pakistan or Pakistanis!

Writers like Manto transcend boundaries and borders.People who have read his ``Meena Bazaar``know under what circumstances he left India in 1948.

Small coorrection: Manto`s birth place is Samrala,not Sambrala-a small town on Ludhiana-Chandigarh road.

He is probably still the most widely read urdu writer in India and his works are available in Devnagri script.

Acording to Khalid,Manto produced his best works after shifting to Pakistan.For his readers in India,he is best known for his satire``Tobha Tek Singh`` and stories like ``Khol Do`` and ``Hattak`` which are undisputedly unparalled in any language,leave alone urdu.

Is it inscribed on his grave ``yahaaN par Manto dafan hai aur us kay saath urdu afsaana nigaari ka fun bhi dafan hai``?I heard somewhere that this was Manto`s wish.

I am again , awed after re-reading this `letter`.Makes me want to learn urdu just to read the original.The translation will do.I forgot to thank you Khalid Hasan, whoever you are for a job well done.God bless.