Alumni Meet + Presentation paper

So, it's been a while since I posted anything. I've been really busy - people who know me have complained enough, as have I. Just gave my term papers, caught up on my sleep and am looking forward to the five weeks worth of holidays up ahead.

So, this post is about what I've been busy with. Many things actually but, the most exciting one was an Alumni meet in our college for our Literature graduates. As a literature student (not a very loyal one though, I'm planning to major in Psychology - Sorry Lakshmi ma'am:P) and as the Secretary for the English Association this year, a lot of my time went into preparing for this event. Last time we had people sing, dance, play instruments - all quite serious and a few fun but chaotic games. This year, we had a seminar. Yeah, I didn't think that as an alumnus, a seminar (on partition literature, at that) was something one would look forward to. Turns out, they quite enjoyed it. Four of us from my class - me included, presented papers at our first ever formal students' seminar. One did an introductory paper on partition literature and the rest of us viewed the partition from the perspective of individual short stories.

Apart from that we put together the most hilarious, robotic, literally interpreted dance on 'jaan-e-jaan, dhoondta phir raha...', 'Justin Beiber's baby! (Yes, imagine that literally interpreted!)', 'main toh raste se jaa raha tha...', 'white white face dekhe...' from Tashan and 'kisi disco mein jaye'. The most fun I've ever had on stage.

And since the tone of the afternoon was so nostalgic, five of us - Srilata, Varnaa, Priyanka, Dhanashree and I, sang 90's cartoons' theme songs - Spongebob squarepants, The Flintstones, Popeye, adam's Family and the best of all Captain Planet!

It’s amazing to work under teachers who put so much trust and faith in you and your decisions. They had no idea what the hell I had planned for the afternoon and I doubt any other teacher in my college, at least, would've given me so much independence(and I've had to work under a good few so I know) The free food in the end was just the icing on the cake.

For those of you who have the patience or inclination, here's the paper I presented. I worked really, really hard on it(and consequently, did terribly in my terms) so, please read it. *puppy dog face*

ON THE PRECIPICE OF VIOLENCE

No piece of literature is isolated from its time. It holds in it, an imprint of the era it was written in. This imprint is easiest seen among the stories written in the context of the partition of India. One can’t talk of partition literature without touching upon the name of Saadat Hasan Manto.

Manto was born in 1912 in the state of Punjab and passed away 43 years later in Lahore, Pakistan. Manto had a rocky relationship with formal education. It is ironic, that while one of the subjects he was unable to pass in was Urdu, he would go on to use that very language to give to the world masterpiece after masterpiece of artful and powerful literature.

One of the issues with analysing and relishing Manto’s work is that many subtleties from the original text are lost in translation. However, Khalid Hasan’s translation of Manto’s short stories is widely recognized to be the most accurate in its nature of expression. So today, I intend to view the partition and the violence and grief that encompassed it from the perspective of Khalid Hasan’s translation of Manto’s short story – ‘Khol Do’

In ‘Khol Do,’ Manto, through the medium of a seventeen year old girl, provides the reader with a realistic, shocking record of the predatory times during the partition. The girl, Sakina, is parted from her father and found by a team of rescuers. The story shows how these men, who promise to protect, give in to their most primitive desires - desires not bound by religion or morality. It displays violence in its most elementary form.

Michael Jauch in his paper ‘Witnessing Violence’ sees Manto’s story as a sort of violated skin, which may be touched, its rugged topography making the reader’s finger hurt. As he puts it – “this elaboration may be accomplished through different levels, be it through a silent confusing irony, bodily metaphors of pain, or the use of slippery words.”

The story begins with our protagonist Sirajuddin regaining consciousness and finding himself in the midst of confused screaming and chaotic movement. He attempts to recall the events that brought him there. That Manto refrains from providing the reader with the details of the environment that Sirajuddin finds himself in, in itself offers plurality to the text.

The first image that comes to his mind it that of his wife’s brutally mutilated body, ‘an image (as described in the text) that wouldn’t go away.’ Instantly, Manto dangles us over a world of demented, lawless existence but, once again refrains from letting go as Sirajuddin thoughts turn to his seventeen year old daughter Sakina.

He remembers that she had dropped her dupatta when they were fleeing the scene of the riots. He remembers picking it up despite his daughter’s pleas to leave it and run. He remembers no more.

During the partition of India, predominant social ideas like purity and honour were idealized in the bodily existence of a woman. Consequently, a father would rather his daughter dies than have her live with a body violated by other men. So, it is only sensible that Sirajuddin, running for his life from the Hindu rioters, should pause, to pick up his daughter’s fallen dupatta – the symbol of honour, her ‘Izzat’. However, as the story proceeds, Manto chooses to transform him and Sirajuddin becomes a father, who wills his daughter life even though parts of her body can only scream the brutality of her violation.

Sirajuddin’s searches for his daughter are in vain. He seeks the help of eight young men armed with guns and a truck who assure him that if she is alive, they will find her. A few days later, they find her, and pick her up to reunite her with her father. She is calm but ill-at-ease without her dupatta. However, strangely when Sirajuddin enquires, they deny having found her at all. Once again, Manto abstains from details and leaves a void in the story for the readers’ imaginations to fill. At each moment such as this, Manto divides his readers between those who don’t understand and those who do. Only those who cross each road-block are able truly comprehend the finish line and all of its implications.

Days pass. One day Sirajuddin witnesses the limp body of a young girl being carried to the hospital at the refugee camp. He follows them and realizes that this girl is, in fact, Sakina.

At this point, I’d like to quote directly from Khalid Hasan’s translation:

“The doctor looked at the prostrate body and felt for the pulse. Then he said to the old man: “Open the window.”

The young woman on the stretcher moved slightly. Her hands groped for the cord which kept her salvar tied round her waist. With painful slowness, she unfastened it, pulled the garment down and opened her thighs.

‘She is alive. My daughter is alive,’ Sirajuddin shouted with joy.

The doctor broke into a cold sweat.”

Men who offer to aid, rape her, repeatedly, to a point that when the doctor asks the father to ‘Open the windows’; in an almost Pavlovian response to her tormentors, despite her drained physical state, she opens her thighs.

Manto showcases a remarkable ability to mould words in such a way that they are loaded with layered meaning and multiple emotions. As Harish Narang says, in his essay ‘Weaving Black Borders’ the most explosive use of language in the text is the delicate shift in meaning, from open to open up between the speaker and hearer of the expression.

The violence itself is not described. Its description lies on the fringe of the text, largely in Sirajuddin’s spontaneous exclamation of relieved euphoria or in the doctor’s cold sweat. The absence of this vital revelation calls for the presence of the reader. He forces the reader to fill in the silences and give meaning to text. Such a silence epitomizes the qualities of Manto that make him such a unique and penetrating writer.

It is evident, though perhaps only in retrospect, that Manto’s intentions as a writer in his time were sincere attempts to understand, analyse and find some consolation for the horrific events that had transpired. He attempted to explore and expose the politics of violence both, against women and against mankind, in general.

Of course, Manto couldn’t get away with such writing at the time. He faced a legal case in which he was, funnily enough, charged with breach of peace. As Girja Kumar says in her book, ‘Fundamentalism and Censorship in India’ “the public and critics alike lapped up at the story. It was a different cup of tea for the censors, who smelled a rat in the story and charged the publishers for disturbing public order.” They received a six month ban and it took nearly a year for any more of Manto’s work to reach the public.

However, it was worth it. Today, ‘Khol Do’ is undoubtedly accepted as one of the finest short stories to come out of the pen of Saadat Hasan Manto. The story is as brief as possible but has the effect of dynamite in its content.

The irony of a Muslim girl escaping from the clutches of Hindu rioters only to fall prey to the lustful grasp of her own co-religious Muslim rescuers is not lost on the readers. Manto displays how ultimately, it was women, who became the victims of the atrocities perpetuated by both friend and foe. As Alok Bhalla puts it, “The inhumanity of the partition has so obliterated the moral realm that there is nothing left to retrieve and nothing to hope for.” The sheer degradation of humanity during this time makes ‘Khol Do’ a sordid tale of man’s beastly behaviour.

The only semblance of consolation that the story offers is that, in the end, Sakina lives. The pain of the thought of having lost his daughter is so maddeningly unbearable that when the truth is realized, her life is all that matters. In the light of the regressive, gendered thought prevalent in society, this new line of thought becomes an eminent one, one that Manto encourages his readers to pursue.

As these events unravel in the presence of and with the assistance of the reader, Manto offers the world two opportunities. First, to revisit the past, reopen the wounds and wallow in the pain of the violence that was witnessed. And then, to perhaps, in that moment of catharsis, rebuild the bridges that were burnt, re-establish those vital human relationships and renew the hope for a better tomorrow.