manto and the dream

Munto and the Dream

I had been seeing him there for three or four days. When? Where? --perhaps it is not possible for me to describe sequentially…or you might say this also that I am possessed by a psychological fear, and it is for that reason that I am unable to tell you anything. At nights I wake up abruptly because of fear. And then I feel as if I were on an unfamiliar road or in an unknown bus. And again I feel a police van comes and halts in front of my bus. The policemen are surrounding the bus. They are in an offensive mood. And then, lying on the road, there is a dead body soaked in blood and encircled, the story of a false encounter. And the policemen, dreaming of their promotion, busy in preparing reports…..
No, perhaps now I need not tell you at all who I am and where I live. I am a minority girl belonging to the community that is a large one, as much as, it will be a mestake to take it to be less than 20-25 crore, as the census will verify. I don’t know even why our political leaders have doomed them by impressing upon them the sense of being a minority when such a large population is larger than that of many a country. Let the matter pass on. I don’t want to indulge in such political mazes. I simply to want to come to the dream that amazed and startled me.
Clad in white but unclean kurta-peyajama, a pair of worn out sandals, on the eyes a pair of very old fashioned spectacles, the eyes dangerously sharp…wearing the shine that would surpass the shine in the eyes of the eagle. But, at the present a deep solemnity had replaced the shine.
He was in the room, at the writing table, without my permission. He had rendered his teeth dark and fingers yellow by constant smoking. His hair was in a mess. He had not considered it necessary to brush it.
I had been seeing him for the last three days. I had got frightened on the first day. An unknown make person in my room! Frightened, I had asked him in confusion.
‘Who are you?’
‘Oh! A mistake,’ he replied in a very low voice.
‘What are you writing?’
He turned his eyes towards me,
‘Want to write something, but… I’ve lost the words. Can you recall, there was a time when I would write one story every day, and comfortably too?
‘Don’t pose. A story every day! This happened only once, and that for one month only. You didn’t have money to buy you cigarettes and wine. You would write a story, give it to the editor of the magazine and buy a bottle of liquor when you got the money. You didn’t care for your dear wife even….’
But it seemed as if he did not hear me. He was looking into space.
‘I had words and words, even at the moment when Toba Take Singh was about to close his eyes on the no-man’s –land… and…that…appallingly cold flesh…! Perhaps all that comes to my recollection…that disastrous afternoon… when hearing the voice of the doctor the had begun to unfasten her shelwar. No. I had words even at that time.
‘and now?’
As I was still looking at him he disappeared.
He, that is Munto. Saddat Hasan Munto.
I had got badly startled by the dream.
Well! Let me tell you even my name. Kausarb bee..or.. why don’t you choose a name for me that might please you?
The times were disturbed even when I was born. Now and then fierce disturbances erupted even when I had grown up to be a girl. The tiny bells tied round the ankles of barbarity and terror produced the noise so very grating to my ears that I befriended books at my very tender age. And, unawares, reading the books gained friendship of this Munto who wore glasses on his large but deceptive eyes. To me it was almost inconceivable that this lean and thin person, sick looking man of letters, could intervene between me and my dreams.
No. it is necessary to give you a reference of that day.
Once again the city was overcast by the vultures of terror. Police vans visited the area populated by the minority cast much more frequently that they otherwise would. Not a long time elapsed since the unfortunate happening had taken place two or three years ago. The disaster was alive once again, in a different guise though.
I am not a journalist. And you can see such scenes on TV screen happening every day. I can recall only this much-
It had rained heavily that morning. Frightened, we stayed secluded, self-imprisoned with in our own home. What like it is to feel alienated in one’s own home, you may imagine that. On that day we had an early supper. As none of us was interested in the telecast stories of false encounters. We went to bed early. I came into my room, closed the window and lay down quietly.

No. Oh! I must beg your pardon for that weird dream. But, that night, Munto was in my room once again. And this was not a whim of my eyes.
‘let us go for an outing.’
‘Have you gone crazy? There is a curfew like noiselessness on the out side.’
‘I known. The conditions are not good.’
‘Then? The police will arrest you.’
‘Won’t arrest,’ he said laughing,’ perform an encounter directly.’
‘You know all this…., yet a proposal of an outing!’
Suddenly he turned grave.
‘Nothing will happen. We shall get back after a round of a mile or two.’
‘A mile or two … on foot?’
‘Sssh, I’ve got a car, by stealth…,’ he was laughing. ‘it is known to a few only that I had chauffeured for Quayade-Azam-Mohammad Ali Jinnah too.’
‘ I know. You drove his car into a collision.’
Munto was laughing. ‘you needn’t worry. I shall be driving this time carefully.’
I looked at the clock. It was three at night.
The road was deserted. I opened the window. The ground was still wet. I couldn’t understand what an attraction was there in this 42-43 years old, lean and thin creative writer that I accompanied him, enchanted.
The road, wet because of the rain, the sounds of dogs barking and whining.’ We took seats in the car. It sped fast. Drowsing police vans at short intervals but Munto was lost in his own thoughts. It seemed as if he desired to fill up his eyes with the vision of the city its solitude. At one or two places the police stopped us and ashed him a question or two. What answer Munto gave them laughing is unknown to me. I only saw this much that in the dark Munto had put a holy sandal mark on his forehead. He would laugh over the fright that held me captive.
‘hadn’t I told you that nothing was happen to us?...let’s cover just a little more distance…’
And now Munto steered the car into such a direction as made me cry out.
‘Where are you going to?’
‘Sssh ! he put his finger on his lips. ‘History does not die in such a short span of time. No need to say anything. Just keep on moving.’
I wanted to say, ‘History never dies,’ but I don’t know what made me keep my silence.
It was over four now. Now we were in a poor colony inhabited by the minority, where there stood mud and thatched huts of laborers or those who kept draught horses.
Dogs were still barking. Morning was already there for some of those horses. In some house kitchen-fire was alive. Some children are also seen in front of a few houses…the women were seen doing something going in and coming out of their huts…and suddenly that accident occurred…a terrible accident. There happened to come in front of the car a little minority boy, and also a little calf, at one and the same moment. To Munto, who was driving in a carefree mood, it was the very time to take a decision with in a flash of time.
No, if you prefer you may leave the story here. I won’t ask you to continue reading..for what you are going to read now is impractical, loathsome and violating the human right as well.
In the last fraction of the second as I was shutting up my eyes in desperation I chanced to catch a glimpse of the young calf bolting away. Munto had steered the car towards the minority boy.
No. I repeat. Please separate the cruel words said here presently from the story.
We were back home.
Munto was standing near the window bars. His spectacles were soiled with dust. He was smoking cigarettes recklessly.
‘You could have saved the boy,’ I shrieked out.
‘Only one-either the boy or the calf.’ Munto shrieked out more vehemently. ‘The casualty of a minority boy will be forgotten with in two hours. But, do you know what the accidental death of a calf in that locality means?’
Munto turned. He tore the papers on the table into little bits and threw them into the dustbin.
Munto disappeared, but the chair on which he had been sitting was still rocking.