[Reader-list] Third Letter to Uncle Sam from Saadat Hasan Manto

Mon May 4 16:42:53 IST 2009

Dear Anupam

Thank you for sharing these pieces by Manto. Great writing that comes through even in the English translation. Khalid Hasan seems to have done a wonderful job in retaining a flavour to the writing.

Of the total of nine such letters, I could find only one additional one (fourth letter) on 'Chowk'. Posting it separately. Do you have any web-source for the balance five?

The translator Khalid Hasan was himself too an accomplished person (died Feb 5, 2009). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Hasan

(Dear Yasir ..... same question for you ..... do you have any web-source for the balance five letters? Also; Has anyone done audio recordings of these letters? I can already imagine what a great job would be done by someone like Zia Mohideen)

Kshmendra 

--- On Sun, 5/3/09, anupam chakravartty <c.anupam at gmail.com> wrote:

From: anupam chakravartty <c.anupam at gmail.com>
Subject: [Reader-list] Third Letter to Uncle Sam from Saadat Hasan Manto
To: "sarai list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Sunday, May 3, 2009, 3:21 PM

Third Letter to Uncle Sam Saadat Hasan Manto’s Letters to Uncle Sam
Translated by Khalid Hasan*31 Laxmi Mansions,
Hall Road, **Lahore* <http://www.chowk.com/tag/Lahore>*

15 March 1954*

Dear Uncle,

Greetings,

I write this after a long break. The fact is that I was ill. According to
our poetic tradition, the treatment for illness lies in what is called the
elixir of joy served by a slender temptress straight out of the quatrains of
Omar Khyyam from a long-necked crystal jug. However, I think that is all
poetry. Not to speak of the comely cup-bearers, one can’t even find an ugly
servant boy with a moustache to play the cup-bearer.

Beauty has fled this land. While women <http://www.chowk.com/tag/women>
have
come out from behind the veil, one look at them and you wish they had stayed
behind it. Your Max Factor has made them even uglier. You send free wheat,
free literature <http://www.chowk.com/tag/literature>, free arms. Why not
send a couple of hundred examples of pure American womanhood here so that
they could at least serve a drink as it is supposed to be served?

I fell ill because of this blasted liquor –
God<http://www.chowk.com/tag/God>damn it – which is poison, pure and
simple. And raw. Not that I did not
know, not that I did not understand, but what the poet Meer wrote applies to
my condition.

*What a simpleton Meer is!
The apothecary’s boy who made him fall ill
Is the very one he goes to get his medicine
*
Who knows what Meer found in that apothecary’s boy from whom he sought his
medicine when he knew he was ill because of him. The man from whom I buy my
poison is far more ill than I am. While I have survived because I am used to
a hard life, I see little hope <http://www.chowk.com/tag/hope> for him.

In the three months I was in a hospital’s general ward, no American aid
reached me. I think you knew nothing about my illness otherwise you would
have surely sent me two or three packages of Terramycin and earned credit in
this world and the next.

Our foreign publicity leaves a great deal to be desired and our
government<http://www.chowk.com/tag/government>,
in any case, has no interest in writers, poets and painters.

Our late lamented government <http://www.chowk.com/tag/government>, I
recall, appointed Firdausi-i-Islam <http://www.chowk.com/tag/Islam> Hafiz
Jullandhri director of the song publicity department at a monthly salary of
Rs 1,000. After the establishment of
Pakistan<http://www.chowk.com/tag/Pakistan>,
all that was allotted to him was a house and a printing press. Today you
pick up the papers and what do you see? Hafiz Jullandhri bewailing his lot,
having been thrown out of the committee appointed to compose a national
anthem for Pakistan <http://www.chowk.com/tag/Pakistan>. He is one poet
in
the country who can write an anthem for this, the world’s largest Islamic
state, and even set it to
<http://www.chowk.com/tag/music>music<http://www.chowk.com/tag/music>.
He divorced his British wife because the British are gone. He is said to be
now looking for an American wife. Uncle, for
God<http://www.chowk.com/tag/God>’s
sake help him there so that he can be saved from a sorry end. (1)

The number of your nephews runs into millions but a nephew like yours truly
you will not find even if you lit an atom bomb to look for him. Do pay me
some attention therefore. All I need is an announcement from you that your
country (which may it please God <http://www.chowk.com/tag/God> to
protect
till the end of time) will only help my country ( may
God<http://www.chowk.com/tag/God>blight the distilleries of this land)
acquire arms if Saadat Hasan Manto is
sent over to you.

Overnight, my value will go up and after this announcement, I will stop
doing ‘Shama’ and ‘Director’ crossword puzzles (2). Important people
will
come to visit my home and I will ask you to airmail me a typical American
grin which I will glue to my face so that I can receive them properly.

Such a grin can have a thousand meanings. For instance, ‘You are an ass.’
‘You are exceptionally brilliant.’ ‘I derived nothing but mental
discomfort
from this meeting.’ ‘You are a casual-wear shirt made in America.’ ‘You
are
a box of matches made in Pakistan <http://www.chowk.com/tag/Pakistan>.’
‘You
are a homemade herbal tonic.’ ‘You are Coca Cola.’ Etc. etc.

I want to live in Pakistan <http://www.chowk.com/tag/Pakistan> because I
love <http://www.chowk.com/tag/love> this bit of earth, dust from which,
incidentally, has lodged itself permanently in my lungs. However, I will
certainly visit your country so that I can get my
health<http://www.chowk.com/tag/health>back. Barring my lungs, every
other organ in my body I will hand over to
your experts and ask them to turn them American.

I like the American way of life. I also like the design of your casual-wear
shirts. It is both a good design and a good billboard. You can print the
latest propaganda item on it every day and move from Shezan to Coffee House
to Chinese Lunch Home so that everyone can read it. (3)

I also want a Packard so that when I go riding in it on the Mall, wearing
that shirt with a pipe gifted by you resting between my teeth, all the
progressive and non-progressive writers of
Lahore<http://www.chowk.com/tag/Lahore>should come to realise that
they have been wasting their time so far.

But look uncle you will have to buy petrol for the car, though I promise to
write a story as soon as I have the Packard that I would call 'Iran's
nine
maunds of oil and Radha'. Believe me, the moment the story is printed, all
this trouble about Iranian oil will end and Maulana Zafar Ali Khan (4) who
is sill alive will have to amend that couplet he once wrote about Lloyd
George and oil.

Another thing I would want from you would be a tiny, teeny weenie atom bomb
because for long I have wished to perform a certain good deed. You will
naturally want to know what.

You have done many good deeds yourself and continue to do them. You
decimated Hiroshima, you turned Nagasaki into smoke and dust and you caused
several thousand children <http://www.chowk.com/tag/children> to be born
in
Japan. Each to his own. All I want you to do is to dispatch me some dry
cleaners. It is like this. Out here, many Mullah types after urinating pick
up a stone and with one hand inside their untied shalwar, use the stone to
absorb the after-drops of urine as they resume their walk. This they do in
full public view. All I want is that the moment such a person appears, I
should be able to pull out that atom bomb you will send me and lob it at the
Mullah so that he turns into smoke along with the stone he was holding.

As for your military <http://www.chowk.com/tag/military> pact with us, it
is
remarkable and should be maintained. You should sign something similar with
India <http://www.chowk.com/tag/India>. Sell all your old condemned arms
to
the two of us, the ones you used in the last
war<http://www.chowk.com/tag/war>.
This junk will thus be off your hands and your armament factories will no
longer remain idle.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru <http://www.chowk.com/tag/Nehru> is a Kashmiri,
so
you should send him a gun which should go off when it is placed in the sun.
I am a Kashmiri too, but a Muslim which is why I have asked for a tiny atom
bomb for myself.

One more thing. We can’t seem able to draft a
constitution<http://www.chowk.com/tag/constitution>.
Do kindly ship us some experts because while a nation can manage without a
national anthem, it cannot do without a
constitution<http://www.chowk.com/tag/constitution>,
unless such is your wish.

One more thing. As soon as you get this letter, send me a shipload of
American matchsticks. The matchsticks manufactured here have to be lit with
the help of Iranian made matchsticks. And after you have used half the box,
the rest are unusable unless you take help from matches made in Russia which
behave more like firecrackers than matches.

The American topcoats are also excellent and without them our Landa Bazar
(5) would be quite barren. But why don’t you send us trousers as well?
Don’t
you ever take off your trousers? If you do, you probably ship them to
India<http://www.chowk.com/tag/India>.
There has to be a strategy to it because you send us jackets but no trousers
which you send to India <http://www.chowk.com/tag/India>. When there is a
war <http://www.chowk.com/tag/war>, it will be your jackets and your
trousers. These two will fight each other using arms supplied by you.

And what is this I hear about Charlie Chaplin having given up his US
citizenship? What did this joker think he was doing? He surely is suffering
from communism otherwise why would a man who has lived all his life in your
country, made his name there, made his money there, do what he has done?
Does he not remember the time when he used to beg in the streets of London
and nobody took any notice of him!

Why did he not go to Russia? But then there is no shortage of jokers there.
Perhaps he should go to England so that its residents learn to laugh
heartily like Americans. As it is, they always look so somber and superior?
It is time some of their pretense came off.

I now close my letter with a freestyle kiss to Heddy Lamarr.

Your nephew,

*Saadat Hasan Manto *

Footnotes:

1) Hafiz Jullandhri was one of Urdu’s leading poets before independence and
gained popularity for his poetic epic based on the history of
Islam<http://www.chowk.com/tag/Islam>that he called ‘Shahnama0e-
Islam <http://www.chowk.com/tag/Islam>’. He was likened to the great
medieval Persian poet Firdausi who wrote the famous epic poem called
Shahnama. Hafiz was often called
Firdausi-e-Islam<http://www.chowk.com/tag/Islam>.
After independence he was assigned to write the Pakistani national anthem
that he did. However, he always felt that his service had not been
recognized to the extent they deserved. Manto did not think much of him,
either as a poet or a man.

2) ‘Shama’, Delhi <http://www.chowk.com/tag/Delhi>, and
‘Director’,
Lahore<http://www.chowk.com/tag/Lahore>,
were two popular magazines of the time that ran crossword puzzle
competitions that offered generous cash prizes.

3) Zelin’s Coffee House, Pak Tea House and Cheney’s Lunch Home, all located
on the Mall were Lahore <http://www.chowk.com/tag/Lahore>’s most
popular
restaurants at the time where writers and intellectuals hung out. Only Pak
Tea House has survived though teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

4) Maulana Zafar Ali Kahn, prolific poet, writer and journalist who founded
the Urdu daily ‘Zamindar’ from Lahore
<http://www.chowk.com/tag/Lahore>. He
died in the early 1950s.

5) Landa Bazar, Lahore <http://www.chowk.com/tag/Lahore>’s famous
second
hand clothes market.
_________________________________________
reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
Critiques & Collaborations
To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in
the subject header.
To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list 
List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>