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

[anupam chakravartty]

Dear Inder and Kshmendra,

Thanks for posting your comments. though i do not have the fourth and fifth
letter.

cheers anupam


On 5/4/09, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>   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.
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