The Classy Satire :TOBA TEK SINGH

After reading the fascinating snippy letter by Manto to Pandit Nehru, eagerness nudged me to read one of his short stories, who is considered by many as the greatest Urdu short story writer. Thanks to the internet I got hold of his some short stories and read arguably one of his best partition short story, ‘Toba Tek Singh’ which was in both English and Hindi translation. To get the rustic juiciness feel of the Urdu text as much as possible  I chose to read the Hindi translation.

‘Toba Tek Singh’ is a brilliant short satire on partition. Most stories of partition that I have seen and read from Tamas to Train to Pakistan are sort of agonising to read. This is where I think master story tellers differ. Giants like Premchand , Marquez, Bulgakov to Manto use the sharp weapon of satire and humour to illustrate the irony of the situation.
Toba Tek Singh’s story starts about the mad people in a Pakistan prison during partition. The story revolves around a madman Bishan Singh who is going to be shifted to an Indian prison from Pakistani Prison.  It sort of resembles Samuel Beckett’s world where behind the repetitive absurdity that we encounter there lies some sort of a profound sense.
Bhishan Singh leitmotiv in the story was...
"Oper di, good good di, annexe the, bedhyana di, mung di dal of the laltain..."
"Oper the good good the annexe the bedhyana the mung di dal of the Pakistan government".
"Oper di, good good di, annexe the, bedhyana di, mung di dal of wahe guruji da khalsa and wahe guruji di fatah jo boley so nihal sat sri akal". ......

The satire sort of goes into the idea of ‘my place’ and ‘home’. It tosses the idea of the boundary and partition.

The end beautifully portrays the whole essence,

"Before sunrise, without any movement, a sky-piercing scream came out of Bishen Singh's throat. Many officers came running from here and there and they saw that the man who had stood, days and nights, on his legs for fifteen years, was lying collapsed on the ground, face down.

There, beyond the barbed wires, lay India, and here, behind similar wires, Pakistan.

In the middle, on that piece of land which had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh."

One of the interesting things that struck me after reading Manto was that great writers who bring in ‘politics of the day’ use satire as a powerful instrument in enhancing there narrative. Premchand, Marquez, Bulgakov, Salman Rushdie, V S Naipaul, Martin Amis, R K Narayan, Ian McEwan etc are some examples that comes to my mind. 

Writers such as Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh etc have somewhat not used this instrument of satire effectively which makes there fiction just good but not great.