Mottled Dawn By Saadat Hasan Manto

Mottled Dawn By Saadat Hasan Manto

      … In between, on a bit of earth, which had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh.

Though Manto has been compared with Gogol, I’ve found his work to be quite unique even more powerful than the works of Gogol that I've read. Mottled Dawn is a collection of fifty sketches and stories of partition of India. Rather than dwelling on the political nuances, Manto’s ironic, brazen and sometimes outright vile tales speak of the horror of human actions caused by conformity, hopelessness , guilt and revenge. His vivid descriptions of atrocities that took place during India-Pakistan secession and its impact on every man is sure to evoke strong emotions to this work- hatred, love or plain disgust.

In this sense, Manto is a romantic. Often, in his works one finds an appeal to logic- to rationality. But sprinting through the burning train coaches haunted by religion and politics, holding the sword of nationalism for nations that do not exist, becoming sub-human and engaging in unimaginable depravity- these are the shoes that the reader is forced to walk in. Through the words that he uses and the events that he depicts as 'obvious', Manto is able to create a Kafkaesque world that is sans secrets. Everything is revealed. The villain is no longer a hidden para-normal concept- it is you.

The essence of the book can be understood through these lines: “Look this is hardly fair. You sold me impure petrol at black-market price and not even one shop could be put to the torch”. Manto’s mottled dawn is not a compilation of what transpired in particular nations. It is the story of human beings faced with randomness, freedom and personal conscience after years of oppression. Are they evolved enough to use these judiciously?

This work is recommended for all those who want to understand human psyche in context of war and revolutions. Reader should expect the stories to be vile, surreal and sometimes even meaningless.

The last lecture By Randy Pausch

The last lecture By Randy Pausch                            

               …We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

When Socrates emphatically said ‘death may be the greatest of all human blessings’ as he faced certain death in his famous speech of Apology, he could have been rationalizing to reduce his dissonance. He could have been raising himself to martyrdom…or perhaps he could have had an epiphany of sorts in the wake of his near death. In either case, his catharsis became one of the greatest works of literature through Plato’s pen. And thus, it seems, that certainty of death creates a certain visceral backdrop on its perceivers that can amaze them, render them hopeless or fill them with an energy that can seem supernatural.

Randy Pausch, through his work ‘the last lecture’, has been able to do all of these three. Though his focus was on opportunities, philosophies of life and specific goals like realization of childhood dreams, the fact that he is terminally ill looms over the entire work. Everything he says, through this looking glass of death is magnified and impactful. This is not to say that his ‘lessons in learning’ are lackluster without this looking glass, but only that they are more poignant on account of it. Neutrally critiquing such a work is a daunting task similar to isolating an artist from his art- ultimately futile. The work is inspired from life. All of author’s opinions, secrets, and love affairs are bits of his memories that are an attempt to conclude his life. Although, author himself seems to be aware of the fact that concluding one’s life is an impossible feat, he, like the romantic he claims to be, makes a sincere effort to do so and in his own way says to the reader-'May life keep inspiring you'.The structure of the work renders it an easy read syntactically. The content and titles of the chapters are apt- ‘efficient’, so to speak, as the author himself is.

I would recommend this work to all those who want to observe how a man succeeds, at least in my opinion, in concluding his own life- and in this process inspires others to live theirs fully.