(Special writing on the occasion of Ghalib’s 155th birth anniversary)
Abul Hasan Naghmi writes about Saadat Hasan Manto, the greatest Urdu fiction writer, in his book ‘Saadat Hasan Manto: Personal Memoirs Based Papers’ that ‘Manto Sahib had a strong emotional attachment to Ghalib. Sometimes he loved Ghalib so much that he used to abuse him out of love, those abuses were not obscene, he called Ghalib ‘bastard’ out of love.’
Manto has always had devotion and love for Mirza Ghalib. In one of his fictions, ‘Artist People’, a character of Minto says about Ghalib: ‘Who else but Ghalib can express human emotions?’
Minto’s association with Ghalib is also revealed in the titles of his books, including ‘Zahmat-i-Mehr-i-Darakhshan’ and ‘Nimrod-ki Khudai’. Apart from these, Minto derived the names of many subjects and legends from Ghalib’s verses.
Not only this, Minto has left at least six writings on Ghalib. Shams-ul-Haq Osmani has included five of them in his book Ghalib and Manto: ‘Ghalib and Government Job,’ ‘The Life of Mirza Nowsha in Agra,’ ‘Mirza Ghalib’s Invitation to Hashmat Khan’s House,’ ‘Galib, Fourteenth and Heshmat Khan,’ ‘Mirza Nowsha and Fourteenth.’
But apart from these, there is an inscription on Ghalib by Manto, ‘Qarad ki peete thaye me…’. In this story, Minto describes a case of defaulting on Ghalib. The judge of the case is Ghalib’s friend Mufti Sadruddin Azarda.
Apart from all this, obviously Minto also wrote the script of the film ‘Gaalb’. The script, which Minto may have sold to Sohrab Modi when he came to Pakistan from Bombay, has not survived, so it cannot be said that its story was written by the filmmaker and the dialogue writer of the film and an Urdu script. And how much the epic novelist Rajendra Singh Bedi might have changed later.
But the story of this film seems to be derived from Minto’s three epics, ‘Mirza Nowsha Aur Chudhuwe’, ‘Mirza Ghalib’s Invitation to Hashmat Khan’s House’, ‘Ghalib, Chudhuwe and Heshmat Khan’.
Minto mentions this script in at least four verses in the name of Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi. In one letter he writes:
‘The story is that I am going to write a film fiction on Ghalib. Some materials I have collected, and some are yet to be collected. I hope the fiction will be interesting. I will keep this to myself.’
The insistence on secrecy shows how important the project was to Minto. He didn’t want anyone else to get wind of it and take the idea away.
Ghalib and Minto were very different types of artists. Ghalib was an inhabitant of the world of ideas, his poetic world has had little connection with the problems of the common world. They make the subject of most abstract concepts and bring earth and sky, non-existence and existence, man and universe into the hinges in a single movement.
In contrast, Minto is an artist living on earth. Abstract and symbolic literature had begun in his time, and Minto himself has tried to write in this style for a while, but his general core is to show the realities hidden in the darkness of human inner life. To highlight in the light of events and accidents.
As if to oversimplify, it can be said that Ghalib’s theme is imagination, ka manto jeeti jagati zenida.
Perhaps it was this contrast and contrast in mood and tone that Minto was drawn to them like opposite poles of a magnet.
However, there is also a similarity, i.e. ‘Qarad ki May’. Both Ghalib and Minto were consumed by this addiction throughout their lives.
Sohrab Modi’s film is famous for its music (Minerva Movie Tone).
Film script
The script of the film is based on Minto’s story ‘Mirza Nowsha Aur Chudhva’. Many people who read Minto may not even have heard of this legend. This myth is not, nor should it be, among the popular myths of Minto. The atmosphere is dull, the dialogues are dull and the story is lifeless. Minto seems to have written it very hastily, and probably in one sitting, and did not even have a chance to revise it later.
The story of the story is the same as the movie ‘Galab’. Like the film, the main character of this story is a prostitute ‘Chudhwe’ who is crazy about Ghalib’s words. Ghalib comes to his room by chance, but Chaudhu doesn’t know that this young man is actually Ghalib. Ghalib also enjoys Nochi’s ignorance and leaves his ghazal sheet with him. And that’s it. The story ends here.
The modesty of the fiction is in its place, but the question is why Minto chose the role of a prostitute to write on Ghalib, but even more than that, why does the prostitute ‘haunt’ Minto?
The answer to this question is not difficult. Just as women use cleansing milk or cleansing lotion to remove make-up from their face, Minto uses the role of prostitutes as a make-up remover to remove the layers from the face of the society and try to bring out its true form. are Including wrinkles like crow’s feet in the corners of the eyes, pimples on the cheeks, and pimples on the nose. In which he has also achieved significant success.
So, according to Intizar Hussain, after ‘Amrao Jaan Ada’, the most powerful female character in Urdu literature is ‘Hatak’. Apart from this, Sultana from ‘Kali Shalwar’, ‘Zeenat’ from ‘Babu Gopinath’, Mimi from ‘Mummy’, and many other lively and memorable characters of prostitutes are found in Minto.
So Minto actually wanted to write about human hypocrisy, greed, deceit, hypocrisy and above all fraud. And what place can be better than the brothel of prostitutes where all these bad things become a dirty drain?
On the other hand, the caste of prostitutes itself is also a collection of opposites, one of which Minto himself pointed out, but apart from that, there are also conflicts, conflicts and contradictions within it. Rather, in a sense, prostitution itself is an embodied conflict and a moving manifestation. It is for this reason that Minto tried to shed light on Ghalib’s life through his lens.
Minto wrote in a letter to Qasmi that ‘I don’t know what I am reading about Ghalib.’ Perhaps it was during this research that Minto came across the mention of ‘Satam Prosad Domini’ in a letter from Ghalib. Minto might have chanted ‘hiptala’ as soon as he read this, because it was the key with which he could try to unlock Ghalib’s life.
This is what Minto has done in his three novels and film script.
The film Ghalib took a long time to make. Finally, when the film was released in 1954, it had been seven years since Minto came to Pakistan. The film was not released in Pakistan, so Minto did not get a chance to see it, but he certainly wished he could go to Amritsar to see the film.
Ahmad Rahi has written that Minto told me, ‘I want to see that Bedi has done my screenplay Naal Ki Keeta Ae.’
Unfortunately, life did not allow Minto to go to Amritsar, nor to watch this film, and he passed away on January 1955.
