JOIN USWhen we came back from school, Abba used to wait for us at the door and keep peeled pomegranate and malta.
We so wish that somebody would wait for us like that today,” said Nighat Manto, the eldest child of the legendary writer, Saadat Hassan Manto who was recently in the City with her two sisters, Nuzhat and Nusrat, to visit their father's birthplace Paproudi village in Samrala.
Invited by Aalami Urdu Trust to participate in their father’s birth centenary celebrations across India, the trio received an unforgettably warm welcome at Wagah. Overwhelmed by the love, Nighat says, “We have been coming to India before but going to our father's birthplace has been my dream for long.
I am glad that we came like this for if we would have come otherwise, we would have been deprived of the warm welcome that we received. Everywhere, we have been welcomed with flowers being showered on us.”
The welcome was warm but the pain of losing their father while still so young could not be missed. But the daughters could not remember too many details. “Nighat was 9, Nuzhat was 7 and I was 5 when Abba died,” said Nusrat, the youngest, “so how can we tell you much about him but what we do remember is that he was a very affectionate father.”
The ladies shared that they learnt from their mother that, “After the accidental death of our one-year old brother, Abba got scared and was under the impression that he had consumed something off the floor, so when Nighat started crawling, he often mopped the floor to make sure that she wouldn’t eat something bad.”
Did their parents face any negative reactions when three daughters were born one after the other, given conservative notions of society? Nighat replies in a lighter vein, “Mere hone par to Abba ko bahut khushi hui thi, Nuzhat ke hone par thodi kam aur Nusrat ke hone par bas hui hi thi!” she says tongue-firmly-in-cheek.
The daughters are today enjoying their autumn years. While Nighat is a homemaker, Nuzhat is a retired teacher and Nusrat works with an NGO in Pakistan. None has tried their hand at writing. They feel that if the result is not at par with their father’s work, it would be shameful.
Having read their father’s works, do they think that some of them should have been charged with obscenity? Nuzhat replies, “Obscenity is in the mind. If you think it is obscene then it will be.”
Manto had become popular in a short span of time but imagine the consequences if he had had a longer life? “His popularity was always there,” says Nuzhat and Nusrat adds, “It is not so that his work became popular after his death but if he would have been alive today then only God knows what all he would have accomplished by now.”
Finally, how does it feel to be Manto’s daughters? “We feel overwhelmed and thank Allah Miyan everyday for being his daughters,” all three say in unison.