Toba Tek Singh exposes the absurdity of partition

Falah Faisal | NT

 Bengaluru

Independence Day these days is a cause for celebration, but it also marks one of the greatest tragedies in our history - the Partition. It is important to remember and commemorate while we proudly hoist flags and sing patriotic songs.

This was why Kafeel Jafri ran a poll on his Instagram asking his audience to choose between two Manto Stories - Toba Tek Singh and Tetwal ka Kutta - for him to do a dramatic reading of his Insta Live. The audience overwhelmingly voted for Toba Tek Singh.

So why is this story published in 1955 written by Saadat Hasan Manto that follows inmates in a Lahore asylum, some of whom are to be transferred to India following the 1947 Partition still so beloved? “It is because it humanizes the plight of partition in a way nobody has ever done.

It exposes the absurdity of partition from the first sentence itself,” explains Kafeel Jafri, an actor and spoken word performer who usually performs  stories  in Dastangoi.

“This is what stories do, they humanize tragedies in a way no nonfiction or direct commentary can do. When lunatics also have so much angst about separating one remembers how when we hear Pakistani musicians or when they watch Bollywood movies we wonder why we got separated in the first place because we are such similar people,” says Jafri. This also forms an important theme in his latest work Dastaan Anekta Mein Ekta Ki which he plans to perform sometime next month.

Toba Tek Singh is more relevant today than when it was first written because of the heights otherization of minorities have reached today far exceed the times of partition, according to Kafeel who said, “New fissures are being created and old fissures are being worsened as we are divided into a binary. But despite that we must remember what horrible times we’ve been through in the past and still survived as a nation.”

When asked what Manto would have written had he been alive today Kafeel said, “Manto wrote for his time and it is past, there are many more writers and artists working today who write stuff that is more relevant to the present. We must find them and give them the right platform and appreciate their work.”

 You can watch Kafeel’s performance of Toba Tek Singh by following him on Instagram @kafeel. jafri