“Manto Bhai, don’t you agree that you cannot try to write poetry? Poetry must come to you on its own. But we don’t know why it comes, or how. Do you know what I think? I think you cannot call someone a poet even if he has written a thousand ghazals, but if he can write even a single sher like a howl of pain, smeared with all the blood in his heart, then and only then can we call him a poet. Poetry isn’t a sermon delivered from a mosque after all; it is one’s final words from the edge of the ravine, face to face with death.” Given that it’s a time when there are more and more books that qualify as ‘quick weekend reads’, ‘breezy, one-time reads’, it is an indescribable feeling when one comes across a book like Dozakhnama: Conversations in Hell. Words cannot express the comfort this book provides - I wished that the book would never end. Meant for posterity, this is a book best consumed like a box of sweets you can nibble at everyday, and take joy from the fact that there’s still so much left to devour.
The bonus: You’d want to take the journey all over again, just to experience those literary orgasms that came in paragraphs of sheer brilliance.
A translation of a Bengali novel by Rabisankar Bal, Dozakhnama is a story of the conversations a young writer unearths as he… sets out to translate Sadat Hasan Manto’s unpublished novel that one day, suddenly surfaces in Lucknow.
But these are not ordinary conversations.
They’re between… wait for it… Manto and Mirza Ghalib, two of the most enigmatic figures in literature, both of whom found fame posthumously and who continue to live on in public memory thanks to the power of their words.
Each chapter is like a monologue and all put together, the book is a conversation happening between their graves, through shared dreams. Pal (translated here flawlessly by the very talented Arunava Sinha) makes an ambitious attempt to pen the most imaginatively written biography of Manto and Ghalib, and lets it simmer in the frothy history of Indian culture. Does he succeed? Hell yeah! (no pun intended).
While Ghalib’s story captures a more ancient period in Indian history, Manto goes about sharing his life’s journey in a more modern era. The former’s frustrations and agony compound and give shape to his terrific ability for verse, while the latter’s account is those of his adventures as a struggler in the early days of India’s film industry, socializing with commercial sex workers in Bombay’s red light district.
While neither of them try to outdo the other in the ‘my-story-is-sadder-than-yours’ routine, they incidentally show a shared passion for consuming liquor, gambling and women. There also appears to be a shared worldview about marriage being a tumultuous bed to sleep on, whereas the brothels provide opportunities aplenty for experiencing love and heart-break. (I personally had more sympathies with Ghalib’s condition than Manto’s.)
What also becomes clear, upon reading of this book, is a similar trajectory of their experience facing rejection constantly during their lifetime, and sweet redemption years after their death.
Those who’ve read Manto and Ghalib’s works in depth may find the conversations in Dozakhnama a bit of a repetition of stories they already know, but for the others, this book is an incredibly kind and sorrowful jugalbandi of sorts, that catches two icons in a memorable conversation you’d like to listen to, again and again. Buy the book, and don’t lend it to anybody.
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