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Publication date 1955 | 4.2/5 Goodreads Originally published 1955 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"Toba Tek Singh" (Urdu: ٹوبہ ٹیک سنگھ Ṭobah Țek Siṉgh [ʈoːbəh ʈeːk sɪŋɡʱ]) is a short story written by Saadat Hasan Manto and published in 1955. It follows inmates in a Lahore asylum, some of whom are to be transferred to India following the independence of Pakistan in 1947. The story is a "powerful satire" on the relationship between India and Pakistan. A film based on a play adaptation was made in 2005 by Afia Nathaniel.
Contents
Plot summary
The story is set two or three years after the 1947 independence, when the governments of India and Pakistan decided to exchange some Muslim, Sikh and Hindu lunatics, and revolves around Bishan Singh, a Sikh inmate of an asylum in Lahore, who is from the town of Toba Tek Singh. As part of the exchange, Bishan Singh is sent under police escort to India, but upon being told that his hometown Toba Tek Singh is in Pakistan, he refuses to go. The story ends with Bishan lying down in the no man's land between the two barbed wire fences: "There, behind barbed wire, was Hindustan. Here, behind the same kind of barbed wire, was Pakistan. In between, on that piece of ground that had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh."
Bishan Singh's mutterings
In the story, whenever Bishan Singh gets irritated he mutters or shouts a mix of Punjabi, Urdu and English which, though nonsensical, is indirectly pejorative of both India and Pakistan. For instance, "Upar di gur gur di annexe di bedhiyana di moong di daal of di Pakistan and Hindustan of di durr phitey mun", which means: "The inattention of the annexe of the rumbling upstairs of the dal of moong of the Pakistan and India of the go to bloody hell!"
Critical reaction
On the sixtieth anniversary of independence, the Pakistani theatre group Ajoka, as part of a series of plays and performances, performed a play adaptation in India. It was described as a "commentary on the state of affairs between the two countries, where sub-committees, committees and ministerial-level talks are the panacea for all problems".