Bishan singh charcter sketch in toba tek singh story
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We don't meet the main character until well into the story, when we've gone through an illustrative sequence of other lunatics. The narrator reports that everyone calls the main character "Toba Tek Singh" (though in the whole course of the story we never actually hear anyone doing so); but the narrator himself always refers to him by his full name, Bishan Singh. Does he do this pointedly, as a sign of respect, and to differentiate himself from the others? And when he seeks to interpret Bishan Singh's outbursts, he always qualifies his suggestions with a respectful "perhaps," to show that he is not privy to Bishan Singh's inner life, but is only speculating.
Whatever the reason, the narrator's carefulness in this respect enables him to set up a wonderfully elegant, haunting, ambiguous conclusion. After Bishan Singh gives a single loud shriek and collapses, the narrator locates him in a no-man's-land between the two new nations' barbed-wire borders. My translation is entirely literal: "In between, on that piece of ground that had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh." We know of course that the person Bishan Singh lay there. But since the narrator never calls this person by that name, he's able to force us to the additional reading that the real location of the village Toba Tek Singh is between the two new states' sharply demarcated borders. But if the village is there, then in what sense exactly, and in whose eyes? Is Bishan Singh sane or mad, conscious or delirious, alive or dead? With wonderful subtlety and literary restraint, the author allows us-- and thus also forces us-- to invent our own ending.
Because of its simple and deliberately repetitive use of language, the story also provides excellent reading practice for students learning Urdu. For more on the Urdu text, see *About the Text*. My translation is almost as literal as it can possibly be. This is partly for the convenience of students, and partly because I love translations that try to bring you right up against the very grammar, the very sentence structures, of the original.
And my translation is literal also as a form of reaction against Khalid Hassan's extremely free one, which is widely available in print; see for example Mottled Dawn: Fifty Sketches and Stories of Partition (New Delhi, Penguin India, 1997, pp. 1-10). Khalid Hassan, who wrote such a fine and sympathetic *memoir* of Manto, apparently felt quite free to "transcreate" his literary idol's greatest story. As only one example, though a particularly irritating one, here is the start of section [08]. The original is, like the whole of the story, stark and simple in almost a minimalist way; my translation reflects those qualities, as you can easily check for yourself in the Urdu text:
He had one daughter who, growing a finger-width taller every month, in fifteen years had become a young girl. Bishan Singh didn't even recognize her. When she was a child, she wept when she saw her father; when she'd grown up, tears still flowed from her eyes.
Khalid Hassan, by comparison, takes away some information that the author wanted us to have (the poignant emphasis on the daughter's gradual growing up over the years, and her continuing silent grief), and adds a fair amount of other "information" that he himself invents (including a whole final sentence of obtrusive padding):
When he was first confined, he had left an infant daughter behind, now a pretty young girl of fifteen. She would come occasionally, and sit in front of him with tears rolling down her cheeks. In the strange world that he inhabited, hers was just another pretty face.
I'm sure Khalid Hassan did this sort of damage with no evil intentions, but only carelessly, and perhaps seeking somehow to "help" or please the English reader. For more discussion of this kind of work, see M. Asaduddin, "Manto Flattened: An Assessment of Khalid Hasan's Translations," in *Annual of Urdu Studies 11*.
Whatever the reason, the narrator's carefulness in this respect enables him to set up a wonderfully elegant, haunting, ambiguous conclusion. After Bishan Singh gives a single loud shriek and collapses, the narrator locates him in a no-man's-land between the two new nations' barbed-wire borders. My translation is entirely literal: "In between, on that piece of ground that had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh." We know of course that the person Bishan Singh lay there. But since the narrator never calls this person by that name, he's able to force us to the additional reading that the real location of the village Toba Tek Singh is between the two new states' sharply demarcated borders. But if the village is there, then in what sense exactly, and in whose eyes? Is Bishan Singh sane or mad, conscious or delirious, alive or dead? With wonderful subtlety and literary restraint, the author allows us-- and thus also forces us-- to invent our own ending.
Because of its simple and deliberately repetitive use of language, the story also provides excellent reading practice for students learning Urdu. For more on the Urdu text, see *About the Text*. My translation is almost as literal as it can possibly be. This is partly for the convenience of students, and partly because I love translations that try to bring you right up against the very grammar, the very sentence structures, of the original.
And my translation is literal also as a form of reaction against Khalid Hassan's extremely free one, which is widely available in print; see for example Mottled Dawn: Fifty Sketches and Stories of Partition (New Delhi, Penguin India, 1997, pp. 1-10). Khalid Hassan, who wrote such a fine and sympathetic *memoir* of Manto, apparently felt quite free to "transcreate" his literary idol's greatest story. As only one example, though a particularly irritating one, here is the start of section [08]. The original is, like the whole of the story, stark and simple in almost a minimalist way; my translation reflects those qualities, as you can easily check for yourself in the Urdu text:
He had one daughter who, growing a finger-width taller every month, in fifteen years had become a young girl. Bishan Singh didn't even recognize her. When she was a child, she wept when she saw her father; when she'd grown up, tears still flowed from her eyes.
Khalid Hassan, by comparison, takes away some information that the author wanted us to have (the poignant emphasis on the daughter's gradual growing up over the years, and her continuing silent grief), and adds a fair amount of other "information" that he himself invents (including a whole final sentence of obtrusive padding):
When he was first confined, he had left an infant daughter behind, now a pretty young girl of fifteen. She would come occasionally, and sit in front of him with tears rolling down her cheeks. In the strange world that he inhabited, hers was just another pretty face.
I'm sure Khalid Hassan did this sort of damage with no evil intentions, but only carelessly, and perhaps seeking somehow to "help" or please the English reader. For more discussion of this kind of work, see M. Asaduddin, "Manto Flattened: An Assessment of Khalid Hasan's Translations," in *Annual of Urdu Studies 11*.
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The most Tragic the most tragic figure whose activities keep us engrossed throughout the story is Bishan Singh called Toba Tek Singh after the name of the village he belonged to he has not slept for a moment for the last 15 years occasionally he would be observed learning against a wall but the rest of the time he was always found standing as such his legs where permanently swollen S he was much worried about Toba Tek Singh it if it would go to Pakistan or to India it was the village he was born in
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