though amongst the best, but still considered very controversial writers of Urdu language ..

I am not sure how many of you read Wajida Tabassum, especially her collection of Afsaanay titled 'Taubah Taubah'. Some of the afasaanay are way too graphic in nature.

Now I am not sure what service an explicitly graphic afsaana can provide in urdu literature. But I want to know ..

and then this urdu poetess (I think its Fehmida Riaz) and some of her Namz's are quite x-rated if you write them back in spoken urdu form ...

I apologize if its not Fehmida Riaz and someone else I am thinking of.

Any other writer that you want to include in this list ....?

I read some of those and I did not see any point , any lesson in the ones I read . The only thing worth mentioning was their provocative ending or punch line. Manto sometimes had sarcastic commentary on the state of the affairs in the society. I guess they got popular because in our society erotic stories cannot be published and sold in open market and even the readers cannot read them and discuss them in public . That is why whatever the readers could get in the shape of this literature by these writers that was enough for satisfying their craving for that kind of literature.

I agree with your Mirch. Kaali Shalwar was an OK (though little over, if you may) commentary on the partition times.

but when you read Manto and then you switch to Munshi Prem Chand, you think that what the heck was going through Manto's mind when he picked such topics to write on.

Does such style of writing reflects the perversion that goes through writers mind or is he/she above that when they do that?

i personally thought naghma safi aka n. safi version of imran series had thw worse case of terying to give people cheap thrills and get their jollies.

manto or chughtai atleast pretended to be about something bigger..even though I found them to be talentless hacks compared to others who wrote on controversial subjects but not in a shockjock style.

To be very honest I don’t find Manto guilty of being obscene , although his controversial stories like Khol do and Thanda Gosht have created a bit of fury in those days .

But in my humble opinion as he was bit influenced by realist writers like Anton Chekhov and Maksim Gorki therefore he tried to articulate the ideals of social uplift and justice through his literature.

He was just guilty of showing us the dirt and slime of our society we have always loved to sweep under the carpet .

He was right to ask the precarious question which boggles the minds of thousands ..... he once said

If a man has to make a woman the center of his love, why should he integrate animality into this sacred human emotion?...Is love incomplete without it?...

Is love the name of physical exercise ?

i doubt thaty is what teh vast majority of his readers got out of it though.

Originally Posted by X2

i doubt thaty is what teh vast majority of his readers got out of it though.

Therefore it didn't surprise a lot of his pakistani fans a bit to learn that a detailed study of Saadat Hasan Manto's life has appeared in India.

well, in our part of the world, we do not have time to pursue such needless tasks.

Zia moheyddin once wrote

' Manto is not the only genius in the creative world to have drunk himself to death. Dylan Thomas, in England, and Meeraji, in India, come to mind immediately. Interestingly enough, both Meeraji and Manto died in their forties'.


Well our dirty society makes them die .. bhai jee we kill them all ....

what I mean is, majority of ppl did not read his stuff because he was some sort of great thinker challenging norms of society, most ppl read it for cheap thrills. and, frankly..he knew it as well.

I kinda agree with X2 on this. Manto and Asmat chughtai kind of cashed on the fact that you cannot just write porn in those days and they were the next best thing to it

talking about india, Asmat Chughta'i's Lehaff was banned in India for very long time

and wth Aliyish, how can you compare Maksim Gorki with Manto and Chughtai .. there is no connection, they had different styles


Is that Najma Safi (you said Naghma), instead X2? But yes I know whom you are talking about .. I read her stuff .. and that was just crazy ..

now what else you expect from our nation ....

wahan Tu log bookstore pe akay kehtay haiN ' je Krishan chand ki wo kitaab jis mein ' Tere Maah k dhood mein Hukum ka ikka ' wali gaali hai chahe'ay ......

Or bechaRoon k shaKal daik kar laGtah hai k Yea gali be un ko daik kar he bana'ee gaee hai

Stop quoting Musthaq Ahmed Yusufi and pretend that its your statement

You know you cannot just do that when I am around to catch you

Originally Posted by TLK

Stop quoting Musthaq Ahmed Yusufi and pretend that its your statement

You know you cannot just do that when I am around to catch you

I never claimed it as mine

okay U r his second biggest fan on Gs

Originally Posted by TLK

and then this urdu poetess (I think its Fehmida Riaz) and some of her Namz's are quite x-rated if you write them back in spoken urdu form ...

I apologize if its not Fehmida Riaz and someone else I am thinking of.

Save your apologies as You are right about Fhemida Riaz

here is a sample




Gawd some one should tell this woman that you can describe this whole feeling in a single phrase ‘ making love ‘ or ‘having sex ‘.... ya don’t need to write a whole poem over this issue ....

But ya know what there is hell of a difference between poetry and prose writing

Jo baaT yea shairi mein lik gaeeN hain , koi agar NasaR mein likdaY tu kitaab zabaT ho ja’ay

p.s: han han TLK bhai ... Mushtaq ahmed yusufi shab ki hi line hai

Originally Posted by TLK

though amongst the best, but still considered very controversial writers of Urdu language ..

I am not sure how many of you read Wajida Tabassum, especially her collection of Afsaanay titled 'Taubah Taubah'. Some of the afasaanay are way too graphic in nature.

Now I am not sure what service an explicitly graphic afsaana can provide in urdu literature. But I want to know ..

and then this urdu poetess (I think its Fehmida Riaz) and some of her Namz's are quite x-rated if you write them back in spoken urdu form ...

I apologize if its not Fehmida Riaz and someone else I am thinking of.

Any other writer that you want to include in this list ....?

Does literature have to provide some kind of service to be considered literary? isnt it is derived from life itself, in all its beauty and ugliness. it just gives an artistic or personal interpretation of the world according to the percipient's point of view.

As a kid in his early teens, when I read Manto for the first time, I found his writings to be vulgar and sexually provocative. Then I read Manto again after many many years and found most of his stories to be a very true description of society at that time, or about the filth that we generally have in our society at all times, or a good description of some human instincts which people are generally shy to express.

I am not sure if it is the right thing to define the scope of what a writer can write on. Let it leave to the readers and I, for one, do not find Manto's stories to be written with a primary perspective of cheap thrill.

short stories of manto like "khol do" actually make a person cry....

Originally Posted by armughal

short stories of manto like "khol do" actually make a person cry....

I am sorry, but khol do was very unnecessarily dramatic. It just showed that Manto did not have the grip on human psychology and what games human mind could play in reality.

Originally Posted by Aliyish

Save your apologies as You are right about Fhemida Riaz

here is a sample




Gawd some one should tell this woman that you can describe this whole feeling in a single phrase ‘ making love ‘ or ‘having sex ‘.... ya don’t need to write a whole poem over this issue ....

But ya know what there is hell of a difference between poetry and prose writing

Jo baaT yea shairi mein lik gaeeN hain , koi agar NasaR mein likdaY tu kitaab zabaT ho ja’ay

p.s: han han TLK bhai ... Mushtaq ahmed yusufi shab ki hi line hai

Thanks Aliyish ..

I have read fehmida riaz where she wrote things like "taangon ke beech main mehekta gulaab" kind of stuff .. very distasteful in my opinion if you ask.