Intent and Identity: a tale of two “I”s (An Examination of the "I" in Audre Lord and Saadat Hasan Manto)

The relationship between the material and the literary has always been one of thick corded rope anchoring fantasies and worlds spun out of thin air. So many of the great works we know today are personal replicas and interpretations of other personal interpretations and carefully chosen words. Intent of the writer is what gives life to literature, regardless of whether that intent changes halfway through or results in the silent tears streaming down as you finish the first and final draft. An intent driven by the world of the author and the poet and the playwright, the storytellers and the epic narrators, we are all living testimonies to the stories we have heard and read and glimpsed dancing across stages and street corners. A living intent: how the world of the storyteller crafts the intent, whether capitalistic or personal or rebellious, and how that story changes with each new hand it touches. There exist three hundred versions of the Ramayana today, each version unique and crazy in its own right: some see Ravana as a human being rather than the Demon of Valmiki’s and Tulsidasa’s imagination. Chandrabati’s Sitayana is an oral woman-oriented Ramayana discredited for its origins in women’s folk tales and songs. These versions exist because people choose to carry stories with them and retell them in their homes the way they know best: with flavours of home. The most important thing I have learnt about literature, form, and the material foundation is that the worlds of the storyteller shape the literature and that the form is a medium best suited to tell the story of the humanity that crafts it. The storyteller takes many forms: the original author, the travelling orator who retells it from memory, the fanfiction writer who knows that things could be taken further or made better if done their way. In that fashion, we all become storytellers in our own right, and it is what fuels our intent behind reading stories: how we see ourselves in them, and how we make them a part of our ever-shifting fabric of life. 

On that note, I shall explore the nature of the “I” in Audre Lorde’s ‘Hanging Fire’ and Saadat Hasan Manto’s ‘Toba Tek Singh’. Both texts relay the “I” in very different ways, and yet are successful in bringing out the intense poignancy of the moments in time they retell. In addition to what was said earlier, the present is the story and the memories and leaves of paper that follow are retellings honeyed by a mind calm enough to pen them with voice or ink. 

‘Hanging Fire’ by Audre Lorde was first published in  Lorde’s ‘Black Unicorn’ anthology, known for its themes of recognising and claiming Lorde’s African heritage. While the anthology and some of its poems have received much acclaim since its release, “Hanging Fire” remains largely unnoticed when it comes to analysis and exploration of thematic elements. The subtle evocations of racism, sexism, and the bone Lorde had to pick with her mother are very apparent in the following lines:

and my skin has betrayed me  

how come my knees are

always so ashy

I should have been on Math Team   

my marks were better than his   

and momma's in the bedroom   

with the door closed. (Lorde, Hanging Fire)

The presentation and context of the lines is what makes the “I” of particular interest to me. The conscious intent of Lorde to have her fourteen year-old self say these words are powerful. The mercurial, sudden, and jarring transitions from thought to new thought are indicative of the new phase of life that all of us experience: the hypersensitivity, not realising the full extent of the problems with throwaway dialogues like “I should have been on Math Team my marks were better than his”. The amount of absurdity that would have been attributed to these remarks if a child had said them to their parents is transformed into gravitas and pathos when published in an acclaimed anthology by an acclaimed author. The material foundation of this very unique “I” of reclaiming the ignorance of childhood and empowering it with the intent of a life having fought injustices is what drives the poem forward. The material foundation of when Lorde, studying in a mostly white school as a result her being legally blind; her protest of the structure and administration of the Second Sex Conference and their lack of representation of guests speakers; from being published by virtually unknown magazines to rewriting and shocking the literary mainstream, dominating the market as  “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet”. When all social, political, and economic standards reduced her to an ethnic, sexual, gendered minority, she fought back. It is the struggle of that story - of poetry speaking in the oppressing silence - that presents itself in ‘Hanging Fire’.

The chosen form is instrumental in establishing the jarring nature of the scene. Drawing from what Durga has so beautifully crafted: “to compare Lorde’s poetry to a coral necklace -- “ragged”, threatened and vibrant, presenting us with a ‘bleached’ experience or emotion but continuing grapple and survive in the face of neglect, violence and discrimination.”. As Durga correctly stipulates, Audre Lorde recognises and acknowledges the toxicity that exists for her gender, colour, age, and agency when she writes “Nobody even stops to think about my side of it” (Lorde, Hanging Fire) even from her own mother who remains aloof to the crises of her child. Like Sahajo and Aayilah state in their post: the form in which the “I” exists allows for new perspective while retaining the quality of being incredibly personal yet public; an sirenic attribute for readers. ‘Hanging Fire’ draws you in with its disarming vocabulary only to stab at your heart as you realise the deeper thematic context behind each stanza: a quality that separates the poem of adulthood’s perspective from the rambling of a teenage girl which in many ways captures Lorde’s identity in its rawest form. 

The lack of the “I” in Manto’s ‘Toba Tek Singh’ is not really a lack at all. In the themes of identity, religion, and family, the “I” intentionally finds its place in the mouths of the lunatics who keep asking which cities belong to Pakistan and which to India. Their supposed madness when it comes to the subject encapsulates the sentiments of the many migrations and exoduses caused by Partition - the event forming the material foundation of the story as well as that of Manto’s. Entire families displaced, families divided, property and livestock left to fend for themselves or given in the care of a trusted friend. For a populace that found its strength in the dust and dirt of their homes to fight off the colonisers, leaving your strength behind because of the colonisers themselves is a hard reality to accept. The voice of the lunatics, and that of Bishan Singh makes the pain easier to bear because like Lorde’s fourteen-year old girl, Bishan Singh is reduced to the societal stereotype of a rambling madman, a quality that enhances the despair and sense of mourning the readers feel for their identity. They recognise their own muddled thoughts of a homeland split into two, given form in erratic lunacy. 

The “I” exists only in the mouth of Fazal Din, who brings news to Bishan Singh from Toba Tek Singh. 

“I have been meaning to come for some time to bring you news.”

“I did what I could to help.”

“Here, I brought you some rice crisps from home.” (Manto, Toba Tek Singh)

His efforts to comfort his friend are admirable, and yet somewhere deep the reader knows there is a sense of resignation and defeat that comes from knowing that even if they drove the invaders away, they lost too much. A different kind of “I” is born then, one of loss and anger and helplessness, finding its home in the readers of the subcontinent: survivors of the divide and their descendants who write digital papers in universities a quarter century before the centennial independence day. It is again, the power of hindsight crafted with literary practice - whether a few years or nearly a century later - that suffuses Manto’s writing with its power and agency. Home, a place of rice crisps and comfort, is lost to the wind. It becomes the dust on the steel trunks and clothes on your back that make their way across the borders, to become part of the place you claim as a new home; begin again. 

Both Lorde and Manto choose to focus and repeat on certain elements in their literary works. I do not exactly remember where I read this, but it has stuck with me for a long time:

When it comes to telling the story of a huge moment, you don’t describe it in its entirety. When you choose to write about a genocide, you often don’t tell all the gory details. You create the image of a burnt sock that belongs to a child, and work off of the resonance. The resonance of the larger issues of identity, sexism, racism, childhood and adolescent trauma are so prevalent in these two works that the “I” is more powerful because of it. The smallest, most inconsequential, most laughable things such as the ramblings of lunatics and the tantrum-like thoughts of an angry teenage girl - things usually scoffed at - are given power and precedence and presence. The resonance of these events is astounding in their evocation of emotion and empathy. By focusing on the reaction of a single individual where an idea or event devastated millions, we get to experience the horrifying reality secondhand. We encounter moments like these are entire lives, and it is only after we have read stories like Lorde’s and Manto’s that we are cognisant of them. 

While the intent behind Manto’s and Lorde’s writing is vastly different from different material foundations, the emotions of loss and anger are no less powerful. The “I” is evoked in the reader and characters in different ways, and finds a unity in the reactions and ideas that it inspires from its consumers. The “I” then becomes an agent of recognition and reconciliation, bringing together ideas across time periods, material foundations, and continents. The “I” becomes home in a world of memories we would have no other name to give, but ‘home’.

Works Cited:

Aayilah and Sahajo’s response to Prompt#2 posted on March29th

Durga, Sara, and Sneha’s response to Prompt#2 posted on March 29th

Audre Lorde’s ‘Hanging Fire’, from the anthology ‘Black Unicorn’

Saadat Hasan Manto’s ‘Toba Tek Singh’, from the collection ‘Mottled Dawn’