Manto and I by Ayesha Mian (guest writer)
It’s only right that Manto would be the source of shattering my writer’s block - a heavy over 5-year-old block. Not being a full time writer nor poet, over the years I have dabbled in both writing and poetry. I practice psychiatry - a conventional career that pays my bills. "Ah!", you might say, "That is why Manto got her writing. That man had plenty going on in terms of mental illness". Perhaps he did. Perhaps, we all do. But I’ll come to that later. On a sunny Thursday meant to be an official holiday, I set out to do a morning clinic, before joining friends at a theater to watch Manto, the much awaited film. My familiarity with Manto had been of a passing nature. Growing up in the O’ and A’ levels realm, I felt a far greater kinship to the Bards, Brontes and Hemmingways of the world than to our Urdu maestros. A couple of his short stories read in my 20s, in English, hardly warrants even an acquaintance-ship to Manto. But the billboard that I passed dail