Motley’s Manto, Ismat….Haazir Hain at Prithvi Theatre

The second of Motley’s series of presentations of Hindustani stories on stage concerns the word ‘obscene’. The story BU (Odour) by Saadat Hasan Manto and Lihaaf (The Quilt) by Ismat Chughtai, for which the writers were tried for obscenity at the Lahore High Court in the 1940s are accompanied by Manto’s Titwal Ka Kutta (The Dog of Titwal) one of the very few anti-war stories written in the sub-continent and Ismat Apa’s hilarious account of the Lahore obscenity trial Un Byaahtaon Ke Naam (In the Name of those Married Women).