Thanda Gosht
The story opens un with the appearance of Eesher Singh at Kalwant Kaur. Eesher Singh seems very tired and holds a dagger in his hand. Kalwant Kaur is sitting on the bed, it is she who breaks the silence which becomes untolerable.
She asks where he has been all these days, but he just mumbles something in the answer. Kalwant Kaur becomes rather irritated, as she does not know where he has been. He keeps silent. Then Eesher Singh tries to make love with Kalwant; she seems to be less intense, but when he cannot perform sexually, she burst out with anger and starts asking who this “bitch” is he has been all these days with, and who has got all the strength from him.
Eesher does not answer clearly, telling that he has been at his grandmother, but the answer does not satisfy Kalwant so she tells him to swear to Waheguru that there was no other woman. She shakes his head affirmatively, and Kalwant in the state of extreme agitation and jealousy grabs the dagger and stabs Eesher’s neck with it. Only then he says that he has killed six people with this dagger. He has got into the house where seven people lived, and he killed six of them.
The seventh was a beautiful girl, he decided to take her with him, but when he got her out of the house and put under the bush to take advantage of a poor girl he found out that she was dead.
While telling Kalwant his sad story, Eesher bled to death.
Khol Do
The protagonist – Sirajuddin, woke up in the refugee camp where cries, shouts and moans were heard all around. He could not collect his thoughts at first, but when he finally understood where he was and what had happened he started looking for his daughter Sakina, who he had lost in the crowd. He could remember rather vividly all the awfulness of the previous night – he could even see the picture of his wife’s death. But all these things made him want to forget.
He continued looking for Sakina, but for few days his attempts brought no results. There was a group of eight young social workers organised to search for missed people, they promised Sirajuddin that if his daughter was alive they would bring her to him in few days. The search continued up to ten days.
One day when the young men were driving in their truck they noticed a girl standing at the road, when she saw them she started running away. They caught her and tried to calm down – they were very good to her.
More days passed and Sirajuddin had no news. One day he saw the group of eight social workers, but they told that they were still looking for Sakina. This day Sirajuddin found out that some unknown girl has been found unconscious near the railway tracks. The girl was taken to the hospital. With a vague hope Sirajuddin went to the hospital, and was very pleased to find in the girl his own daughter. She was very weak and continued painfully moving her hand towards the cord holding her salwar.
Mishtake
'Mishtake', originally titled 'Sorry' in Urdu, is a chilling story about the horrors of the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The Partition Riots of 1947 occurred between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs during the division of British India into India and Pakistan. These riots were marked by extreme violence, mass killings, and forced migrations, as religious communities clashed. Hindus and Muslims were at each other's throats. Mobs from different communities would forcibly check men to decide whether to spare or kill them, depending on their religious affiliation. This was because, in Islam, it is mandatory for males to undergo circumcision, whereas Hindus do not practice it. The story 'Mishtake' describes one such occurrence. Though no explicit context is given, we can still understand the story. In the story, we see a man killing another man with a knife, slitting him--most probably due to religious differences. As the knife moves below the navel, it cuts through the victim's trousers, causing them to fall. When the trousers fall, the victim's genitals are exposed, and the killer realizes that he has killed the wrong man. It is only at this moment that he feels remorse and exclaims, "Chi, chi, I have made a mistake. Manto tries to show that the killer feels no remorse for taking a life; all he cares about is that he has killed the wrong man. The imagery of the knife piercing the victim's belly is deeply unsettling. Manto employs irony and dark humor to highlight the absurdity of the situation and the disconnect between the gravity of the violence and the perpetrator's casual reaction.
