Toba Tek Singh

Toba Tek Singh is a short-story by Manto. In the short-story, a man named Toba Tek Singh is going progressivley deranged as he is trying to find his way to the right side of the newly-partitioned state of Punjab. The story is mostly a single-stroked comment on the correlation, loosely formulated as, of self with the place/belonging. As the newly independent states were being created, there were places and people who were withering away in the process. Toba Tek Singh was one such individual who stood in the story as the agent representing the Punjab, the people and the place, being neatly cut into two, by the Partition Plan of June 3, 1947.

What then Toba Tek Singh would do. To which side of his land would he belong to? Could he be thrust into opposing the forces that had moved against him, his people and by extension his land? Did he have a choice? Was insanity his refuge against Them who'd gone and done it sitting in their Brown Sahib luxuriance in the remote colonial capitals, reason be damned.

Kenzaburo Oe's heart-wrenching novella "Prize Stock" reminded me, though somewhat obliquely, of Toba Tek Singh. In Prize Stock, an American pilot crash landed in a remote Japanese village and the story was told through the perspective of a ten year old boy in the village. The questions Oe seemed more interested in to explore were about Japanese
"character" and its relation to the War (implicative, passive?) and its interface with the "Other", here an African-American captive being treated as an animal, a Prize Stock.