Google, on Monday, changed its doodle to pay tribute to late Pakistani playwright, author and screenwriter – Saadat Hasan Manto, on his 108th birthday.
Google changed its doodle to a representation of Manto created by Lahore-based guest artist Shehzil Malik, showing him with a pen in his hand and scribbling on paper.
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Saadat Hasan Manto was born into a middle-class Muslim family in the predominantly Sikh city of Ludhiana in 1912. He wrote all types of stories including radio plays. Between 1941 and 1943, he produced four volumes of radio plays. He also began pushing out short story collections. By 1945, he had written and published the short stories ”Dhuan,” ”Kaali Shalwar,” and ”Bu,” which would later be collected in twenty-two short story volumes.
He was often surrounded in controversies and was accused of propagating and promoting ‘inappropriate’ literature, to which he once famously responded as;
“If you find my stories dirty, the society you are living in is dirty. With my stories, I only expose the truth.”
In total, Manto wrote 22 collections of short stories, a novel, three collections of essays, over 100 radio plays, and more than 15 film scripts throughout his notable and impactful career.
He is considered as one of the most prolific and impactful authors of fiction in Indo-Pak region. In 2015 Sarmad Khoosat’s film ‘Manto’ featuring artists like Saba Qamar, Sania Saeed and Mahira Khan garnered significant praise from film critics. Furthermore, another Bollywood film titled ‘Manto’ starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, in 2018, garnered critical acknowledgement and praise at the famous Cannes Film Festival.
