SOCIAL SCIENTIST Which surely is the reason that, as you have quite likely heard, when people finally chance to see their literary idols face to face, they inevitably discover the grief that comes from the crashing of clay gods. One day, some time after the death of Manto, my colleague and noted Gujrati poet Swapnastha, turning the pages of a flew issue of New Age, suddenly shot out a query at me: "Would that be Manto in the picture?" Yes, it was unquestionably a photograph of Manto. Jet-black sherwani, sharp intelligent eyes, eyes that were mischievous and restless - eyes that appeared to tear their way through the very heart of his spectacles! A mocking, impudent, exulting smile playing on his lips, as it were to say, "I know you through and through, all you custodians of virtue and piety." "Yes, that is Manto alright." A tremor of disbelief flickered over Swapnastha's features. As he examined Manto's picture from a variety of angles, I could see him trying to judge whether I was fooling around, both with the thoroughly good man seen in the photograph, and with the late Saadat Hasan Manto. Swapnastha it seems had long savoured a conviction that Manto must look like one of your top-class bohemians, possibly one rather advanced in years; and the picture he was looking at gave little confirmation of any such imagery. These notions had no doubt originated when after sampling some of Manto's works - those that happened to have been translated into Gujrati - Swapnastha had hastened to form a quite definite mental picture of their author. To this imagery the rich store of apocryphal fictions and narratives put into circulation by Manto's friends and acolytes had no doubt contributed in fair measure. All the same, it was gratifying to know that Manto, the master of Urdu short-story, was also familiar to the literary circles of another language. They too had read his tales, had thought about and reflected upon them, and had formed opinions in regard to them. How very extraordinary is it, then, that Manto's fame should have come to rest primarily on his reputation as the most notorious of Urdu's literary figures. No more so, however, than the fact of his acclaim prospering in direct proportion to his infamy! Whatever their disconcertment at some of his more anarchistic posturings, Manto's detractors have had to join his adherents in acknowledging that among all his contemporaries, judging solely by the yardstick of craftsmanship and artistic technique, none could hope to rival his armory of keenly