Saadat Hasan Manto > Quotes > Quote > Tosif liked it
“... इधर-उधर से कई अफ़सर दौड़े आए और उन्होंने देखा कि वह आदमी जो 15 बरस तक दिन-रात अपनी दाँगों पर खड़ा रहा था, औंधे मुँह लेटा है-उधर ख़ारदार तारों के पीछे हिंदुस्तान था, इधर वैसे ही तारों के पीछे पाकिस्तान ; दरमियान में ज़मीन के उस टुकड़े पर जिसका कोई नाम नहीं था, टोबा टेक सिंह पड़ा था.”
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Rough English translation:
"... from here and there a number of officers came running, and they saw that the man who for fifteen years, day and night, had constantly stayed on his feet, lay prostrate. There, behind barbed wire, was Hindustan. Here, behind the same kind of wire, was Pakistan. In between, on that piece of ground that had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh."
Toba Tek Singh is both the name of the main character of the story and the name of the village in Pakistan where the character came from. In that sense I found this quote (and story) very clever because it seems to also talk about the village. The ambiguity it faces after the border is drawn, for even if Toba Tek Singh is geographically in Pakistan it certainly is in India when it comes to other things. So the metaphor of Toba Tek Singh stuck between the borders of two countries is true both for the protagonist and the village.