Empty Bottles, Empty Cans

(Penguin Petit)

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If there is one thing that Manto has always wanted to understand, but never has, is this: why is that singles—men not interested in getting married, ever—are so unnaturally obsessed with empty bottles and cans. Be it his fifty-year-old relative, his friend who is a reader at the high court, or the retired Colonel Sahib, all of them have one thing in common: a collection of empty bottles and cans spread all over their homes.

Manto wishes to make sense of this fascination, but it isn’t something that can be explained easily in psychological terms. Until, one day, he meets Ram Saroop, the superstar, who is not just single but has an entire room full of empty rum bottles and cigarette packs in his small flat by the sea at Shivaji Park. Will Ram Saroop finally help Manto solve this bizarre mystery?

One of the lighter stories from Manto’s repertoire of short fiction, Empty Bottles, Empty Cans is an interesting take on the concept of emptiness and a generation of single men experiencing it.