Pakistan, Aug. 12 -- When Saadat Hasan Manto's Kali Shalwar first appeared in the 1940s, it was accused of obscenity. However, to a reader who revisits this story years later with a more reflective gaze, the label of "obscene" feels misplaced; it is more like a social misreading than lewd. Yet there is no explicit sex, no crude language, no sensational climax. The scandal, I believe, was never in what Manto wrote but in who he chose to write about.

The story follows Sultana, a sex worker newly arrived in Bombay. She lives in poverty with an indifferent lover, and as Muharram approaches, she is drawn to its solemn rituals of mourning. She dyes her old shirt and dupatta black, but insists on something she cannot afford, a new black shalwar...