Manto (review)

Readers of Sa‘adat Hasan Manto’s Urdu short-stories, radio and screen-plays, essays and a novel, recognize him as a man not possessed by ideology. A Muslim by birth, the chain-smoking, whiskey-guzzling author was never a zealous practitioner. Neither a Pakistani nor an Indian nationalist, socialist or liberal, his writings reflect the uncomfortable truths glossed over by ideologues of all stripes. The director, Nandita Das’s account of Manto’s life and work deserves praise on multiple levels, but none rises higher than her attempt to capture exactly this aspect of the brilliant writer’s personality. Criticism, on the other hand, is due on the grounds that she seems unable to halt the intrusion of her own ideological assumptions.

Portraying roughly a decade in Manto’s life—his last ten years or so— the film, like those years, is punctuated by the violence and trauma of British India’s Partition. Before the Partition, Manto had lived for some time in Bombay, though originally from Punjab. The tone of the moment is set, not by introducing the viewer directly to Manto, but through a dramatization of one of his early short-stories, Das Rupaye—a device flawlessly employed five times during the course of the film. The first is the tale of an underage sex-worker handed over to a trio of dapper, young men by her widowed mother eager to make ends meet. Although the girl only acquiesces to please her mother, a day spent roaming the streets and frolicking on the beaches of the city ends with the romanced daughter refusing to take her financial compensation as payment. With no mention of sex, even if economic pressures leading to prostitution are highlighted, the story begins with sweetness, and continues in this manner into the next scene, where the viewer meets the thirty-something Manto (starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui) for the first time—sensitively brought to life by Siddiqui in this scene, and in every other one that follows. Manto’s wife, Safia, (starring Rasika Dugal), admiringly reads the closing lines of Das Rupaye in a comfortable home. They dote over their baby daughter as Manto signs off on his story with one of his father’s collection of pens before stepping out to greet the children playing in his neighborhood. Dugal’s brilliant portrayal of Safia—delicate, yet not subservient—is also worthy of recognition.

All is not so sweet beyond the confines of Manto’s private world. His screen plays are being rewritten to fit the market, and producers prey not only on aspiring young actresses, but also on Manto shortchanging him. He and his friends, including his literary-peer, Ismat Chughtai, (convincingly brought to life by Rajshri Deshpande), are hauled up on charges of obscenity and receive hate-mail for their works. His progressive credentials and assumed lack of concern for workers’ rights, British atrocities and national liberation are questioned. Others feel he over-emphasizes such provocative themes as prostitution. Manto’s response: “If you cannot bear my stories, it is because we live in unbearable times.” Thus, the viewer is led into another of Manto’s short-stories, Sau Kaindal Pawar Ka Balb; one in which an exhausted sex-worker pressed into another trick bashes her abusive pimp’s head in with a brick.

Partition looms through all the above; skillfully told through such scenes as the one in which Manto eavesdrops on two Muslim shopkeepers debating whether to stay in India or move on to Pakistan. The crux of the matter for the former is that his ancestors are buried under his feet, while for the other shopkeeper such sentiments are violently uprooted by the Hindu chauvinism directed at his community. Manto listens, ever the observer, but must ultimately face the same dilemma. He chooses the roots he has planted in Bombay, only to find that the city has changed after Partition. Muslim screen-writers are no longer welcome in the film industry. Even his longtime friend, the...