Jashn-e-Manto

Naseerudin Shah speaks at Jashn-e-Manto.

                                           

 -Brian Mendonca                                                                                 

To be honest, I am still bleary-eyed as I write this. Having slept at 4 a.m. after being rivetted to the 2019 HD version of the movie Manto (2015) directed by Sarmad Khoosat. It is a biopic on Manto's life (played by Khoosat himself) and is a good three hours and more. The film embraces many languages, viz. Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi and English. The screenplay by Shahid Nadeem is brilliant, introducing phrases of Urdu songs in the first thirty minutes to give momentum to the film. The music is nuanced using many natural sounds of birds, crickets, and tongas on the streets.

The movie intersperses within its narratives, vignettes of Manto's stories (afsane). It dwells lovingly on the relationship between Manto (1912-1955) and his family comprising of his wife Safia (Sania Saeed) and his three daughters. It is set in Lahore in the late-1940s; the years leading up to the Partition of India in 1947 and the state censorship in Pakistan after that. 

Acidity kicked in at 2 - or was it 1.45? - but I quelled it with a sweet potato. I wanted to end what I had started. Like the Zeigarnik effect. 

Here was a man in the throes of two cities Mumbai and Lahore, trying to make sense of both. However, he does say memorably when asked to return to his beloved Bambai: 'Jo sheher ek dafa chhod diya, vaha vapis kahi laut kar nahi aaya. Amritsar, Aligarh, Dilli, Bambai. Sab station guzar gaye. Ab mera dabba Lahore station pe khada heh - vo bhi begair engine.'  [I have never returned to a city I have left. Amritsar, Aligarh, Delhi, Bambai. Now my coach is in Lahore - and it has no engine!']

Manto's family hailed from Kashmir. They moved to the plains in the early nineteenth century. But they kept the traditions of Kashmir alive. Towards the end of the movie, when Manto counsels the cricket team he treats them to lunch mentioning proudly that his wife cooks the Kashmiri dish very well.

Manto was born in Ludhiana, Punjab. He travelled to many cities in India in search of work. After the Partition he left for Pakistan in 1948. At that time he was working on the story/screenplay of the film Mirza Ghalib directed by Sohrab Modi. The film was released in India in 1954.

As the biopic progresses it get darker. Manto is assailed by a daemon in black (Nimra Bucha). She is from his past. He imagines her sitting at his bedside at night, the fan twirling overhead. She urges him to write her story. Finally as he cycles past her she lets out a shriek and falls to the ground. Manto later learns that she was with child and she died giving birth. 

This unhinges Manto who then has to be committed again to a mental asylum where he is administered shock therapy with disastrous consequences. Drinking finishes him. The asylum scenes occur in the beginning and the end of the film.  After Manto is injected with routine sedatives in the asylum he tries to rouse the inmates by pointing out to them that they are made to be patients (mareez) here not prisoners (mujrim). He invokes the Lunacy Act to seek justice. 

All along Manto has to endure withering criticism from his mother-in-law at home. 'Kahani bhej bhej ke, khandaan ki hifazat nahi hoti,' she observes satirically. ['A household is not maintained by selling stories.']

The strength of Khoosat's Manto lies in his dramatization of  Manto's short stories. 'Thanda Ghosht' (1950) is enacted with the soulful (and sinister) Punjabi folk song 'Mehram Dilaan de Mahi' in the background. The picturization of 'Toba Tek Singh' is vivid. In 'The License' Neeti - widowed and denied work - is forced to compromise herself. In 'Khol Do' the terror of Sirajuddin is palpable.

The courtesan Naazo (Arjumand Rahim) is full of praise for Manto's writing. It is for him that she sings Ghalib's shayri, 'Aah ko chahiye ek umr asar hote tak / Kaun jeeta heh teri zulf ke sar hote tak. [Longing needs a lifetime to have any effect / Who has won the privilege of arranging your tresses?]. Cloaked in the night she comes to warn him, asking him to be vigilant (hoshiyar). Manto characteristically replies, 'Hoshiyar rehne ke liye hosh mein rehna padta, aur voh mere bas ki nahi.' [To be vigilant one must be sane, and that is impossible for me.]

A hint of tenderness is seen when he asks the actress Noor Jehan (Saba Qamar) to come to his house to humour a young fan of four on his birthday. Manto wrote a vivid non-fiction piece on her. 

Manto's honesty is lauded. After all for what else does a writer write? He refuses to be bought by the US consul who visits his house. 'Manto is not for sale!' he thunders. His sardonic 'Letter to Uncle Sam' (1951) is seen as too hard-hitting. 

Throughout Manto is obsessed with his legacy. How will people remember him? He looks for answers to the dark sea at Karachi -- the same sea over which he had come by boat from Bombay. But now he has been summoned to the Karachi court from Lahore for his hearing concerning the publication of his story titled 'Upar, Niche aur Darmiyan'. ['Above, Below and In-Between']. His muse whispers that his stories will outlive him. His destiny is to write.

Perhaps the movie attempts too much.  But it gives a glimpse of one of the greatest writers of our time - who left at the tender age of 42.

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Pic by Brian Mendonca taken on Zoom meet on 11th May 2021. Programme organized by Katha Kathan on the 109th birth anniversary of Saadat Hasan Manto. Sources: wordswithoutborders(dot)org; wasafiri(dot)org; tarshi(dot)net; dawn(dot)com; poetrysoup(dot)com; Intro. by Matt Reek to Saadat Hasan Manto: Bombay Stories (2012). All translations mine. Updated on 14 May 2021.