A storyteller true to her words

Hindi writer Mannu Bhandari, who lived an unconventional life, gave a voice to women of the ’50s and ’60s trying to do the same

Many have been introduced to the work of the wonderful Hindi writer Mannu Bhandari through a film. Rajnigandha (1974), a surprise hit directed by the late Basu Chatterji, starring Vidya Sinha and Amol Palekar, had the rather unorthodox story of an independent young woman trying to decide between two men, an old flame and her loyal current boyfriend.

The short story it was based on, Yahi Sach Hai (1966), was even more unconventional for its time: Written by Bhandari in the form of a personal diary, it chronicles the fluctuating emotions of Deepa, a research scholar who lives alone in Kanpur, and is in a relationship with an amiable if predictable young man, Sanjay. He visits her at home (always arriving with a bunch of rajnigandha flowers), they go out in the evenings. She welcomes his kisses and embraces, writing in her diary: “No girl gives a man this kind of right before marriage. But I have.” Because she loves Sanjay. But that love is tested when Deepa goes to Calcutta for a job interview and runs into Nisheeth, the young man she’d been involved with as an 18-year-old.

Yahi Sach Hai was one of dozens of short stories that Mannu Bhandari wrote from 1955 onwards, that gave a voice to women who came of age in those years. Bhandari articulated their anxieties and aspirations, their attempts to break free of confining social mores. Sometimes her characters succeeded, sometimes they failed.

Bhandari was associated with the vibrant

Nayi Kahani literary movement of the 1950s and ’60s that explored a rapidly changing post-independence urban India. Major Nayi Kahani themes included lonely, conflicted men migrating to anonymous big cities, women beginning to assert their individuality, and the shifting equations between the two sexes. The movement was spearheaded by three strikingly talented male writers: Rajendra Yadav (whom Bhandari married in 1959; they eventually separated), Mohan Rakesh, and Kamleshwar. At the time, the Hindi literary world as a whole was a solidly male-dominated space. But Bhandari held her own, and her work was celebrated.

Bhandari was unusual in another respect; she had a family, an uninterrupted career, and made time for her writing. She was a lecturer, first in Calcutta and then at Delhi University’s Miranda House college for women (her subject was Hindi literature). She also kept house, raised her daughter Rachana and wrote. She wrote about women’s lives in all their complexity — about mothers who wanted to raise their daughters to be independent but recoiled when that independence became too much to handle (Trishanku), of women who ultimately rejected cheating men (Stree Subodhini; Abhineta), women who walked out of unhappy marriages, to everyone’s shock and horror (Deewar, Bachche aur Barsaat). But she also told stories of women who ended up sacrificing their careers at the altars of their husbands’ professional success (Nayi Naukri), who were unable to break through the social conditioning of their growing-up years (Ek Kamjor Ladki ki Kahani), who were tormented by unfulfilled marital and sexual desires (Keel aur Kasak) or trapped in suffocating marriages (Ghutan).

Bhandari doesn’t keep well so I spoke to Rachana Yadav, an accomplished Kathak exponent. She said that her mother always emphasised education, the need to be financially independent, and not be subjugated by anyone, man or woman. She remembers her mother dressing up and driving to work at Miranda House every morning, coming back and slipping into the role of mother and homemaker, going into the kitchen to see if everything was on schedule, then in the evening settling down on the floor on a gadda in front of a small chowki to do her writing.

“There would be gatherings of writers in our home all the time,” Yadav says. “My mother would participate in the discussions but at the same time, she’d ensure the snacks were circulating smoothly. She took pride in her role as hostess.”

Bhandari turns 90 this year. This landmark birthday is as good a time as any to raise a toast to a luminous writer who shone a light on the troubled and brave women of her time.