A glassful of Manto, buoyed by lyricism and spirit
Writers love readers who care. In this film, a fan approaches the storyteller and expresses his admiration. He enquires why the latest issue of a periodical lacks a new Manto instalment. “Something political must have taken up the pages,” Manto smiles, as if to suggest that the story is saved for another time. His nonchalance is deceptive. India is being partitioned. It is a sad day indeed when politics doesn’t leave room for prose.
And vice versa. It is simplistic to look at Manto’s dazzling stories — of smells and brothels, necrophilia and homelessness — and reduce him to an activist/ reformer, when the master of the short story was the ultimate observer. He used to boast he could write a story on any subject. Yet Tamasha, his very first story, was about Jallianwala Bagh. Every story may not be political, but prose makes room.
Unbound by fact, Nandita Das’s film is impressionistic fiction. Manto’s greatest hits feature prominently: the writer steps out for a smoke and one of his characters offers the light. This is a sweet, romanticised mood piece.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays Manto and he is brilliant in this deeply internalised role. His words are sharp, his tongue is dry, and it needs wetting. Siddiqui doesn’t resemble the writer, but captures his restless defiance and all-knowing air.
Rasika Dugal shines as Safia, Manto’s wife. Her role is a cliché — the longsuffering wife helplessly waiting for the drunkard husband — but Dugal, with her eyes and her sighs, drinks Manto up. Mrs Manto could have been a finer film. Safia is masterfully firm with the man she loves. He may write lines, but she draws them.
Maestro Zakir Hussain provides an intricate background score, occasionally highlighted by a discordant, drunken sitar twang. This sense of intoxication informs the visuals as well, with cinematographer Kartik Vijay’s otherwise-steady camera lurching when following Manto characters.
The film is affectionately directed but lacks narrative flow.
The Bombay portions are full of choppy scenes, buoyed by lyricism and spirit. The Lahore half is more linear but feels too obvious, with overt melodramatic manipulations.
Manto once famously (and only half-jokingly) suggested that his tombstone ask: ‘Who was the better storyteller: God or Manto?’ It is when writing Manto’s life that God may have come close. It is a life measured out in messy glugs of whiskey, with a writer dreaming about the bars of unsafe Bombay while drinking the unsafe liquor of Lahore. He belonged to them both, as he does to all who read him. Like the character from his most famous story, Saadat Hasan Manto was no land’s man.