A Short Film review "for India of Tomorrow and In Defence of Freedom" (Manto)

Friends! here you will find the link of  a short film on Manto made by Nandita Das shared by Our Professor Dr. Dilip Barad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFU281gOArk

First of all I am thankful to Prof. Dilip Barad for sharing this short film.

It has been only 1 and half year before, I came across the name ‘Sahdat Hasan Manto’, while my eldest sister was reviewing his book and she told me about Manto. My interest began to raise in his short- stories. And in last September I have presented one research paper on ‘Exiled and Banned writers and their selected works’; which also includes Manto’s ‘Khol Do’.

“If you find my stories dirty, the society you are living is dirty.  With my stories, I expose only truth.”
                                                        He further included,
“If you cannot bear these stories then the society is unbearable. Who am I to remove the clothes of this society, which itself is naked. I don’t even try to cover it, because it is not my job, that’s the job of dressmakers.”

In this 6 minute short film, Nandita has tried well to capture the major part of Manto’s nature. And I admires Nawazuddin Siddiqui; who plays a  role of Mnato, because he has been succeed to give enough justice to Mnto’s Character, we can see Manto in that classroom.

 

Some well-known quotes by Manto always lead me towards my sense of ‘self- critiquing.’ As we can have for i.e,

 

 

It is well-known that Manto lived his life in exiled; he was not accepted in India as well in Pakistan for his self- critiquing works.    He has been many a time imprisoned for his usage of naked (slang) or open language in his stories. There for i would like say,

         

“I have seen the people; who speak refined language to hide themselves behind masks, simultaneously I have seen the people; who speak naked, but there is nothing to hide with them.”

 

Ultimately, I found this short film truly mind captured, and also put me in dilemma to go deep into Manto’s life and study his background as its ends with an abrupt line by Manto “Even though I close my eyes, what will I do of my soul (internal side)?”

Left the end abrupt and open for the whatever interpretations or it can be taken as a question on himself!.