Manto's daughter on Nandita Das' film: People should know the loving father he was

By Gurpreet Kaur

on September 05, 2018

Nandita Das is all geared up to immerse us completely into the world of controversial and brutally honest author and playwright Saadat Hassan Manto. Her upcoming biopic titled Manto, featuring Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the lead, follows the most tumultuous years in the life of the iconoclastic writer and those of the countries -- India and Pakistan -- which Manto inhabited and chronicled. But it was her passion for bringing his story on screen with effortless brilliance that convinced the writer's daughters, Nuzhat Arshad and Nusrat Jalal, to part with their story.

In a chat with a leading daily, Nuzhat revealed how the family first met the filmmaker in Lahore in March 2007 and said, "I believe Manto's personal life hasn't been given its due share of coverage. People should know the loving father and affectionate husband that he was. He was castigated during his lifetime, but he continues to be as relevant today as he was sixty-three years ago."

It is not unknown that the late Urdu writer refused to sugar-coat unpalatable truths in his stories, whether it dealt with his family or society at large. However, Nuzhat talked about how it was her mother Safia who shielded them in troubled times when the writer was engulfed in a series of defamatory allegations. She also remembered her father as a man who firmly believed in gender equality and never shied away from helping around the house.

In fact, she credits Nandita for unravelling the other facets of the famed writer rather than the usual ones. "Nandita worked closely with the family to understand the intricacies of Manto on a personal level, unlike Sarmad who never bothered asking us about what he was like as a person," she said adding that, "Nandita has essentially focussed on my father's life when he was in Bombay."

Produced by HP Studios, Filmstoc and Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, Manto also stars Rasika Dugal, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Rishi Kapoor and Divya Dutta in key roles. The film is slated to release on September 21.