As told to Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; July 30, 2018)

As an actor, I always wanted to play a role that would require ‘prep’ because many of my characters were from a context too familiar and so eminently believable with the result that I was driven primarily by my instincts. Of course, every character requires one to learn new skills to make the portrayal more authentic so for Bawandar, I had to practice walking in the dessert with pots on my head, and in Earth, I actually learnt to fly a kite. For the widow’s role in Deepa Mehta’s Water, I shaved my head while for Rani, I had begun to learn fencing. Unfortunately, neither materialised. Also, having acted in 10 languages, learning my dialogues with the right pronunciation and meaning was a challenge too.

Direction is a whole different beast. One has to ‘prep’ from day one of the inception till the very end. I am not a trained filmmaker, nor have I assisted anyone to learn the tricks of the trade. What has helped me are the multiple things I’ve experienced and observed in life. Also, some subconscious learning must have happened through the 40-odd films I’ve acted in. But there is lot more to making a film than just the shooting which I was privy to earlier. The exciting part about direction is that every phase allows you to dabble in a different creative field — writing, finding locations, casting, gathering the crew, editing, sound, music, songs, graphics, visual effects and so on. It is like doing many different things, but all in the service of one.

For years, I had thought of making a film based on Saadat Hasan Manto’s short stories, but it was his essays that helped the idea expand beyond them. Researching and writing was time consuming and hectic, but that’s what formed the backbone of the biopic. I’ve read Manto extensively but given how prolific he was, I can’t claim to have been fully exhaustive in my research. It took five long years of reading his works, getting people’s inputs, writing several drafts of the script to finally feel equipped, both emotionally and creatively, to tell the story that so needed to be told.

I didn’t grow up in an Urdu speaking household, but growing up in Delhi, where we would speak a mix of Hindi and Urdu, came in handy. The dialogues had to be easy enough so as not to alienate the audience but not so simplistic either, that it compromised the authenticity of the period. The first few drafts of the script were done with my consultant Mir Ali Hussain. He’d read aloud to me Manto’s works in Urdu that were not available in Devanagari script or in English. Thereafter, many in Mumbai and Lahore helped me with it. My own Urdu improved exponentially with this film.

As Manto died so young (at the age of 42), there were very few who had actually met him. I went a few times to Lahore to meet his three daughters and his grand-niece, the eminent historian Ayesha Jalal. Apart from her own books that she gave me, the stories that the family shared were precious. No book could’ve given me the insights they did, not just about Manto, but also about his wife, Safia, as very little has been written about her. Safia’s sister, Zakia Jalal, is one of the few people who had a lot to share. Little nuances that make the characters rich and believable came from those conversations.

When I began writing the script, I wanted to journey through 10 years of his life but with every draft I realised I was trying to cover too much. I ended up focusing on the four most tumultuous years in Manto’s life (1946–50). What to include and what not to, was the most challenging aspect of writing. I wanted to introduce him to the widest audience possible and at the same time, give precious nuggets to his admirers, who are the film’s natural allies. It was not an easy process but everything I have kept, I think, is more compelling and relevant than everything I had to let go.

The learnings were not just creative, but also emotional and spiritual. In fact, ‘letting go’ has been one of the most valuable gifts of this experience. I was tested at every stage. First with the writing, then, dealing with constraints of budget and locations and finally editing. Direction is, after all, about making the right choices and also letting go of things one has no control over.

Manto, the man and the film, both have helped me grow in the direction I want to. And that I am grateful for.


From left to right: Nandita Das in Bawandar (2000), with Shabana Azmi during prep for Water, with Aamir Khan in Earth (1998)