The Urdu word badnaam , one among the many translations of which is the adjective ‘disgraced’, is used for many of Saadat Hasan Manto’s writings. For giving ample space to human desires — both material and sexual — in his works, he was slapped with obscenity charges at least thrice under India’s, and later Pakistan’s, Victorian penal codes. However, this badnaami was a trait he held with pride during a short life of 42 years as he depicted the emotional hollowness of a semi-feudal society that was incapable of giving its citizens the material or intellectual wherewithal to lead a complete human life.
Manto’s works — in all their salaciousness as well as sombreness — lend themselves to easy dramatisation by film-makers. The IMDB lists his name as a writer on 22 occasions. There has been, of late, a renewed zeal to present his life and writings on celluloid, with one biopic having released last year and another in the making.
However, while capturing the bare outlines of the plot will come easily even to a novice, encapsulating the moral ambiguity of his characters will involve someone willing to suspend his character judgment. Pakistani filmmaker Iqbal Shehzad was one of the many directors who sought to adapt a Manto’s story, jhumke (ear-rings). And, it may not have been a mere coincidence to have named it Badnaam . The film, which turns 50 this year, is said to be one of the biggest hits of Pakistani cinema during its period. However, Shehzad, while partly succeeding in presenting the gist of the story, became a victim of the same Victorian morality Manto spent much of his life protesting against.
>Neelo And Ejaz - Badnaam - Pakistani Urdu... by >m3techpakistan
The narrative is about a poor, unlettered housewife’s desire to own a pair of earrings, one that makes her indulge in an illicit affair with her rich landlord. Her honest husband, who makes a living by driving a horse cart, makes an earnest effort to buy her the modest piece of jewellery and feels deceived when he discovers the adultery. However, in a display of righteous rage, he doesn’t just punish her by putting an end to their relationship; he also takes away their daughter. The woman, condemned by both her husband and the landlord, is forced to take up prostitution for a living.
The short story, though not completely sympathetic to the lady, tries at least to empathise with her. She is rejected by her husband and forced to take up sex work but retains certain independence and dignity. She feels guilty of having deceived her husband but also dejected that not just he, but also the rest of society, imposed a life-long punishment on her. Finally, as the couple kill themselves, the wife realises that her husband had some love left in him, as she glimpses the earrings he had bought for her but was not able to give her.
The film, unlike the original story, is forcibly injected with principles of probity. The wife’s genuine want for jewellery is frowned upon initially by her husband. While her relationship with the rich landlord in the story is kept ambiguous, in the film the director feels the compulsion to create a villain out of the latter and shows him molesting her. Remaining true to the principle of patriarchy, the husband doesn’t just doubt his neighbour, he casts aspersions on the nature of his wife and deserts her. From this point, the wife becomes a zombie, a thanda gosht (cold meat), to use the title of another Manto story; during the climax, she is shown proving her chastity to her husband, in the process dying in his arms.
The tale is not a simple one of a misunderstanding husband, a victimised wife and a cruel society. After rejecting his wife, the husband gives his daughter the best education. Having developed an aversion to jewels, he considers his daughter’s taleem (education) the best ornament he can give her. When he discovers that she is in love with a college friend, he tries his best to understand her. His dislike for his wife is not shown as being completely unjustified. What comes across as injustice is the wife being forced to take up sex work after being disgraced for one act of adultery.
Badnaam ’s commercial success owed greatly to its music by Deebo Bhattacharya, a Bengali who had migrated to Pakistan in the mid 1950s and had a short career in its film industry. The mujra , Bade Bemuravat Hain by Suraiya Multanikar was the most popular of the lot, being placed in the film half-way after the leading lady has been pushed into prostitution and singing.
Another interesting track is the qawaali where the equation between a dejected lover and his beloved is, in what could now be considered chauvinistic, juxtaposed with that between a coloniser and the colonised. One of the antaras compares the disappointment suffered by the lover to the defeat of the British in Suez, the withdrawal of France from Algeria and the retreat of the American forces from Korea. And, to make the case more curious, its mukhda is borrowed from Mirza Ghalib’s poetry ( bahut beaabroo hokar, tere kooche se hum nikle ).
What makes Badnaam watchable, despite the melodrama and righteousness that is out of place in 21st century, is the music and some wonderful performances by Alauddin (as the husband), and Pakistani superstar Ejaz Durrani (as the gullible student who falls in love with the cart-driver’s daughter). However, the most complex character in Manto’s story, that of the wife, is played by a rather tepid Nabila, which takes away the sting from the original story. That apart, the need to force a good-conquers-evil climax, with the wife at the receiving end, robs Manto’s conception of its ambiguity.
A similar tale of a woman’s obsession with jewellry and her husband’s submissiveness in the face of her desires was presented in a rather haunting manner by Satyajit Ray in an adaptation of Tagore’s Monihara that formed a part of Teen Kanya . It gave a good example of the artistic completion a complex narrative, shorn of forced moral codes, could so successfully achieve.
Trivia:
The tune of Bade Bemuravvat Hain was used by Indian composer duo Nadeem-Shravan -- whose oeuvre comprises quite a few ‘tune-lifts’ from Pakistani songs -- for a number, Mohabbat Se Zyaada.
