1. Mannu Bhandari was an Indian author, screenplay writer, teacher, and playwright.
34 Facts About Mannu Bhandari
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Primarily known for her two Hindi novels, Aap Ka Bunty and Mahabhoj, Bhandari wrote over 150 short stories, several other novels, screenplays for television and film, and adaptations for theatre.
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Mannu Bhandari was a pioneer of the Nayi Kahani movement in Hindi literature, which focused on the aspirations of the emerging Indian middle class, and her work is notable for its depiction of the inner lives of middle-class working and educated women.
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Mannu Bhandari's writing has been extensively adapted for film and stage, including productions for Doordarshan, the BBC, and the National School of Drama in India.
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Mannu Bhandari's work has been widely translated into other Indian languages from Hindi, as well as French, German and English.
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Mannu Bhandari received numerous awards in India for her work, including the Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sansthan and the Vyas Samman.
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Mannu Bhandari was one of the most notable writers in 21st-century Hindi literature, with the Indian Express describing her as a "doyenne of the Hindi literary world," after her death.
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Mannu Bhandari was born on 3 April 1931, in Bhanpura, Madhya Pradesh and grew up largely in Ajmer, Rajasthan, where her father Sukhsampat Rai Mannu Bhandari, was a freedom fighter, social reformer and producer of the first English to Hindi and English to Marathi dictionaries.
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Mannu Bhandari was the youngest of five children.
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Mannu Bhandari was initially educated in Ajmer, and graduated from Calcutta University in West Bengal.
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Mannu Bhandari died on 15 November 2021 at the age of 90 in Gurgaon, India.
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Mannu Bhandari's first publication was a short story titled 'Main Har Gayi' in 1957, in the Hindi Kahaani magazine.
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Mannu Bhandari followed it with a novel, Ek Inch Muskaan in 1961, co-authored with her husband, Rajendra Yadav.
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Ek Inch Muskaan was an experimental novel, narrating the story of a marriage between a man and woman, with Yadav and Mannu Bhandari writing for each character in alternate chapters.
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Mannu Bhandari had continued to write short stories for Hindi magazines during this period, and she followed the success of Ek Inch Muskaan with four collections of short stories, which were published between 1961 and 1970.
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In 1971, Mannu Bhandari published her second book, and first solo novel, titled Aap Ka Bunty.
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Mannu Bhandari took up residence temporarily at the Miranda House College in Delhi, to complete the novel.
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Mannu Bhandari continued to write short stories through her career, publishing in Hindi magazines as well as in Indian Literature, and the Journal of South Asian Literature.
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Mannu Bhandari published several more collections of these stories in Hindi, including Ek Plate Sailab, Teen Nigahon Ki Ek Tasvir, Yahi Sach Hai, Trishanku and Sampoorna Kahaniyan.
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Mannu Bhandari's works have been frequently adapted for production in film, television, and on stage.
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In 1974, a story by Mannu Bhandari titled, Yehi Sach Hai was adapted into a film by Basu Chatterjee, called Rajnigandha.
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Mannu Bhandari's story was about a young woman, recording her feelings about her past and present lovers, in a diary, in an attempt to choose between them.
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Mannu Bhandari continued to collaborate with Chatterjee over the next few years, writing screenplays for a television serial titled Rajani.
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Mannu Bhandari adapted a story by Bengali writer Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, for a film that Chatterjee made, titled Swami, in 1977, but disagreed publicly with Chatterjee's decision to have the heroine of the story fall at her husband's feet at the end of the film, rather than be embraced by him.
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Mannu Bhandari wrote a very successful play, titled Bina Deevaron Ke Ghar.
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Mannu Bhandari's writing can be situated within the early stages of the Nayi Kahani movement, a Hindi literary movement in the 1950s and 1960s that focused on the aspirations and problems of the educated middle class in post-Independent, post-colonial India.
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Writers like Rajendra Yadav, Mohan Rakesh and Kamleshwar used the format of short stories, giving the movement the name of Nayi Kahani or New Stories; Mannu Bhandari followed this pattern, but wrote novels as well.
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Mannu Bhandari's style has been characterised by critics as marked with disregard for formal structure.
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Mannu Bhandari has been closely involved in several film, television, and stage adaptations of her works.
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Mannu Bhandari's stories have been included in the Hindi curriculum for schools, set by the National Council of Educational Research and Training.
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In 1986, Mannu Bhandari sold the rights to her second novel, Aap Ka Bunty and it was adapted for a film produced by Dharmendra Goyal and directed by Sisir Mishra.
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Mannu Bhandari subsequently sued the filmmakers, Kala Vikas Pictures Pvt Ltd, on the grounds that the adaptation distorted her novel and consequently violated Section 57 of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957.
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The judgment in this case, Manu Bhandari v Kala Vikas Motion Pictures Ltd is a landmark decision in Indian copyright law that clarified the scope of an author's moral rights under Indian copyright law.
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Mannu Bhandari wrote in Hindi, but her work has been frequently translated to Indian and foreign languages, including Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Manipuri, French, German, Hungarian and English.