Mannu Bhandari’s name will always be inscribed in golden words on the literary map of India. A great storyteller, who will always remain re...
Mannu Bhandari’s name will always be inscribed in golden words on the literary map of India. A great storyteller, who will always remain relevant as her stories are as touching to a common Indian homemaker as they are to intellectuals all over the globe, died on November 15 in Gurugram.
Her in-depth exploration of emotions were rendered effortlessly in her stories. Film producers in the 1970s rallied around her to seek permission for films based on her stories and novels, but she was adamant that she would not allow any twists and turns to be added to make them more appealing to the audiences.
I met her for the first time in 1994, when I was researching her stories for my MPhil thesis. Having read stories like “Nai Nukri”, “Yahi Sach Hai”, “Swami”, and others, I had expected a very modern woman with a crisp saree, some make-up, and exotic perfume – but to my surprise, there appeared a woman who was humble, down-to-earth in her demeanour, and traditional in her attire, which was not totally in-sync with her writings.
Her protagonists have always inspired me. When I was in class seven, we read a story by Mannu Bhandari,...
