
Manjuben is a picture of hard work, independent judgement and a strong desire to be rich so as to be able to call the shots in her professional relations with men. By her own admission, Manjuben had once owned as many as eight heavy-duty, long-distance trucks which carried all sorts of cargo from Mousa or Vadodara in Gujarat to Delhi and other north Indian destinations. She would be at the wheel, driving during the day or night for long stretches of time, accompanied by an experienced, elderly man who would take over when she felt the need for a nap. She has, of her own choice, reduced the scope of her business, currently content with just one truck that is shown needing to be repaired once in a while. The way she goes about ordering male mechanics to attend to the vehicle while she goes to a nearby saloon for a shave and a face massage, speaks volumes about how Manjuben has decided to assert her rights to a unique independent existence in a patriarchal society that shows little or no sign of improving.
Manjuben wears what we call “men’s clothes” – a loose-fitting, full-sleeved bush-shirt, trousers that give her enough space to go about her work comfortably, and leather chappals. She has a tilak on her forehead, her hair is cropped short, she wears a kara in the manner that many Sikh truck-drivers do, she takes gutka with a flourish, and she is quite at ease with the men she comes across at the wayside dhaba where she stops to have tea and snacks, and loosen her limbs. Much of the ‘action’, such as it is, however, takes place on the highway, which is understandable since we are watching unfolding before our eyes the story of a very different sort of truck owner-cum-driver. Shot largely in the cinema verite style, crammed with details, both verbal and visual, the FTII-trained Sherna Dastur’s road movie is as much about a lone woman’s struggle to succeed in a man’s world, as it is about a society in, arguably, slow transition; a society which is being forced to come to terms with a stout-hearted individual who couldn’t care less about her ‘rebellious’ looks, attire, language, mannerisms, in short her entire persona.
Manjuben’s looks are androgynous; she takes care to look that way; she openly enjoys looking that way; showing the middle finger, so to say, to a traditionally lascivious male society. Her spare time, she likes to spend with her girlfriends, the different ‘bens’, with whom she goes out on long drives and has herself photographed at small-time studios. She tells the camera that she was in her teens when she was married off much against her wishes. Although she soon after sought and obtained a divorce, she remains respectful to her family elders, and of course to her gods on whose goodwill she has to depend for her safety on the road littered with the occasional remains of a truck that had met with ill-fate. Manjuben is both serious and fun-filled as she declares herself to be “half-man, half-woman”. There is a homo-erotic edge to her life and lifestyle which Dastur, quite insightfully, does not enter, yet leaves a space for the viewer to explore. The space is created by means of a couple of snapshots showing Manujuben with her ‘intimate friends’.
Come to think of it, Manjuben is a priceless piece of subversion that the ‘manly’ world of Gujarat (read India) is badly in need of, perhaps more today than ever before. In other words, this is a personal story that couldn’t have been more public, considering the style, the form, the aesthetics and the hidden politics that the director espouses to bring to the fore a myth-shattering, stereotype-deriding working woman who happens to be self-employed and is answerable to none save herself.
If one wishes, one can justifiably read Dastur’s film-on-the-move as a striking retort to the stranglehold of medieval orthodoxy on present-day ‘Bharat’; as a fearsome anti-thesis to the manner in which the RSS would like the ‘virtuous’ bharatiya nari to conduct herself – as a private person willingly submitting herself to her man, her pati-devata within the strict confines of her family home; overjoyed begetter of many sons and one or two daughters; and efficient keeper of the home at all times and in all ways.
For all one knows, Manjuben maybe in the habit of voting saffron, but even in that case, it may be said that, unwittingly, she is a naysayer to the politics that claims “below the navel, all women are unclean”. Manu, the sage, would have certainly come down heavily on this feisty child of Gujarat, caught for the past several decades in the grip of frenzied hostility to Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis, the poor and the homeless, and in the context of the present film, to women with a mind of their own. The viewer does not have to strain himself or herself, or be remarkably acute, to realise that Dastur is a craftswoman of conviction. Her film is a believable portrait of a highway woman day and night on the move, to carve out a bank-account and thereby an identity all her own. Cruel as it may sound, a woman, anywhere on earth, without an income of her own, is destined to remain till her last breath, a beggar woman.
Even as one is likely to be attracted to Manjuben, Truck Driver (2002) in its totality, one cannot be blamed if he or she has the feeling that Sherna Dastur has made a somewhat “safe portrait” of a unique woman, professionally speaking. Practically everyone in the film, man or woman, appears to be in something akin to awe of Manjuben. Perhaps, it would have contributed to the richness, to the density, of the woman’s narrative if at least one or two critical voices were also on view. For, the kind of life Manjuben leads, at both the personal and the public level, is bound to arouse dislike, jealousy, or even contempt in some women; and in many men, fear. Inclusion of such contrarian voices would have added meat to the argument that the need of the moment is more, not less, daredevil characters like Manjuben to make our society a more wholesome entity. At the end of the day, it is difficult to believe that everything is hunky-dory in Manjuben’s life. Glimpses of bumps on the road would have added diverse meanings to the daily precarious journey of a very special woman. One is not talking so much of the physical dangers, but the possibilities of emotional distress born of long-held prejudices about a woman’s role in society, or the nature of female sexuality as hinted in the film.
Although Dastur’s film was made many years ago, for whatever reason, this reviewer was able to get down to writing about it on the eve of the commencement of the proposed nationwide ‘celebrations’ marking the centenary of the RSS in 2025. This being the case, this film should be shown, with renewed energy, along with others of its kind, across the length and breadth of the country to counter the many divisive policies and practices of the organisation.
Vidyarthy Chatterjee is a Calcutta-based veteran writer-critic.