''Manju'' () is a 1983

Malayalam film Malayalam cinema, also referred to as Mollywood, is a segment of Indian cinema dedicated to producing films in the Malayalam language, primarily spoken in Kerala and the Lakshadweep islands. It encompasses both the mainstream film industry ...

based on the novel of the same name by

M. T. Vasudevan Nair Madath Thekkepaattu Vasudevan Narayanan Nair (15 July 1933 – 25 December 2024) was an Indian author, lecturer, Screenwriter, screenplay writer and film director. He was a prolific and versatile writer in modern Malayalam literature, and was o ...

. The film was scripted and directed by M. T. Vasudevan Nair himself and stars Sangeeta Naik, Nanditha Bose, Indira, Sankar Mohan and Desh Maheshwari.

Plot

Set in

Nainital Nainital (Kumaoni language, Kumaoni: ''Naintāl''; ) is a town and headquarters of Nainital district of Kumaon division, Uttarakhand, India. It is the judicial capital of Uttarakhand, the Uttarakhand High Court, High Court of the state being ...

, ''Manju'' is about Vimala Devi, a teacher in a boarding school, who waits in hope for the winter of her discontent to vanish. Another important character is Buddhu, who waits for his Englishman father to return to Nainital. Loneliness and endless waiting are recurring motifs in the film.

Cast

* Sangeeta Naik as Vimala *

Nanditha Bose Nanditha Bose is an Indian actress in Malayalam movies. She was a prominent lead actress during the 1970s in Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi and Bengali films. She was well noted for her performance in the Malayalam movies '' Achaani'' (1973), '' Pan ...

as Mother * Indira as Younger Sister * Kalpana as Rashmi * Shankar Mohan as Sudheer * C. S. Dubey as Amar Singh * Desh Maheshwari as Budhu * Dinesh Thakur as Sardarji

Soundtrack

The music was composed by

M. B. Sreenivasan Manamadurai Balakrishnan Sreenivasan (19 September 1925 – 9 March 1988), or MBS, was a South Indian music director who worked mainly in the Malayalam and Tamil film industries. He was born to an orthodox Tamil Brahmin family on 19 Sept ...

and the lyrics were written by

Gulzar Gulzar (born Sampooran Singh Kalra; 18 August 1934) is an Indian Urdu poetry, Urdu poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, and film director known for his works in Hindi cinema. He is regarded as one of greatest Urdu poets of this era. He starte ...

. All the songs are in Hindi as the film is completely set in Nainital.

Hindi version

The novel also had a

Hindi-language Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of the Government of India, alongside English, and is the ''lin ...

film adaptation titled ''Sarath Sandhya''.

References

External links

*
''Manju''
at the Malayalam Movie Database 1983 films 1980s Malayalam-language films Films with screenplays by M. T. Vasudevan Nair Films based on Indian novels Films set in Uttarakhand Films directed by M. T. Vasudevan Nair {{1980s-Malayalam-film-stub