“He has the Midas touch” may well be an adage for the versatile Manav Kaul. Renowned for his slick acting in celebrated Bollywood films like Badla, Thappad, and Jolly LLB 2, Manav is equally masterful behind the pen. When he dabbles in playwriting, he delivers immersive theatrical works, includingIlhaam, Park, and Shakkar Ke Paanch Daane. When he is not acting, playwriting, or directing, Manav can often be found in quaint cafés, channelling his creative energies into writing poetry, fiction, or travelogues.
When approached for this interview about his travelogue A Mountain, A Lake and A Song, published by Penguin and translated from Hindi by Vaibhav Sharma, Manav responded with a congenial yes. Manav turned up on Google Meet in a blue T-shirt, sipping tea and holding a copy of his book, which is a meditative account of his inner world that he wrote during his ramblings around the small cities of Europe. He divulges a fascinating story about the genesis of this book, “I used to dream that one day I’d be writing a novel. But I didn’t have the patience for it. I was writing short stories even when travelling from London to Paris, and from Paris to Chamonix.”
After writing around 40 pages, he sent it to his publisher who insisted that he finish the book.
A Mountain, A Lake and A Song
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
On his stints in the different realms of art — cinema, direction, theatre and writing — Manav tells us, “If you see me in a film or on a set, you wouldn’t believe that I have written a book because I’m completely into being an actor at that time. Because of theatre, I started reading a lot of interesting playwrights first. Then I realized that I needed to write too.” This carved the way for writing short stories and novels: “While I was writing plays, I used to write random stories. In 2016, my first book was released.”
Born in Baramulla, and raised in Hoshangabad, now Narmadapuram, Manav later moved to Bhopal and finally settled in Mumabi — the latter two cities have been the focal point of his creative life. Having lived these migrations, his home is in his imagination and memory. “You can always draw from what you don’t have. I remember every detail of my childhood, especially my house. I can place anyone there, and it will be honest and truthful because I have lived that.” Instead of lamenting the loss of home, Manav says, “the idea is that it made me richer from inside rather than feel the angst of displacement or crave for home”.
Manav Kaul
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
I ask if his A Mountain, A Lake and A Songemanates the fragrance of fictionality, because he draws an alluring ambiguity between reality and imagination in it. Manav says, “I always find fiction more honest and something that holds more truth than truth itself. I realised late in life that I have a way of making things more interesting through writing”. For him, writing is a refuge from the banality of life. “My life is actually very boring, but writing about it makes it interesting.” The travelogue is not only a socio-cultural exploration of the varied geographies of Europe; it is also an excursion into the inner-self of the writer.
Manav believes that we are governed by the desire “to know ourselves by stepping into the unknown”. And A Mountain, A Lake and A Song is plausibly his tapestry of the unknown churned out of his travel experiences. “I took a step into the unknown when I started travelling without even thinking where I was going. On every page I’m brutally honest about what I was feeling. I want to understand what happens when you have no comfort of language, home or your own people,” he says.
Manav is always willing to moor himself around the mountains; so his travelogue resonates with his exploration of mountains from Mont Blanc in Europe to those in Binsar in Uttarakhand. And he calls himself “a mountain person”. Manav says, “I think if you have a mountain in front of you, you can look at it in the morning, afternoon, evening and night. Every time, it’s going to give you something different. And that is the beauty of it.”
