- by Rubina Firdaus & Ishraq Ahmed Ismat Khanum Chughtai is one of the pioneers of Urdu fiction. She was an excellent storyteller and novelist, whose works are known to be more radical, incisive and bolder than other writers of her times. She was considered by some as a crusader for the rights of oppressed women. Some of the earliest feminist writing in Urdu can probably be credited to her. Ismat was born in Badaun, India on August 21, 1915. She graduated from Lucknow University and was in the teaching profession for a little while before stepping into freelance writing. During 1939-40, she was the head mistress of a girl's school in Jodhpur, and in 1941-43 she was the superintendent of a municipal school in Bombay. For someone who is remembered as a literary figure, she began her writing on scraps, scribbling curses against her brothers: her inspiration coming mostly from romantic books. Her first story was anonymously published in an Urdu woman's magazine, when she was thirteen. She requested that her name be left out, because it was a romantic story with some minor "details". Lihaaf, shot her into fame, where she wrote about an eight- year-old's view of lesbianism. Immediately afterwards, obscenity charges were filed against her, and she had to appear in court in Lahore. She later went on to win the case, as there was nothing specific in the story that could be proven obscene. Ismat's fiction is very biographical. Some details of her own life appear in several of her writings, almost entire sequences captured in fiction. She published an autobiography named "Kaghazi Hai Pairahan". She considers her brother, Azim Beg Chughtai to be her first teacher and mentor; and she wrote about him in one of her biographies. She also wrote about Saadat Manto and several other famous literary personalities in "My Friend, My Enemy" (translated by Tahira Naqvi). Her major short story collections are Kaliyan, Choten, Chooi Mooi, Ek Baat and Do Haath. Her novels are Tehri-Lakeer, Ziddi, Ek Qatra-e-Khoon, Dil Ki Duniya and Bahroop Nagar. Several writers, friends and relatives agree that she had a stubborn desire to disrupt the ideas that constituted civility, to overturn the traditions that dictated how "civilized" women ought to be. Her works are known for their provocative nature coupled with honesty, wit and courage. In Chooi Mooi, she talks of an incident of childbirth witnessed by three upper-class women in a train compartment. Fascinated and deeply affected by the incident, the three women react in different ways. Although she writes in an energetic and colloquial prose, there is a sense of brutal bluntness and a biting sarcasm that is evident in her works. She was married to film director Shahid Latif. The film "Garam Hawa" was based on one of her works, which talks about the India-Pakistan partition. She also directed a documentary on Sardar Jafri and children's film "Jawaab Aayega". Though her writings frequently caused a stir in literary circles, she won the Ghalib and Nehru awards. For her prolific and multi-faceted contribution to Urdu literature, she was given the prestigious Padmashri Award. Even in her death in 1991, she continued her crusade against the norm, by requesting that her body be released into the sea so that the fish could relish it! |
