Qurat-ul-ain Haider Has Passed Away

wasif2:
Why is everyone obsessesed with Aag Ka Darya ?
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Right on!
the reason is very simple. It was the subject that was addressed the very first time in an introspective manner. It was also an attempt to trace the "roots" of the psyche of the Indo-Pak muslims as a nation . It was also a very
scathing and brutally honest comment on the post-Jinnah Pakistan.

The "politics" behind the Adamjee award that she won for that was also the reason for its popular appeal. It was
a whole tome that was simply a long and winded paraphrase
of Faiz's " Daagh Daagh Ujalaa". Indians too lapped it up,
and the Nehruvian congressites gloated in their " I told you so" manner that finally someone in Pakistan was anti-Pakistan. They were totally wrong.

All the rumours about she not being allowed for a stopover in Pakistan on her return from england, the blank page of aag-ka-darya (in reprints only), her Information-service employment and lot of other stuff was put to rest when she herself cleared up the matter in a very detailed account of her days in Pakistan. She kind of laughed at the stupidities of those contemporaries who suggested that the blank page was the work of the censors. How could it be that
"a page could be blanked after the printing, and also when their is no break in the continuity. This no one bothered to ask." (not exact translation, but my paraphrase from memory).

Aag kaa Daryaa , as a novel, is certainly not what it has been hyped. Other than the Gotam Neelumber, Cyril, and Kamaal's apperance in their "first" incarnations..the rest of the novel is simply a rambling soliloquy of Kamaal in the form of a letter to his sister Surrayaa (Maybe just a repro of the letter/dialogue between herself & her brother
(or someone else).

Her best worl in my opinion is Housing Society & Seeta Haran.

Her "Kaar-i-Jahaan-Daraaz hai" has a special & significant appeal for its "roots" factor and may also be considered quite unique because of the diligent research employed.

Now where aag ka darya, as its last line says " Kuchh loag kehtay hain kay ubb aakhri ummeed fauji Inquilaab meiN baaquee haiN" [tr: Some people say that now the last hope is
a military coup] was dated mauripur, Karachi 1957 the day the Novel was completed..just a year before Ayub Khan took over. It was not what she said but the fact that she did say it and it did get printed just before the coup speaks volumes about the post-ayubian Pakistan.

Similarly, her Chai kay baaghhat ( the Tea-Gardens) is a very chilling account ( in hindsight of course) of the nuanced lurking in the shadows of what was to happen later in east Pakistan. She infact does mention about agartilaa.
She was sent there to make a documentary by the Ministry of Information Pakistan...maybe if someone has paid attention to her insights & warnings then perhaps history would have been different.

Her days at BBC when aijaaz Bataalvi & the "gang" was there is a separate subject itself...hersketchy account of those days would make anyone envious of the world which it now feels was fully anchored & predictable. The siesmographs were not trembling & going as crazy in the psyches of these confident men & women , and the paradigm fault-lines were not shifting as frequently as they do now.

It seems that Los Angeles & San Francisco are the new metaphors of the human condition.

HP:
May be I'll find time to reply to you as well.

May her soul rest in peace, Ameen!

I have heard of her and others through my Urdu A Level class which i did many moons ago, indeed now my years are ticking on, i have once more thought of entering the world of Urdu literature with the help of my Lughaat of course. I should look into reading more of her stuff. I remember reading stories of Manto, Rajinder Singh Bedi and Munshi Prem Chand, on my last visit to Pakistan i was glad to see all of these writers' works still widely available.

Ana what a plesaure to see you on here again, please do leave the address of your blog for us.

HP are you Sindhi? I had no idea, thats so cool so now i can ask you how to say things in Sindhi, i think its such a sweet language, i remember watching Sindhi TV in Pak and being able to understand a lot of it, though there was much i couldn't understand, but also couldn't figure out how you would pronounce the letters that have for noktas on them!

Stuka you can get Aag ka darya in an English Translation from Amazon.

#22

The second line is "ik aag ka darya hai aur doob kay jaana hai".... not "doob kay jaana 'ho ga'". Voh to vaisay bhi baywazan ho ga.

Why is everyone obsessesed with Aag Ka Darya ? She has written bigger books. I find Gardish e Rang e Chaman, grand. And her last, Chaandni Begum too. Akhir e Shab Ke Hamsafar too, I thought was much better than Aag Ka Darya which was, quite frankly, unreadable in many parts.

But oh what a woman... and what a great writer ! The only urdu speakig urdu writer of any merit in the last hundred years...oh well, maybe Esmet Chughtai too...to an extent.

Though she wrote it seldom, her literary criticism was quite poignant also... unfortunately, I forget where I read her last essay...written about two or three years ago....it was a delight.

And as Ejaz Batalvi said,

Qurrat ul Ain hai kay Haider hai
Aaj kaisa kharaab weather hai....

One more story about her.
Hameed Akhtar writing in Express claimed that her book Aag ka darya was censored in Pakistan and that disheartened her. So her reason for leaving Pakistan was not Ayub’s take over but her disgust with the Pakistan information department. The irony: She was also an information Officer in the same department.
Btw,
Hameed Akhtar also claims that one Journalist Ayub Kirmani wanted to marry her and committed suicide when she refused. I also found out the Mushahid Hussain is married to Jari Ahmed’s daughter. Of course those who have read kar e Jehan daraz hai( her family story)would remember Ms. Haider’s stories about Jari and one railway contractor. People who have lived in DC, must have known Mowahid Hussain, Mushhid’s brother and currently an adviser to the Punjab PM.

Echo,
I am not sure about her fascination with the aristocracy though that is a misnomer as there was no aristocracy in UP but a residue of the dyeing feudal and landowners whose holdings were shrinking fast. The arrogance in her style was not because of her background as there was nothing sensational in it. Her father was a naukari paisha a Kamora as we Sindhi would call all government servants. Her arrogance was from the fact that her father was perhaps the highest ranking govt. Officer in her whole family and in the UP of yester years, being a government officer in a Muslim family was one huge thing and a family’s social status used to skyrocket as soon as someone got a govt job even in the post office.

I am not sure her father was a Commissioner at Andaman. He started his career as a translator. But he sure was a phenomenal writer. I have read his prose, though would have difficulty now in quoting any thing from there.

Will write more later, but before I go let me correct this.
ye ishq naheeN aasaaN, bas itna samajh leejay
ikk aag ka darya hai, aur doob kai jaana hai

The second line actually reads as:
ikk aag ka darya hai, aur doob kai jaana HO GAA

HP:
before hitting "send" i happened to read your replies. Let me just say that you are plain wrong. It is quite OK to disagree with the writings but to cast aspersions based on hearsay is just unjust.

It is only you who would lose credibility.
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Folk s:
I have been able to sneak & read these throughout the day but am quite busy these days in my work. I do promise to keep on adding my comments here as we move along.This method is better than an "article"..who reads articles anyway :)

I am happy to see quite an interest here and especially thankful to HP for a varied perspective. That I do look forward to discuss...without his input this would have been
quite one sided....and HP seems to be quite informed as well.

AS you all must have read in Shahnawaz Faruqui's column QH was very particular about retaining her personna private so with a nic, and in an anonymous forum I feel king of restricted & restrained to talk about my meetings as a "family matter" [this should be sufficient ..I hope].

She has written a lot about herself & her family , alongwith pictures, in Kar-e JahaaN daraaz hai"and I believe it would be appropriate to keep that as our source.
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I can very vividly recall the first time I happened to read
Ainee Aapaa's piece of writing. It was what one could call a reportage, a travelogue, or maybe even an essay . It was called " London Letter". I, at that time was not aware when it was written first published. Later on , of course, I found out that it was written around mid-50's. I read it in Nuquoosh anthology issue of " Selection from Ten-year's best
literay writings in Nuquoosh. Calling Nuquoosh a magazine is
perhaps like calling a sumo wrestler a jockey.Every issue was humongous & of quite a high literary & intellectual caliber.

I read "London Letter" over & over again. It was different. It beckoned you to learn more. It opened a door just a little ajar to give you a glimpse of a world beautiful & baffling lying in wait for you to be enchanted and willingly ensnared by it.

London Letter dispelled from my mind most of the misgivings I had formed in my mind about Ainee Apaa. "Sanam Khaanay", was already there and created quite a buzz..but of the wrong kind and that had me convinced that it was not worth reading and I had just seen it but not truly read it. It was later on I learned that a cabal of writers sneered at her early attempts and she was derided as the "Pom Pom Darling" writer. Worst, the sling arrows were from the progressives
who had appointed themselves the high-priests of literature
and carried out regular literary inquisitions to declare
those who did not tow their party line as "kaffirs".

Her first novel "Maray bhhee sanam Khaanay was enough to singe the stuble of these beardless mullas of Moscow. The reason , as is commonly understood was not the characters & situations in the novel..upper class annglicised civil service aristocracy..no, the real reason, in my humble opinion, was in the title itself. After all, Hijab Imtiaz Ali and Shafique-ur-Rehman were already acclaimed writers & were getting reprinted in paperback many times over without a "Choon" from the progressives. They were acceptable to the Mulla-Moscovees because they distanced themselves from Islam. So even if they were from "upper-crust" they were still OK because they were not "regressives".

The title was from Allama Iqbal's poem..and is really quite apt for the novel.

She was a devotee of Iqbal...thoroughly mesmerised by him.
I would had agreed with HP about her "name-dropping" and the aristocratic aura in her writings but one has to be fair for without that we would really no be able to look into a world which really existed then. A look at the Indian/Pakistani movies of the 50's & 60's would be enough to convince anyone of what I am saying.

Then a short story by her " Chhutay aseer toa badlaa hua zamaana thhaa" recalling her early childhood in Andeman Islands where her father was posted as the Commissioner. She has very meticulously & very skillfully recreated that time-period from the scrapbook of her elder brother Mustafa Hyder. She was about 4 years then. She fondly remember the day the sweet Panjabi Maulana who was imprisoned for life in the andemaan islands tells her dad " Kurree chaar saal, chaar maheenay tay chaar din dee hoa gaee ai, aidee parRhaae shroo karao" ( Today the girl is 4 years 4 months & 4 days..her education should begin)..for that is when the Bismillah ceremony is held for a child by reading the first ayat of the Quraan " Iqraa, b'isme kaa rabbaul lazee" Read! in the name of thy Lord...

Later on in maaadren Pakistan she is shocked devastated to spot the maulanaa's girl, who was her own age & played with her there, in a diplomt's party with a glass in her hand
and drinking in "free Islamic" Pakistan for which the Maulana had spent all his life in prison.


aag kaa daryaa:

title is from this shair by Jigar moradabadi.

ye ishq naheeN aasaaN, bas itna samajh leejay
ikk aag ka darya hai, aur doob kai jaana hai

secod thought..
Kirshan Chandar, Bedi and sometime Asmat Chugtai.

Rahul,
I have not read an Urdu book since coming to the US...24 years now. So if I had some favorites, I don't remember them now. I actually enjoyed Urdu Critics like Akhtar Hussain Raipuri, Firaq, One Saroor and two or three more that I can not remember.

Ana,
Here is another story about her that will make the fake critic jump out the window.

The only reason she came to Pakistan was to find some good boy to marry. Since all the good, mohazib, Sharif and Taleema yafta, uppity UP muslim boys had moved to Pakistan.
Well she failed and left Pakistan. She never married.

Believe me I am not making this up..I heard it from her family in Pakistan.

HP HP HP!!!

I did not even think I was in your wildest dreams (and thank whoever for that!) Aur ji, mujhko apne baray maiN na tau koi khush fehmi hai, na hi ghalat! (do khush fehmi and ghalat fehmi actually mean the same thing?!)

As for the rest of what you said. . . hmmmm, I am trying to be nice here. So I will end my derailment of the topic at hand, plus I have to leave the building!

HP,who are your favorite writers in Urdu?

This whole thing is messed Up.

Chowk Staff that Back button is not working. Note the Bug!

"are actually talking about two things"
are actually talking about two Different things.

"Being a fake literary critic (actually I am not one at all!)"

Ana! ana!! ana!!
You were not even in my wildest dream when I wrote "fake critic". That was meant for someone else. Tum ko Apnay baray main koi Khush fahmi ha kiya?

Anyway you did not read the novel in Urdu and I have not read it in English so we are actually talking about two things. Sometimes translation can ace the original.

I stand by my comments about Mythology....Don't care about your criticism because I look at things differently and many people are just lakeer kay fakeer and mostly I am right!
HAHAHA!

Rahul, I knew that already. :) I meant if he could find one in Hindi where he is right now. The one character that stays mainly in my memory is Champa, and the reappearance throughout the generations of a Champa.

ana: aag ka darya etc are available in Hindi. I read it eons ago,as much as that the only thing I remember is that there was someone called Rehan in it.

HP, aren't you always the contrarian anyway?!? :)

Being a fake literary critic (actually I am not one at all!) I am not going to jump on your case when you say AKD was a poorly written novel. Andaz apnay apnay, pasand apnay apnay. . . I shared what I felt because I enjoyed the novel, you did because you did not.

As for the "stupidity" of Hindu mythology in the novel, it kept me glued to it, and I am not a Hindu, nor has my family been for generations. And there are some Pakistanis, among others, who happen to be fascinated by this "stupidity". They do not have to believe it, but it is after all, a kahani. I do not think that Aag ka Dariya was original, but then there are very few novels I think of being that way. It was a just different way of telling a story.

One of the reasons as I tried to say earlier that I did not have much to say about her is because I do not know her enough as a writer. Definitely nothing about her personal life. But reading your post, I have learned just a little more. And of course am reminded of your contrariness - which is by no means original!

And that thing about Tender Notice made me smile - because I do remember that both from the papers we used to get at home when I was a child. Nawa-e-Waqt and The Pakistan Times. :)

Excuse some errors in the post below. Chowk just gives one attempt to fix things.

So let me be the contrarian.

I read her three and half books. The first book was mera bhi sanam khanay. It was short novel and an easy read. She obviously had a great command over Urdu language I believe there aren’t very many Urdu writers with such immaculate command over the language. Akhar Shab kay Humsafar was another book. It was okay there was nothing outstanding about that.

Now I know these fake literary critics would jump on me when I say that Aag ka Darya was actually a very poorly written novel. I was not able to finish it. I think I gave up after I was somewhere half way through and that too after many attempts to finish it. There was a distraction there too. I was in Lahore and was working on a girl for some cordial relationship and the book was my way of getting to her. Until one cordial afternoon she read notice in Urdu as notes. (I hope Urdu newspaper readers would remember those “Tender Notice” that appeared in Urdu papers for govt contract work. She read that as “Tender Notes”. (I must say that there is no discernible difference between "Notice" and "Notes" when written in Urdu.)). That is why I remember aag kaa darya so vividly.

Aag kay darya actually was an attempt to copy master Russian writers like Leo Tolstoy, Gorky and I believe Chekhov. The whole book moved from one giant’s writing style to another style. Now Ms. Haider had a great command over Urdu, why did she choose to copy them is anybody’s guess. We see a clear difference in writing style between Mera Bhi Sanam Khanay and Aag Kay Darya.

Aag Ka Darya was really boring but it did introduce me to Hindu Mythology. The stupidity of Hindu Mythology can only entertain Hindus.

I must say that aag ka Darya must have influenced some as two more Urdu writers tried to copy her style-which was not original as I said earlier- in to two major Books. One was Abdullah Hussain’s Udaas naslain and the other was Shoukat Siddiqui’s Khuda ki Basti. Out of the two, Khuda Ki Basti had some originality it later became a great TV serial.

Naeem of Udass Naslain was a great Character and I still remember parts of the novel. Btw, if someone intends to challenge my Urdu, I must forewarn them that I have also read A R Khatoon and Wajaida Tabasum.


In Pakistani literary circle, Ms. Haider was considered almost a progressive writer. Her resignation after Ayub took over in 1958, made her a legend in the anti army circles in Pakistan. But in the end that was just an excuse for her. She was never happy in Pakistan. She did not have many relatives in Pakistan and some of her closest relatives lived in India and the ayub coup was a good excuse for her to resign and then go to Pundit Nehru to get her Indian citizenship back. She left Pakistan in perhaps '61 or '62 after Pundit Nehru had assured her of Indian citizenship.

I have some more personal stories to tell about my encounters with the Pakistani side of her extended family. One of her granddaughter (not real) almost caused a major fall out between old friends from KU.

Getting back to her books… She wrote a book about her family life, a sort of autobiography. That book was so horrible- intellectually- that progressives ended up disowning her for good. I cannot remember the name of the book. It had all old pictures and stories about her father, mother and other family members and some servants too. It was a good read there is no doubt about it. But it showed how much she loved the feudal and landed gentry of UP. Her family was not big landowners in fact most of them were middleclass (Nuakri paisha loog) but she attempted to make them look like the noblest people, right out of the legendary UPian hubris, bravado, exaggerations and Apni Barai maarna.

God bless her…