Qurat-ul-ain Haider Has Passed Away

Was Aag ka darya really a masterpiece? Going by the standards in Urdu language, it perhaps was. Compare that with the literature produced in other languages such as English French or Russian, the novel stands nowhere near the top. In over Four hundred years of history, Urdu language has produced just about four or five epics i.e. if you include Tilsame hoshrooba by Abdul Haleem Sharer. And they are nowhere near world class.

Most of the Urdu novels are actually novelettes or to be precise, just long-short stories presented as novels. Some of those long short stories were stretched by using the Nastaleeq script creatively. Put them through some word processor, those novels will become what they are long short stories.

Urdu had all the ingredients to produce the top class literature. First, it gathered steam under the Mughal patronage and then it became the voice of Muslim dissent in the British India. The two elements that could have been instrumental in producing world class literature.

Under the Mughal patronage, only three worthy poets Mir, Ghalib and Anees appeared on the scene. During the dissent, only Faiz reached the pinnacle.

Dissent in Russia produced some phenomenal novels, stories and some exceptional writers. Under the King’s patronage, one after another classic appeared in the English language by some top class poets and writers. Social upheavals in France produce some great writings.

Borrowing heavily from Farsi, Arabic and Hindi, Urdu had all the ingredients to allow authors to explore all possibilities but barely a handful did. Why?

One simple answer: The culture in the subcontinent did not encourage creativity. The subcontinent is an insipid society. There is a great depth in the land but the Indian culture does not encourage new ideas. It encourages followers and hates innovators.

No mater how big a social upheaval, the society encourages people to internalize the wounds. It encourages people to keep quiet, maintain a silence and as a whole the society just attempts to walk away from the problems instead of confronting them.

The literature produced in Urdu language reflects that.

Indian Literature, not in English

With healthy literary traditions in over 20 official languages, why is so much more attention paid to the small number of Indian authors writing in English?

Hirsh Sawhney


August 14, 2007 2:15 PM | Printable version

It's a sprawling, postmodern epic, a radical history of the subcontinent which draws on two millennia of history in a vivid demonstration that Euro-American civilization doesn't have a monopoly on progress or cosmopolitanism, a towering fictional achievement which summons up a country in flux and casts a steely eye over the myths of colonialism. Salman Rushdie's genre-defining Midnight's Children? No. I'm actually referring to Qurratulain Hyder's A River of Fire.

The novel is defined by a dizzying array of parables, love stories, letters, dreams and diaries, but Hyder successfully weaves this fictional universe together with a cast of characters that's not only diverse but also most intriguing. Hari, a monk in post-Buddha India, lives in a land inhabited by architects who fled the ashes of Persepolis. Kamaluddin, a 15th-century Persian thinker, has met Muslims in Andalusia who wrote Spanish in the Arabic script. Gautam, an opportunistic employee of the Raj, ends up in the kingdom of Oudh, where Muslim rulers celebrated Hindu holidays.

The group rematerializes in various incarnations and eras, and the result is an enlightening portrait of the subcontinent, one that blurs the line between insider and outsider, Hindu and Muslim, and reveals the ceaseless cycles of greed and hate that disrupt the world's beauty. Hyder is my favourite kind of writer, one who spares nobody from her scrutiny, not the treaty-breaking English who "took away the glory and wealth of Hindustan" or the "anti-British leftists" who made "a bee-line for England, deserting the toiling masses for whom their hearts used to bleed."

She first published this book in 1959, 22 years before Midnight's Children bagged the booker. So why has no one in the west outside of academia or the pages of the literary journals ever heard of this one-time Fleet Street journalist?

Firstly, her time-travelling, historical masterpiece is so bitingly anti-colonial that it isn't likely to please the powers that be, or rather were, in the former empire. Secondly - and more importantly - River of Fire was written in Urdu. Like the Kannada writer UR Ananthamurthy, Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi or Tamil writer CS Lakshmi, authors writing in the more than 20 official Indian languages that aren't English (none of which I read fluently) have found it difficult to gain the attention their talent deserves.

Ainee aapa: a recent picture

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1376/1193232402_e9649e9048.jpg




QURATULAIN HYDER,
1927-2007: LITERATURE LOVERS RECALL AN ‘ALL-ROUNDER’


Khushwant on Quratulain:
As her boss, I suffered her and she suffered me, but with respect for each other

Arpit Parashar

NOIDA, August 20: Urdu literature’s luminary writer Quratulain Hyder — who jostled for creative space with the language's other grand dame Ismat Chughtai — passed away at her Noida home early Tuesday morning . She was 81.

After a prolonged illness, Hyder was brought to her Sector-21 home a day ago. Her adopted daughter Ameena said, “Doctors had warned us she might not survive a day.” Hyder had severe asthma and was admitted to the Kailash Hospital in Noida for a month.

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She was buried in the Jamia Millia Islamia cemetery on Tuesday evening. It was a sombre occasion attended by close family and friends. Hyder, who was not married and quite a critic of that institute, lived with a domestic help and driver at her E-55 Jalvayu Vihar home.

Born in 1927, this Jnanpith awardee was one of India’s most prolific pens — both in Urdu and English. She won Sahitya Akamedi Award for her collection of short stories Patjhar ki Awaz (The Sound of Falling Leaves) in 1968. She won the Padmashree and Ghalib awards in 1984. The Urdu Academy in Delhi conferred upon her the Bahadur Shah Zafar Award in 2000.

Known among students of Urdu literature for her novels Aag Ka Dariya and Aakhi-e-Shab Ke Humsafar, Hyder lived a quiet life for the last decade. Her nephew Jalaluddin Hyder and relatives from Canada could not make it to the burial ceremony.

Her elder brother, who lives in Karachi, could not attend either due to illness.

Her former boss at The Illustrated Weekly Khushwant Singh said, “She was a short-tempered woman. She was patronising but also very intelligent. As her boss I suffered her and she suffered me. There was great respect on both sides.

“Not many know that there was a chemistry between her and film director Abbas Ahmed in the late sixties. She followed him to Bombay after they had met at a function in Colombo. But they decided against marriage.” A student at Jamia said, “Her work resonates with her suspicion of marriages. She related thoughts that traditional Muslim society found hard to digest.”

Hyder had also worked for the weekly journal Imprint and served at the Jamia Millia Islamia for a year.

Khushwant Singh said, “When she decided to return to journalism, even a paper like The Times of India had to change its policy of not re-employing those who have once left.”

Originally from Lucknow, Hyder shifted to Karachi after the Partition. She was among those along with Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan whom Jawaharlal Nehru wooed to come and live in India.

Decades after shifting to India, Hyder went on to write a famous book on the Ustad, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan: His life and music, with Malti Gilani. The book was published in 2004 and became a bestseller, giving readers a fresh glimpse into the Ustad’s private chambers.

Sukrita Paul Kumar, professor of English at Delhi University, describes her work Aag Ka Dariya as “a description of evolution of composite culture". “She describes the macrocosm of three centuries with passionate involvement in them. Even her rival in 1940s, Ismat Chughtai, who was much elder to her, was insecure when she emerged on the Urdu literary scene.”

Hyder was seen as a modernist and her “stream of consciousness” style was popular and often pitted against the "social realism” of Ismat Chughtai.

Her book Aakhi-e-shab ke Humsafar, translated to Hindi as Nishant ke Sahyatri, is a modern-day classic. Khushwant Singh said on her craft: “She was one of the most erudite women I have ever met, with immense knowledge of English, Urdu and even Hindi literature. She was an all-rounder.”

Paul described her as a “woman of conviction” who would have her way if and when she wanted to. Her driver S Haldhar said, “She told me around 10 days ago that she would die by the 19th of this month. She just survived one more day.”

Khushwant Singh had the last word: “It is a great loss to the Urdu-reading people of both India and Pakistan.”

Confound this new CHOWK!

I had written quite a long inter-act reply to HP when , stupid me, I pushed the back screen-button ( not the interact-back-button but the SCREEN one] & then immediatley cussed myself for having done that. All was lost!

In the earlier baitee-system of CHOWK ( this is baitaa system , right?) there was never such a worry. One could browse other sites with no worry. Those who are not aware
..watch out.

Maybe I'll be able to write write "that" post later. In the meantime this is something very interesting from my "saved" favorites.

So some of you will find this meeting of another aashique of hers give a personal account of his meeting her two years ago.
___________________________________________________________

On Qurratulain Hyder -

This piece was published in The Friday Times (on August 2005), Pakistan as “Writer’s Muse”

In my otherwise uneventful life, something significant has happened. It may seem unimportant to some people but it’s a big deal for me: I finally met Qurratulain Hyder, twice, in Delhi. The journey to get to Ainee Apa (the affectionate title bestowed on Hyder by her admirers in the Urdu-speaking world) took fifteen long years, for despite my familiarity with Pakistani literary circles, I never met her in Pakistan. On my recent visit to Delhi, however, fate smiled upon me.
Dr Enver Sajjad introduced me to her writings when I was in high school and since then, I have read almost every word published by her. Once, I composed a long letter to her that I never sent, thinking that it was a bit melodramatic to do so. Over the years, I internalised its contents and a part of me has been perennially nurtured by the magic of her writings. I still remember the glorious London summer when I finished Aakhir-i-Shab ke Humsafar during my college days; I looked around and discovered that the world was a different place. Henceforth, I lived the better part of my life in her books.
Ainee is arguably the greatest living Urdu writer. The Times Literary Supplement once commented that she can be counted alongside her contemporaries Milan Kundera and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as one of the world’s major living writers. Her novels and short stories have dealt with the inextricability of Hindu and Muslim subcultures in terms of literature, poetry and music, and the historical forces of colonisation, Independence and Partition and their impact on the current of individual lives. Her first novel was published in 1947 and her magnum opus Aag Ka Dariya (translated by her as River of Fire ) undertook a groundbreaking examination of issues of identity in the context of South Asian civilisation; Darya is to Urdu fiction what A Hundred Years of Solitude is to Latin American literature.
Born in the UP in 1927, Hyder comes from an accomplished upper-crust family of writers. Educated in Lucknow, she spent a stint in London as a young reporter on Fleet Street before immigrating to Pakistan after Partition and returning to India around 1962. Ainee was awarded the Jnanpith – India’s highest national award – and before that, the Sahitya Akademi, Padma Shree and Ghalib Awards.

On my first visit to Delhi, I was invited for lunch at Ainee Apa’s house. She lives in Noida close to Delhi. Quite symbolically, the real-mythical Jamna River separates the two localities. In Noida, I buy rajneegandha flowers (much loftier than the prosaic ‘tube roses’) and standing under a jaman tree, wonder why life is treating me so well. I was, after all, buying flowers for Ainee Apa.

She is entertaining a guest who had brought some books for her to read. There is no electricity and she repeatedly apologises for the humid afternoon and her utter helplessness in getting the supply restored. Evidently frail, there is nevertheless something electric in her manners and conversation. It takes me a while to register the reality of that afternoon. Her house is full of books; I later find that each room has bookshelves and yet more bookshelves. The walls are adorned with a decade’s worth of her paintings, some of which I recognise as they feature in her books.

Mindful of her legendary irritation regarding literary small talk, which she has always considered ‘boring,’ I launch into a ‘natural’ dialogue of sorts. She hurls at me several questions on the state of Indo-Pak relations, the visa policy and my projections on the peace process. I am a bit taken aback, my cynical self not ready to offer coherent replies. Nevertheless, I conjure up answers that are cautiously optimistic or, shall we say, “moderately enlightened.” She appears amused by my assertions and insists that her generation suffered due to conflict; my contemporaries and I have to rise to the occasion. I can appreciate her point given that the world that she has lived in is no more; the composite Indo-Muslim culture is fast diminishing and the RSSs and Lashkars – illegitimate children of the historical upheavals – are better known than Mir and Kabeer.

She also inquires into the state of the Pakistani intelligentsia and I am again a little nonplussed. I lament about the middle class and how it is not playing its historical role (except for crass consumerism) nowadays. Then I mention Kamal, a character from Darya , who is disillusioned by the aesthetics and politics of the 1950s but sees no option but to integrate into the changing Pakistan. She smiles and avoids a direct answer by saying that was an old tale. Earlier in the conversation, I was chided for citing my favourite thesis of territorial re-adjustment (shifting boundaries) as a recurring theme in South Asian history. Ainee, the iconoclast, vociferously opines that medieval trends are over and communications and technology have changed our futures. I am struck by her buoyant thought process and led to question my own historical determinism. I notice that she has a terrific sense of humour, her sharp wit unaffected by her age and illness.

We lunch in the dining room amidst more of her paintings and books. The setting is quite cheerful as we talk of the Raj, vanishing Anglo-Indians and Lucknow, while the domestics sway hand-fans. She holds that Zia-ul-Haq’s era damaged Pakistan irretrievably. Pakistan, she adds, was progressing before Zia took over. She recalls Pakistan’s first female pilot, Shukriya Ahmad, the day Bhutto was hanged and how Lucknow appears desolate. I am nothing short of enchanted. She saw Bhutto on a steamer-ship in 1954 and remembers vividly how he was ‘wading’ outside the ballroom. Her memory is fantastic.

Lucknow is a constant point of reference that lurks in the shadows of her conversation. Ainee insists that I should visit Lucknow on my next trip – and I will, God (and visa) willing. I am reminded that in Lucknow, religious identities were secondary to those of the secular Lucknavi culture and even the street vendors used language such as: hazoor dekhiye ye jalaybee aap ki mohabbat mein ghulay ja rahee hai . I inform her that the ‘Lucknow nostalgia industry’ is vibrant in some parts of Karachi. She likes my blasphemous remark but wonders how I can be Punjabi, given that I speak Urdu! But I am now used to this identity crisis.

Getting rather familiar, I start discussing her books and, of course, the narrator. Her answers are delightfully original and utterly self-effacing. She recounts how her parents were born at least a hundred years before their time. Her father’s liberal outlook and her mother’s love for the arts were the inspiration for Ainee to devote her life to writing. She never got married; it was quite evident that she could not have met a man capable of complementing her. I suppose the rich inner universe makes up for the ‘loneliness’ syndrome in exceptional individuals.

When I mention a real character, the Calcutta singer/courtesan Gohar Jaan (who died in 1930) from her novel Gardish-i-Rang-i-Chaman she is most excited. I tell her that a musicologist friend has discovered some thumrees in her original voice. (These I deliver to her during my second visit, and when we listen to them she is in a state of disbelief.) She asks me to search for the music of Janki Bai, another luminary of the early 20th century. (When I later call my musicologist friend to request that he dig out Janki’s music, he is stunned when I tell him why). Ainee is fluent in the language of music; she co-authored a book on Ustaad Barray Ghulam Ali Khan and in her heyday, played the piano and the sitar with equal ease.

She corrects me when I use the term a-historical (she calls it anti-historical) noting the systematic destruction of heritage across the subcontinent. We talk about her discovery of the first subcontinental novel written by Hasan Shah in 1790 – The Nautch Girl – which she translated in 1992. She is angry that no one bothered until she unearthed the manuscript from the Patna Library. We drift back into lost eras and she remarks that Dara Shikoh was a 21st century man. Small wonder that he was beheaded in the 17th century, I respond.

On my second visit, our conversation ends when Ainee, preempting my melodrama, warns me, “now don’t you do the conventional: it was great that I finally met you as I have been dying to meet you for so many years.” She also mocks a shudh Hindi version at me. We laugh endlessly, and I tell her that all the clichés are true and need to be expressed shamelessly.

As I leave, I promise that I will return very soon to present her with Janki Bai’s music. My undelivered letter to Ainee is getting longer. . . I shall need a lifetime to complete it.

"She came to Pakistan in 1947 when India was partitioned but went back to India after a few years"
Any doubts who is running Chowk?

thanks HP for your posts. Gives an insight into how the new jagirdars were hustling for power.

Urstruly:
sorry couldn't reach you earlier.

Posting pics. is , it seems, ok on i-logs & unplugged.
But CHOWK these days is erratic & fickle..maybe some kid is having fun shifting, rearranging and finguring the formats & codes.

always run as "test" on an archived article...before posting
images.
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The AKD's contrived & manufactured "controversy" has spawned spinoff controversies & fake-editions.

AAG KA DARYA CONTROVERSEY.

Everyone with an agenda has tried to twist the Aag Ka Darya episode to promote their cause but the truth is explianed by none other but by Qurat-ul-Ain Haider herself in the preface of the later editions of the book aag ka darya.

There she explains the reasons for not accepting the Aadamji Award for this book. She clearly states in her own words that everybody including herself were thoroughly convinced that she would win the award; and everybody kept on telling her that. But as a protest against Ayub`s Martial Law she volunteered her name as a Judge on the panel instead, and that automatically disqualified her from the contest to win the award.

Please keep in mind that this particular edition that I read was published in Delhi and she does not mention anything about censor on her book. The whole controversey was about the Adamji Award.

A similar controversey happened when Mumtaz Mufti's Alipur Ka Ally was nominated for Adamji Award and the book did not get the award. Ibn-e-Insha wrote in his column "some books gain popularity because they win the Adamji Award but reason for the popularity of Alipur Ka Ally is that it did not win the award".

wasif2:
Why is everyone obsessesed with Aag Ka Darya ?
____________________________________________________________

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!