For the doyenne of Urdu literature Ismat Chughtai, romance was but an inconvenience. She baulked at poetry and detested popular romantic journals of her time such as Tahzeeb-i-Niswan. She considered the arghanoon – a musical instrument that featured in most love stories of her adolescence – nothing but the ordinary organ. “I was not the one for such exotic stuff, it would leave me cold. The stench of the salt lakes, crumbly walls, leaking roofs, heavy nails — this was our world. There was no way out, not even for death,” confesses Chughtai in her memoirs, A Life in Words: Memoirs, which have been translated into English by M Asaduddin from the writer’s Urdu rendering Kaghazi Hai Pairahan.
Why, one wonders, didn’t a young Chughtai – “Chunni”, as she was addressed at home – share her sisters’ lofty dreams of the perfect man, despite being raised in the same household? Questions such as these linger in the mind of the reader as she flips through the pages of Chughtai’s seemingly exciting life.
The memoir provides interesting insights into Chughtai’s family: she grew up in a progressive Muslim household with 10 siblings, her mother “whacked” her every now and then, yet was innocent and trusting. Her father was a deputy collector in Jodhpur with a second wife — a detail revealed at the end of her memoir. The family member who stands out is her brother Azim Beg, also a writer, whom she fondly calls “Munne Bhai”. While the other siblings mocked her fiery spirit, Azim Beg encouraged it, nursing her writing talent from a young age.
Published in 1994, three years after the writer’s death, the memoir succeeds in bringing Chughtai to life. Armed with her wit and subtle irony, the writer lends colour to most members of her large family. She confesses that her low self-esteem makes her abhor the idea of marriage. The rebel in her scorns all forms of hierarchy and discrimination, whether of Muslims or women. She protests vociferously against wearing a burqa, a decision that invites the ire of her devout family. Using her imagination and humour to subvert dire circumstances, she recounts stories of discarding the burqa and her quarrel with a writer about obscenity, baring it all with the enthusiasm of a child.
Her experiences also bring to attention the cultural landscape of British India. Chughtai acknowledges the loss of Farsi’s prominence as the language of administration; her father, too, doesn’t impose the language on her. Chughtai wrote at a time when the words “breasts” and “lover” were considered obscene, when D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover was banned for its description of sexual encounters, and when lesbianism was considered a curse or ailment. “But, from my hiding place under the bed, I have heard old women talking about even more obscene things. I knew that same sex love existed but did not know what exactly it was,” admits Chughtai.
And yet she wrote the controversial “Lihaaf” (The Quilt) – a short story highlighting themes of marriage, subjugation of women and the oppression and neglect of female sexuality and desire – which was published in 1942 in the Urdu literary journal Adab-i-Latif. In 1944, “obscenity” charges were levelled against Chughtai and she was summoned to court in Lahore.
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Chughtai recounts her obscenity trial in vivid detail, describing her relationship with Saadat Hasan Manto (“madcap Manto”), who faced similar charges for his story “Bu” (Odour). In her hilarious account, while the court debates whether her story is blasphemous or not, the curious writer explores the city of Lahore, its delicacies and delights. Though she was at the forefront of the Progressive Writers’ Movement, Chughtai bluntly remarks, “they [the Progressives] didn’t write me off, nor did they offer me great accolades” for “Lihaaf”.
Yet, she makes a confession about the short story that catapulted her to infamy: “I am still labelled as the writer of ‘Lihaaf’. The story brought me so much notoriety that I got sick of life. It became the proverbial stick to beat me with and whatever I wrote afterwards got crushed under its weight.” “Lihaaf” dominates her memoir, as it did her life.
Asaduddin’s translation is breezy and engaging, without any effort to place Chughtai’s writing within a larger context of the subaltern or the “other” — a trap that many translations fall into. However, the memoir is not a chronological account of events in Chughtai’s life, a fact that is acknowledged in Asaduddin’s somewhat apologetic introduction. Names, events and dates come together to form a web of details — one with which the reader struggles.
For a writer so outspoken, Chughtai provides shockingly little information about her marriage to Shahid Lateef or her relationship with her children. She chooses to be more revealing about her short-lived romance with Zafar Quraishi Zia, allowing the reader to make inferences about her marriage.
At various places, Chughtai’s concerns and curiosity raise a chuckle. Immune to the luxury and affluence at a Nawab’s birth anniversary – a rather gala affair in Jawrah – Chughtai writes, “I marvelled at how they [the servants] knew when their mistresses were going to spit and placed the spittoons before their mouths!”
ISMAT CHUGHTAI
A Life in Words: Memoirs
Translated by M Asaduddin
Penguin Books; 282 pages; Rs 499