The pages of Ismat Chughtai's memoirs available for the first time in English come alive with her irrepressible spirit. We are allowed a glimpse into her personal life and her large family with a maze of siblings and relatives, her fight against obscenity charges and her struggle for education. Her free will permeates the book whether she is throwing a shoe at her brother or fighting with her parents to let her study and you begin to realise how monumental her struggle against the system and Muslim society of those days must have been. She was born in 1911, when education for girls was anathema. Throughout there is a deep gratitude for her education which did not come easily.
Family escapades
It is difficult not to enjoy her family escapades, and her experiences of evading a future as a daughter- in-law of a Nawab Sahib. Her romantic essay on the interlude with Zia is one of the best parts of the book and she manages to be amusing and tender at the same time. Her language reflects the impulsiveness of her character and she jumps from one thing to another but there is a running thread of defiance and independence throughout. She is clearly a woman who cannot suffer fools or hypocrisy and set a benchmark with her frank writing.
The chapter where she describes her encounter with the law over her famous story Lihaaf is both funny and capricious. She laughs on hearing of her summons for writing an obscene story and refuses to accept it. She annoys her husband by saying she has a great desire to see a prison house and later sends up a thanksgiving prayer to the Crown of England for providing her a chance to have a good time in Lahore. A suit was filed against Sadat Hasan Manto too and they appeared in court the same day. Manto like her is looking forward to a freezing winter in Lahore tempered with fried fish with whiskey and blood red maltas.
Chughtai braved the onslaught of hate mail and says, “Only a hard-hearted person like me could endure them. I never retaliated, nor did I refuse to admit my mistake.”
As a child she made a racket in the majlis over the baby Ali Asghar's throat being pierced by an arrow by the Caliph Yezid and had to be thrown out. This later became part of her family lore. But she mentions another incident which left a deep impression on her and that has to do with her Hindu friends and the prevailing notions of defilement.
The occasion where she picks up a silver Krishna only to create a storm in her neighbour Lalaji's household is both moving and hilarious. She is critical of childhood which forms the basis of her short story Bachpan.
She offers a striking portrait of her father and gives an account of his resourcefulness at a time when relations between Hindus and Muslims were becoming more and more tenuous. Her mother too and her aunts and numerous cousins and friends live through Chughtai's eyes. While the translation gives you some idea of her style, one almost wishes to read her in the original.
