Simply Ismat

The oft quoted Lihaaf The Quilt is just one of the controversial tales which Chughtai narrated and which, like her contemporary Saadat Hasan Manto, forced her into a court case in Lahore, for writing salacious prose. However, she was acquitted when the judge found no evidence of 8216;8216;four-letter words8217;8217; being used in the text. Undaunted by the experience, Chughtai wrote frankly about the entire episode, down to the hate mail she received. She was a woman who was bold enough to step out of the circumscribed Muslim milieu, which many of her contemporary writers, including the men, were often scared to transgress.

In this collection of unforgettable tales is Chatan The Rock, which through its delicate irony brings alive the uneven balance between the male protagonist and his wives. While the women are destroyed literally at the altar of marriage 8212; becoming insecure, overweight and uncaring of their appearance 8212; the man or 8220;The Rock8221; remains as debonair and gallant as ever, attracting new alliances, forgetting the old. While perhaps nothing can replace the vigour of Chughtai8217;s original text, the translation does justice in describing the horror of this willing and almost inadvertent sacrifice. The allegory of the man as a 8220;rock8221; comes across smoothly: 8220;He was as solid as a rock. Waves leap towards the rock, crash at its feet, shatter and disintegrate, and weak and exhausted return to the sea.8221;

Chughtai8217;s fifteen stories and two novellas in this collection are very representative of her eclectic style 8212; the words which leap off the page like firecrackers, and the stories imbued with both pathos and humour, are peopled with characters whose hypocrisy towards women and sexuality is unsparingly revealed. But Chughtai is as relentless in exposing the double standards amongst women even housewives as she is about men. Allah Ka Fazal By the Grace of God is a tale in which the mother of a childless married young girl schemes callously to get her pregnant so that her rich husband will not leave her.

Not all of Chughtai8217;s stories, however, have an unhappy ending. Sometimes the sheer simplicity of the solution washes away the despair. In The Heart Breaks Free Qudsia Begum, condemned to a lifetime of living without her husband, finally discovers happiness escaping with her recalcitrant, shy lover. But, throughout, even when the stories leave you with a marked sense of sorrow, there is always buoyancy in Chughtai8217;s approach that creates both poignancy and a deep understanding.

This book is one of the first offerings from the newly divided family of Kali 8212; and comes from 8220;Women Unlimited8221;. The collection had been published earlier by Kali itself, therefore we are familiar with the text in translation. Our only suggestion would be that if this text could be more rigorously edited, it would improve the quality of the translation.

However, despite the years that separate us from Chughtai8217;s writing, we can still imagine the kind of 8220;mortification8221; the other authors including Krishen Chander expressed in the face of her literary presence and genius. She wrote as she lived, an uncompromising connoisseur of life8217;s foibles, breaking all the rules.