Lifting The Veil

Ismat Chughati

Description

At a time when writing by and about women was rare and tentative, Ismat Chughtai explored female sexuality with unparalleled frankness and examined the political and social mores of her time. She wrote about the world that she knew, bringing the idiom of the middle class to Urdu prose, and totally transformed the complexion of Urdu fiction. Lifting the Veil brings together Ismat Chughtai's fiction and non-fiction writing. The twenty-one pieces in this selection are Chughtai at her best, marked by her brilliant turn of phrase, scintillating dialogue and wry humour, her characteristic irreverence, wit and eye for detail.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 12 septembre 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351184515
• Langue: English

Extrait

Ismat Chughtai

LIFTING THE VEIL
Selected Writings of Ismat Chughtai
Selected and Translated by M. Asaduddin
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Introduction
Gainda
The Quilt
The Wedding Suit
Kafir
Childhood
The Net
The Mole
The Homemaker
Touch-me-not
Quit India
The Survivor
Sacred Duty
Tiny s Granny
Vocation
All Alone
The Invalid
Mother-in-law
Roots
Hell-bound
My Friend, My Enemy!
In the Name of Those Married Women . . .
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
About the Author
Ismat Chughtai (1911-1991) was Urdu s most courageous and controversial woman writer in the twentieth century. She carved a niche for herself among her contemporaries of Urdu fiction writers-Rajinder Singh Bedi, Saadat Hasan Manto and Krishan Chander-by introducing areas of experience not explored before. Her work not only transformed the complexion of Urdu fiction, it brought about an attitudinal change in the assessment of literary works. Although a spirited member of the Progressive Writers Movement in India, she spoke vehemently against its orthodoxy and inflexibility. Often perceived of as a feminist writer, Chughtai explored female sexuality while also exploring other dimensions of social and existential reality.
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M. Asaduddin translates Assamese, Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and English. He writes on the art of translation and fiction in Indian languages. He has recently edited For Freedom s Sake: Stories and Sketches of Saadat Hasan Manto (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001) and edited with Mushirul Hasan Image and Representation: Studies of Muslim Lives in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000). A former fellow at the British Centre for Literary Translation, University of East Anglia, UK, he currently teaches English literature and Translation Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
For Nasreen who has crossed many barriers
Introduction
IN MY STORIES I ve put down everything with objectivity. Now, if some people find them obscene, let them go to hell. It s my belief that experiences can never be obscene if they are based on authentic realities of life. These people think that there s nothing wrong if they can do things behind the curtains . . . They are all halfwits. 1
This is how Ismat Chughtai, Urdu s most courageous and controversial writer, asserted the validity of her literary engagement in her characteristic, forthright manner. Known as much for her unconventional writings as for her mercurial personality, Chughtai became a legend in her lifetime. Born at a time when Indian society was largely orthodox and tradition-bound, and women spent their whole life behind the purdah, Chughtai challenged the mores and values of her time and fiercely advocated selfhood and self-definition for women. Though she operated largely within the parameters of Indian patriarchy, she offered subtle critiques of its dominant assumptions through her writings. She had a special place among her illustrious contemporaries in the field of Urdu fiction-Rajinder Singh Bedi, Saadat Hasan Manto and Krishan Chander-and brought into its ambit the whole terrain of feminine sensibility with a sharp focus on female sexuality, which had hitherto been regarded as a taboo. She gave voice to the areas of silence that marked women s writing in Urdu before her, and thus brought about a significant change in literary judgements and appreciation. It would be no exaggeration to say that the circumstances of her life and art help us understand both the cultural economy in which women write and the politics of canon building as it affected women 2 in India.
Ismat Chughtai was born in 1911 3 in Uttar Pradesh at a place called Badaun, associated with the memory of Gautama Buddha. Her father, Qasim Beg Chughtai, was a judicial magistrate who served in different capacities at Agra, Bahraich, Jaunpur, Kanpur, Lucknow and later at different places in the princely state of Mewar, particularly Jodhpur. The Chughtai family was a large and sprawling one; with ten children and innumerable relatives and hangers-on, it was always bursting at the seams. The atmosphere was relaxed and informal-family banter, laced with wit, humour and repartee, was indulged in with great gusto. However, this freedom was limited to the male members only. Our family was progressive, but this attitude was acceptable only for boys. I was after all just a girl. Every woman in the family-mother, aunt, sister-was terrorized. Society had fixed a station for her. If she overstepped these limits, she would have to pay the price. Too much education was dangerous. 4 Being the ninth child in the family, her birth was not celebrated with enthusiasm. On the contrary, it seemed to the child Ismat that her mother treated her with heart-breaking indifference. In her unfinished autobiography, Kaghazi hai Pairahan, and her short story Childhood ( Bachpan ), she gives a graphic description of her childhood and early education at Agra and Aligarh.
When she was in her ninth class at the school in Aligarh, her father moved with the family to Sambhar in Rajasthan. She tried her best to persuade her parents to allow her to stay on in a hostel, but they did not agree. According to their perception, staying in a hostel would lead to the corruption of her morals. Sambhar is a Rajasthani town at the back of beyond, as it were. Chughtai felt suffocated in the claustrophobic atmosphere there. The sprawling family quarters seemed like a prison house to her. She brooded over her future day and night. Eventually she braced herself for a showdown with her parents. In Kaghazi hai Pairahan, she describes the scene that irrevocably changed the course of her life. That momentous morning her father was reading the newspaper after his breakfast; her mother, sitting on the chauki, was cracking betel nuts with the nut cracker. She entered the room, sat by her mother quietly and then, all of a sudden, blurted out her wish to go to Aligarh to study. Her mother was dumbfounded; her father stared at her; she stared back at him. This was incredible. No one, let alone his sons and daughters, had the courage to look him in the eye. It was said that hardened criminals cringed under his glare and began to confess right away.
I want to go to Aligarh to study, I blurted out. There was no tremor in my voice.
You re studying here, with your Bade Abba.
I want to take the matriculation exam.
What s the use? Jugnu 5 has just two years of study left . . . And then . . .
I want to do matric.
It s no use (going to Aligarh).
Then I ll run away.
Where will you go?
Anywhere.
Just like that . . .
Yes, I ll take a tonga to go to the station. I ll get into any couch.
And then-
I ll get down at any station and ask people about the Mission school. Once I reach there I ll become a Christian. Then I can study as much as I want. 6 Aghast at her audacity her mother began to curse herself and her fate for having given birth to such an evil brat. Her father, however, was compelled to reconsider his decision by the sheer vehemence of her approach. Seeing her passion for education, he finally agreed to send her to the school at Aligarh. For Ismat it was the first major step towards empowerment.
Hostel life meant a new kind of freedom for her, freedom to mould her life the way she wanted it. Her energy and grit were inexhaustible. This brought her accolades from teachers and fellow students, though her outspoken and abrasive manner made her an object of envy and dislike to some. She took an active part in debates and elocutions that sharpened her wit and taught her how to win arguments and gain advantage over her adversaries. Moreover, in the hostel she came in contact with a cross-section of students from various backgrounds, which enriched her repertoire of experience. Shaikh Muhammad Abdullah 7 was a source of inspiration; his wife A la Bi and their three daughters were living examples before her of women s emancipation.
In 1933, after completing her First Arts from Aligarh, Ismat Chughtai went to Isabella Thoburn (IT) College, Lucknow, to do her BA. IT College was a greatly liberating experience for her. Her mind was bristling with questions, and the books she read stimulated her thoughts. When she read the Bible, she was scandalized by the fact that it accorded only a secondary status to women. Her study of history and politics made her aware of the complicity of religion with politics in perpetuating patriarchy. Then she studied Charles Darwin whose theory of evolution was a direct assault on Christianity and the Christian and Islamic views of the origin of man. Reading Sigmund Freud disabused her of her romantic notions about love and man-woman relationships. All these made a deep impression on her mind and went into the making of her artistic sensibility. It must be stressed, however, that Chughtai had too original and independent a mind to accept anything without scrutiny. For her, a healthy scepticism was the first essential condition to arrive at the truth. There s something in me that militates against putting faith in anyone uncritically, however great an intellectual he may be. Such a bad habit-I would first look for loopholes in his theory. One should first examine all points of disagreement before coming to a consensus. I cannot believe in anything suddenly, take it at its face value. I think, the first word articulated by me after birth was- why . 8
Among the literary authors she read were the Russian and French masters in fiction-Tolstoy, Gorky, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Maupassant, Balzac, Zola. In George Bernard Shaw she found a kindred soul. One can understand her fascination with him. There was a good deal of commonality between them-a puckish delight in shocking people out of their wits, outspokenness, clarity of views, a combative attitude and a readiness to take up the cudgels against all kinds of cant and hypocrisy. However, the two decisive early influ