Ishmat chughtai was an Indian Urdu novelist, short story writer and filmmaker. And a padma Shri awardee.
I recently came through Chughtai's Memoir : A Life in Words and i really loved it. I was not aware of chughtai's writing before memoir. I love how beautifully she reflects her life journey mirroring the social mileu of her time. She describes her every struggle and experiences growing up in a conservative muslim family like how she starve herself to get the permission of her parents for school, which ultimately change her life by exposing her to the works of realist writers like gorky and chekov, woman rights activist like Rasheed Jahan and the Progressive Writers Association.
And one of my favourite incidents is her humorous act of hiding her burqa on a train to avoid wearing it. For her, wearing the burqa was nor merely an act of act modesty but a symbolic humiliation and restriction on her intellectual and personal freedom. By hiding it, she took a stand against this imposed code of conduct. This incident indicate that from a very young age she oppose all the restriction put on women by this patriarchal society and it was her first conscious step toward becoming the free thinking, unapologetic, and powerful writer with a fierce and independent spirit she was destined to be. Chughtai's memoir chronicles many such amazing incident of her journey from having a sense of inferiority for being a girl to understanding that a woman's strenght lies in her intelligence and ingenuity, not her physical strenght.
I like her bold, realistic writing style. She doesn't shy away from criticizing anyone and honestly put forward her views. Chughtai even criticize her own mother also who internalize and perpetuate patriarchal norms.
Through memoirs, I came through her other writings also like Lihaaf, Angarey, Gainda etc where she explore themes like female sexuality and feminity, class conflict.
Have you read any book by Ishmat Chughtai?
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