Life World of Ismat Chughtai: Some Snapshots | Arup Kumar Sen

Ismat Chughtai was a rebel woman writer in the world of Urdu fiction. In his Foreword to Ismat’s first collection of short stories, Choten (Wounds), the eminent fiction writer of her time, Krishan Chander said that “as soon as Ismat’s name is mentioned, male short-story writers get hysterical, they are embarrassed, they experience mortification.” In her interview with Carlo Coppola in 1968, Ismat herself recorded how the public responded to her story ‘Lihaaf’ (The Quilt) written in the early 1940s: “You know, when I first wrote ‘Lihaaf’ this thing (lesbianism) was not discussed openly…So as soon as I wrote this, oh, it really was like an atom bomb exploded! People started calling me bad names. Nobody knew my address, so they could only write to me through my editors…People said that it was a very, very dirty story and that I was a very dirty person, coming from a very dirty family.” In another conversation with Prof. Nurulain Ali and others (1974), Ismat stated in this context: “The subject of sex is very important for women who live in parda and exist in a suffocating environment. They talked a lot about sex. My story-writing is a reflection of this stifling environment…” She also talked about how her family upbringing influenced her writings: “My family believed that exhilarating, passionate love drives the heart and the mind. There should be no suffocation in it, no weeping and wailing in it.”

In her later life, Ismat left her known world of Aligarh in north India and got settled in Bombay. Here, she became associated with the Communist Party, and got connected with the Progressive Writers’ Association. This had a major influence on her later writings. To put it in her own words: “…I encountered the Communist Party after I came here, I experienced politics and learned about economics. I discovered that sex and the suffocation caused by it were not the only important subjects, but…there are many other themes…I wrote many stories which differed from my earlier work in terms of style and subject matter.”

The social life of neighbourhoods in Bombay was recorded by Ismat Chughtai in her conversation with interlocutors in 1974: “Thousands of men leave their wives in their hometowns and come to Bombay seeking employment. Who do they depend on? Which underclass fulfils their needs? The prostitutes. You will come across every type, every class of prostitute in every neighbourhood. There may not be such a colourful variety of prostitutes anywhere else in the entire country. The needs of men who can’t go home for years are fulfilled by helpless, poor women, who in turn have left their villages to find work here, and who are forced to become prostitutes when they cannot find any other employment…”

The above snapshots may be treated as pathways to the literary journey of Ismat Chughtai.