Published in 1931, Parde Ke Peeche (Behind the Veil) was one of the two short stories contributed in, ‘ Angaare’ (Embers), a controversial collection of short stories by authors Sajjad Zaheer, Sahibzada Mahmuduzaffar, Ahmed Aliand Rashid Jahan. Starting from Rashid Jahan, to Qurratul Ain Hyder, all these authors have played a huge part in the development of Urdu short story the way it is today. The list explores stories that depict the plight of women within the institution of marriage in different forms. Here are five groundbreaking, unconventional and ‘bebaak’ (bold) stories, as they would call it – that are responsible for this shift in our books and our minds as well. This progression, we owe to the few authors who suffered a great deal of ostracization, fatwas, social angst and isolation in order to bring this to happen. But I very much appreciated the authenticity of Chughtai’s writing, and its frankness and emotional clarity always rang true.Urdu literature has seen a drastic shift in its story-writing in the course of the last one century. I would note that the stories are translated from the Urdu but into a distinctively Indian-inflected English, to the point that I found some parts difficult to follow, a problem which was exacerbated by my ignorance of many of the cultural traditions that Lifting the Veil explores and satirises. A perfect example of how misogyny can warp even a woman’s mind, and a painfully convincing description of bitterness.
I was most struck by the monologue of a struggling teacher with a deep and irrational hatred for sex workers, which was almost a tragic echo of my beloved “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day”, if Miss Pettigrew had let the whisperings of her father the curate drive her out of Delysia’s flat. Some are based on real events in Chughtai’s life and her relationships with other writers. One gives us a masterly description of the desperate and almost wordless stubbornness of an elderly lady refusing to leave her home when all her family are fleeing to the newly created Pakistan. Several have to do with Hindu-Muslim marriages and the resulting shockwaves in the lovers’ families. One poignant story portrays the breakdown in the relationship of two young girls when a stolen sensual object begins to intrigue and obsess them. But there are many others that are just as impressive in a whole range of styles and subjects. Her most famous and controversial work, Lihaaf, which depicts a rather dark lesbian relationship between the frustrated Begum Jaan and her maid, is included in this collection. She freely interrogates religious and cultural traditions and although her stories are rarely happy in the usual sense, she celebrates the lives of even difficult or unappealing women. Unsurprisingly her stories are bold, energetic, and irreverent. Chughtai was apparently something of an enfant terrible of Urdu literature, one of the very first Indian Muslim women to pursue higher education, and was prepared to go to court to defend her right to publish allegedly obscene material in the early 1940s.
Lifting the Veil is a collection of stories primarily about the lives of Muslim women in India around the time of Partition, with a special focus on female sensuality and sexuality.
0 kommentar(er)
