I apologise that in opening this subject I am going to have to pass through my own self. You will also forgive me because I too am just a unit of this vast mankind; that is why to understand everything
Rajinder Singh Bedi is universally regarded as one of the four greatest Urdu fiction writers in the second half of the 20th century. He completes this hallowed quartet along with his contemporaries Saadat Hasan Manto, Krishan Chander and Ismat Chughtai.
Aarushi Avirook Sen Penguin Books India Rs 199 | 312 pp How do you begin to write about a book that crushes your soul and all its feeble hopes? How do you begin to write when anger and despair
Aamer Hussein is a writer, critic and a Professorial Writing Fellow at the University of Southampton. 37 Bridges and Other Stories, his eighth book, is a masterful new collection of 13 stories. Written beautifully to capture exile, settlement, modernity, friendship, love and art, the book
Ahmedabad: A City in the World Amrita Shah Bloomsbury India Rs 499 | 216 pp Anand Patwardhan’s documentary Father, Son and Holy War begins with scenes of destruction from the Bombay riots of December 1992 and January 1993,
How does a secular intellectual feminist perspective emerge when one is raised in a highly patriarchal religious community? What specific features is this perspective likely to have, depending on the extent of oppression one experienced at the hands of the
“Puzzled, I stare at the skein not knowing which end I should pull so that one strand comes out untangled, and with its help I could fly beyond the horizon, reaching out like a kite.” —Ismat Chughtai, ‘Chhoti Aapa’
Ismat Chughtai, the most provocative and rebellious among women writers in Urdu, wrote voluminously until she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1988. Her formidable body of work comprises several collections of short stories, novels, sketches, plays, reportage, radio plays as
When I saw that tiny collection with her name on the spine on a public library shelf, I couldn’t help being curious. Ismat Chughtai was a friend of my aunt’s; she liked to listen to my mother sing Rajasthani folksongs,
In a letter she wrote to me in response to my translation of her story ‘Do Haath’, Ismat Chughtai said, “Translating from Urdu to English is a very difficult task. There are great differences between languages. If you are satisfied,