Ismat Chughtai
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As an author
Behind the silver screen
By Ismat Chughtai
Reviewed by Saulat Pervez
Urdu literature has a rich lineage of diverse authors whose writings have both entertained and infuriated generations but their readership has, nonetheless, been limited. For instance, these works have largely remained elusive for English readers due to the scarcity of translations, until recently.
Tahira Naqvi, a translator, writer, and Urdu language lecturer is among the new breed of translators who are actively working to bridge this gap. She has translated the works of Sa’adat Hasan Manto, Munshi Premchand, Khadija Mastoor, and Ismat Chughtai. A Very Strange Man is Naqvi’s latest offering of Urdu prose to the English readership.
Translated from the original novel Ajeeb Aadmi, it follows the journey of an unknown director as he tastes fame, love, depression, and finally, death. In the process, Chughtai skillfully weaves an unflinching critique of the film industry, making her readers starkly aware of the behind-the-curtain life in Bollywood — from one who lived and breathed it.
Indeed, Naqvi charts the connection between the Urdu literati and the Bombay film industry in her Introduction. She explains that the Progressive Writers’ Movement was very much linked with the film industry, as many of its writers earned their bread and butter by writing scripts for Indian movies. Chughtai herself was married to a film director, Shahid Latif, with whom she produced and co-directed six movies. Even after his death, she continued her association with the film world and produced six more pictures. She was the script writer of famous titles such as Ziddi, Buzdil, Sone ki Chiriya, and Garm Hawa, among others.
Hence, the subject matter of Ajeeb Aadmi is neither novel nor recreational for Chughtai. She focuses her mind’s lens on an obscure director, Dharam Dev, who catapults to fame and glory with the release of Bali, an innovative movie. His signature technique, touch, and style are touted and his genius is trumpeted all over the industry. He loves the limelight and soon, not only does he start his own production company, he also becomes the hero for most of his films — as was the trend in those days. Introduced as an ‘incorrigible lover,’ he nevertheless marries Mangala, a Bengali playback singer after she, bereft of his attention, attempts suicide.
Rumours abound of Dharam Dev’s affairs, but he manages to sidestep them and eventually Mangala is satisfied with her husband’s loyalty to her. Enter Zarina Jamal, a talented dancer from Hyderabad, as the heroine hired by Dharam Dev on a five-year contract and the story takes a predictable turn. Although Dharam Dev puts a lock on his heart more than once in the course of the story, the very thought of Zarina Jamal effortlessly becomes the key. Her evasiveness after submission is too much to bear and this man, the very strange man of the title, is willing to give up everything to win her back.
Readers look on in horror as he begins to undo his hard work, with random gasps of his genius here and there like the sputtering of a car before it dies. His life becomes a pendulum between fame and depression — the former being a temporary panacea. He seeks consolation in alcohol and a filmi tawa’if, but in the end, after a series of attempted suicides, he — just when he is so close to his objective — dies, leaving behind a mangled Mangala who has wreaked havoc with her life ever since her marriage fizzled out.
As this sorry tale unfolds, the reader is sickened by the depravity behind the glitter, so much so that it is difficult to continue reading but then one realises that this is the true aim of the book: to present the reality in all its gory details. We are being shown the tumultuous lives led by heroes, heroines, directors, producers, script writers, singers, and even the staff working on a set, beyond the silver screen. We are made to see how the fictitious story of a movie slowly creeps into actors’ lives — how the on-screen romance blossoms off-screen. Yet, we can also see how it wilts afterwards, with dangerous consequences for all the parties involved.
The storyline makes it clear that Ismat Chughtai was heavily influenced by the real-life love triangle of Guru Dutt, Geeta Dutt, and Waheeda Rehman. However, she refrains from making any direct references most likely for fear of a lawsuit. She does mention other contemporary artists such as Ashok Kumar, Dev Anand, Madhubala, Dilip Kumar, Lata, Rafi and even Shahid Latif at one point, which add to the realism in her story. Similarly, actual film titles and song lyrics are also interspersed in the narrative, with the same effect.
The plot itself is easily overtaken many times with Chughtai’s preoccupation with industry trends — from black money to publicity ploys and the ‘adoption’ of heroines by producers. It is this crisp commentary which keeps the narrative alive, more so than the lives of the main characters — after all, they simply become representative of the general picture and are put up as models of the destructive forces within the industry.
Naqvi deftly captures Chughtai’s spirit in A Very Strange Man. One can clearly hear the author’s voice echoing through the narrative. She also maintains an informal and spontaneous style, which makes the reader feel as if they are reading Urdu in English! Indeed, the text repeatedly jumps around — it goes off on a tirade and then returns in the next breath, so to speak, to continue the story. As a result, the reader must keep a vigilant eye for the ever-changing twists and turns in the novel because one never knows how suddenly a tangent will begin and when it will come to a dead stop.
Robert Frost once said, ‘Poetry gets lost in translation.’ While Tahira Naqvi has successfully circumvented this trap, one does wonder whether the title A Very Strange Man fully encapsulates the implications of Chughtai’s choice of Ajeeb Aadmi. After all, the term ‘aadmi’ in Urdu is used for both singular and plural — hence, could the author be putting Dharam Dev on the spotlight as an example of many others like him in the film industry? In fact, she points out other cases in the story like Dharam Dev’s where directors/producers leave their families for some young starlet, who in turn leaves them once she reaches her peak.
All in all, A Very Strange Man is a useful reminder for those of us who are enamoured by the ‘glossy’ lives of the glitterati. The reality behind the gossamer veils is not as luminous as the silver screen — and, at times, their real lives are stranger than the fiction they create.
A Very Strange Man
(Ajeeb Aadmi)
Translated by Tahira Naqvi
Women Unlimited, New Delhi, India
ISBN 88965-36-7
231pp. Indian Rs250
Filmography
The Times of India, Aug 16 2015
Avijit Ghosh
Renowned Urdu writer Ismat Chugtai, who was born exactly 100 years ago in August 1915, also wrote Dev Anand's first hit, Ziddi, and shared a Filmfare award for Garm Hava, arguably the best film on the Partition.
Reading her short stories is like taking a guided tour of the courtyard and discovering the words and the world of urban Muslim women in the early 20th century . Ismat Chugtai, whose birth centenary celebrations begin this month, will always be remembered as one of the most authentic voices in modern Urdu literature.
Her body of work in Bombay cinema is less known. Garm Hava, director MS Sathyu's melancholic classic on the lingering pain of the Partition, is based on her story (see box). And it fetched her the Filmfare Award for best story along with Kaifi Azmi. Serious cinema lovers would also recall her as the grandmother with a nagging cough in Shyam Benegal's Junoon. Ismat is also credited with writing “additional dialogues“ for the film.
But beyond that, few will remember that she wrote Dev Anand's first hit, Ziddi. Ismat also authored the story, screenplay and dialogue of Aarzoo (1950), an early Dilip Kumar tragedy . Both these films were directed by her husband Shahid Lateef. The couple was a rare husband-wife creative team in 1950s Hindi cinema. In his autobiography, Romancing with Life, Anand recounts meeting the two in a local train and vividly describes the conversation that led to his role in Ziddi and took his career to the next level. Judging by the film reviews of its time, much of Ismat's work in the 1950s wasn't exactly high art though the TOI film review on May 18, 1958 describes Sone Ki Chidiya (1958) as “significant“, “definitely off-beat“ and “perilously close to truth“.Sone Ki Chidiya exposed the culture of sycophancy and greed in the film industry .
The reviewer noted, “What an iconoclast is to religion, writer Ismat Chugtai is to films. One who has always delighted in assailing cherished beliefs and popular notions, the stormy petrel of Urdu literature, who has many controversial stories to her credit, pricks the movie bubble in `Sone Ki Chidiya'.“
Sheesha (1952), Fareb (1953), Darwaza (1954), Society (1955) and Sone Ki Chidiya were all written by Ismat and directed by her husband Latif. None of them really set the cash registers ringing. In Society , Ismat is also referred to as the film's producer.
“Bombay film industry of the 1940s and 50s was a fairly patriarchal society . My sense is that Ismat got far less credit for the collaborative work she did with her husband Shahid Lateef than she Shahid Lateef than she deserved,“ feels literary historian Rakhshanda Jalil, who is editing a selection of critical writings on Chugtai.
Ismat was closely associated with the radical Urdu literary movement of the 1940s. At least one scene in Sone Ki Chidiya illustrates her ideological preference. Close to the climax, the film's idealist-protagonist played by Balraj Sahni recites Kaifi Azmi's radical poem, Aaj ki raat bahut garm hawa chalti hai, aaj ki raat na footpath pe neend aayegi, in the poet's own voice over two minutes. In his book, Cinema Modern, Siddharth Bhatia refers to a photograph of Stalin in one of the shots in Ziddi.
The Ismat-Shahid duo also made Jawaab Aayega (1968), generally rated as a classic, for Children's Film Society of India.
Among other films, Ismat wrote the dialogues of Barkha Bahar (1973), which was based on Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection.The movie was directed by the Left-leaning Amar Kumar (Garm Coat, Ab Dilli Door Nahin).
Garm Hava and Junoon provide real heft to her cinematic ouvre. Benegal remembers her as a delightful raconteur, a feminist with totally unorthodox views on gender relationships who possessed a strong personality . “I found her to be the ideal person to play the grandmother in Junoon. Although she was the oldest in the unit, she had by far the most youthful and adventurous attitude to life,“ says Benegal.
Books and academic papers cite Ismat's date of birth as either August 15 or 21. But as Jalil points out, the exact date cannot be ascertained because those days it wasn't customary to note down a date of birth. “What we do know is that she was born in August 1915,“ she says.
In 1942, Ismat gobsmacked India with Lihaaf, a cleverly constructed story on lesbianism. “Lihaaf was to her, what Lolita became to Nabokov . It made critics and readers view her entire work in a slanted, monochromatic way ,“ says Jalil.
Like the rest of her work, Ismat's exertions and energies in Hindi cinema too needs a detailed examination.
Ismat Chughtai II
Putting Chughtai on stage
Ismat Chughtai
An eminent Indian Urdu writer known for her indomitable spirit and fierce feministic views, Ismat Chughtai was a born rebel. Considered the grand dame of Urdu fiction and as one of the four pillars of modern Urdu short story (the other three being Saadat Hasan Manto, Krishan Chander and Rajinder Singh Bedi), her outspoken and controversial style of writing made her the passionate voice for the unheard.
Ismat has become an inspiration for the younger generation of writers, readers and intellectuals. Termed as classics in recent times, her short stories have often being staged for theatre as well as adapted for televsion.
Tehrik-i-Niswan
Known for consitently striving to raise awarness about women’s rights through the medium of theatre, Tehrik-i-Niswan spearheaded by Sheema Kermani, recently took two stories of the oft-titled rebilious witer, Ismat Chughtai.
The stories in question are Kafir that revolves around a Muslim girl’s love for a Hindu boy whom she wants to marry, and Amarbail which unveils the true middle class Muslim woman and how she govern’s the lives of men in her life. After witnessing both the performances, the first thought that comes to mind is of a task well executed by the Tehrik-i-Niswan troupe.
The sweetness of the language used by the writer to depict that era in its original form and the direction by Anwer Jafri (Kafir) and Asma Mundrawala (Amarbail), as well as the up to the mark acting by Salim Meraj and Asma Mundrawala (Pushkar and Munni, respectively, in Kafir) and Imtiazi Phupoo/Najji Bua (Sheema Kermani), Shujaat Mian (Saif-i-Hasan), Qamar Ara (Mahvash Faruqi) and Noor Fatima (Asma Mundrawala) in Amarbail is definitely the plus point of both the productions. Even though Ismat’s work is perfect in itself and one doesn’t need to struggle too much while staging it, Tehrik-i-Niswan’s adaptation managed to bring out the true essence of Chughtai’s writings.
Images managed to catch up with directors Anwer Jafri and Asma Mundrawala for an exclusive tête-à-tête after the performances.
Making a play on literature, be it for TV or stage, has become a trend. Has Tehrik followed such a trend. And why Ismat Chughtai?
Anwer Jafri: You just do not find good scripts today. Besides, if one talks about television versus theatre adaptations of literature, firstly these are two different mediums and you cannot compare the two. Secondly, by bringing the literature of Ismat and/or Manto to stage, every director will bring his/her own interpretation to it.
Take a look at world theatre — every other person is picking up literature and presenting the same story according to their perspective. So why not tap on Urdu literature which has so much to offer? And no, we weren’t following a trend. We have been contemplating work on Ismat Chughtai. Writers such as Ismat are a treasure trove. Her short stories are written in a way that one can easily adapt it for theatre.
Both Kafir and Amarbail depict a time culture, language and era long gone. Today’s generation might not be able to relate to the ghararas, pandans and rista lagane wali bua?
AJ: The era of the pandan might have gone by but this is a part of our culture and was a part of our lives at some point. There is nothing wrong in recreating that time frame. As far as the language is concerned, if we do not revive it or keep it alive it will be lost forever.
The Urdu spoken in those times had a sweetness which is getting maligned in today’s minglish-speaking society. Hence it is the responsibility of people like us to revive and keep the language alive through the medium of theatre.
Kafir talks about a Muslim girl and Hindu boy in love who want to get married. In India one can relate to it as Hindu/Muslim marriages take place there, but in Pakistan such an issue tends to raise eyebrows. Do you feel that the audiences here can relate to it?
AJ: If one reads the play carefully it says that thinking that only you are right and others aren’t leads to religious intolerance. When Ismat Apa wrote this play such alliances were not so common but happening. Besides, in the play the writer’s opinion about religion has also come out. Yes, some people might raise eyebrows but art is art; it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to only talk about issues that are not controversial. In any case a certain topic can be considered controversial by some and may be relevant for others. Tehrik-i-Niswan has always taken risks.
In Kafir the writer has tackled this sensitive issue beautifully, depicting the arrogance of being a Muslim through the character of the girl Munni who, in the beginning, coins the name Kafir and keeps teasing her Hindu friend by this name.
As a theatre actor with a decade-long association with Tehrik-i-Niswan this is the first time that you have directed a play. What took you so long?
Asma Mundrawala: Many years ago, when I was studying abroad, I had seen a few plays which inspired me. I spent one summer reading Ismat Chugatai which was a huge learning experience. The language, the compelling vocabulary that she uses was all very captivating. When I came back I discussed it with my fellow actors at Tehrik and wanted to do something with it, but not really knowing what.
This project kicked off when we decided that this is the time to get serious about it as it. I wanted to maintain the narrative element in the play without really dramatising it beyond what I thought was necessary. For me, the storytelling approach was very important.
How was the experience?
AM: It was very scary but a learning one, nonetheless. I would like to add that had it not been the support of my actors and Sheema and Tehrik-i-Niswan I would not have been able to do this. It is one thing to want to do something, but it’s quite another to be able to get the support to actually do it.
Putting forth the same question that we asked the director of Kafir, why Ismat?
AM: There is no reason for picking Ismat. It is a piece of literature which was written during a certain period in time, and done so in a kind of playfulness that is very alive in the world even today. It had to be the way it is supposed to be, and not because it is in vogue.
The sets of both Kafir and Amarbail were very simple and basic. Would you have rather made it elaborate?
AM: I did not want a highly-detailed or realistic set as it was part-narrative, part-dramatisation. I wanted the set to work in a simplistic way without feeling like we are working in a playground.
You acted as well as directed Amarbail. How easy or difficult was it to juggle both?AM: It’s very difficult and I don’t know if I will be able to do that again. I love the story and couldn’t resist doing the role. Who knows, in the next production I might stay on the sidelines.
Is directing more creatively satisfying than being a mere actor?
Yes, certainly. Directing is a huge creative process. I look at it as an extension of my visual art practice. Also, the training in theatre has come in handy and has formed my work as a director in many ways. — U.M.
Ismat Chughtai
An incidental rebel
Reviewed by Karamatullah K. Ghori
THE late Ismat Chughtai still commands the title of Urdu literature’s most controversial icon. Close at her heels is none other than Saadat Hasan Manto. But Manto, though nearly as provocative as Ismat, lost on the gender front. A male writer barging into the then ‘no-go’ area of Urdu short story or novel wasn’t considered as lethal or profane as a female story-teller, that too one hailing from a family of landed Muslim gentry of Indo-Gangetic plains — the heartland of Urdu and a bastion of then ‘correct’ Indo-Islamic culture.
Ismat and Manto made a rare and colourful pair in the then prolific field of Urdu literati of the 1930s and ’40s. Such was their mystique, in fact, that some of their mutual friends, like Krishan Chander and Ali Sardar Jaffry, actively connived to somehow bind the two by marriage. That didn’t work out. However, one can still muse over the probability of the kind of progeny a union of the two firebrands of Urdu literature would have produced.
This interesting revelation is just one of many new curtain raisers on the life and person of Ismat found in the highly readable and interesting book by Shakila Rafiq. Shakila’s 100-page book — which is so enthralling that it may be read in one sitting — is based on a four-hour interview with Ismat Chughtai recorded during her visit to Karachi in 1983. Therefore, whatever Shakila has attributed to Ismat in her narrative has come straight from the legendary writer’s own mouth.
However Shakila’s belated recollection of a no-holds-barred interview with her favourite literary icon is not a critique of her. Quite the opposite; it’s a labour of love, a passionate paean to someone she was infatuated with at the tender age of 11 when she read, on the lam, Ismat the first time. That first short story of Ismat that Shakila read, away from the prying eyes of her elders, was none other than Lihaf, Ismat’s signature pen-product and, quite easily, the most controversial and most talked-about story, to date, in Urdu short-story’s pantheon.
The defining feature of Ismat’s portrait as painted by Shakila, and by Ismat herself, is of a born rebel one who carried a chip on her shoulder against a male-dominated culture. Concomitant to this homophobia, Ismat regarded it as her life-long mission to stand in the vanguard of liberation of what she perceived as India’s oppressed woman, something too avant garde for her age especially with her being a woman.
Interestingly, there was nothing in Ismat’s social and cultural milieu to trigger the rebellious streak in her, except for the fact that she was born in a brood that contained over half a dozen older brothers. Her upbringing in that kind of ‘big-brother’ household could be the only trigger to light the torch of rebellion in her against male domination. Nature had endowed her with a pen that was sharp as a rapier and Ismat learned to wield that weapon, from an early age, with the kind of incisiveness and penetration not seen before.
And yet she adored her famous older brother, the writer Mirza Azim Baig Chughtai, to the extent that the obituary she wrote after his death entitled Dozkhi is, without a speck of doubt, the most stirring and passionate in the entire genre of Urdu literature. So moving was her posthumous tribute to her brother that it prompted a man as unworldly as Manto to suggest to his sister that he was prepared to die, then and there, if she could write an obituary like that for him.
For all her rebellion Ismat led a fairly conventional life, measuring up to the societal norms. She fell in love with a man, married him, bore him a daughter; even tried to adopt his name for her surname and got one of her books published under that name (but the book didn’t sell and she quickly jettisoned her new identity). So it seems quite out of character for her to suggest to Shakila — and through her to her younger acolytes — to shun the institution of marriage. ‘Have lovers, not husbands,’ was her prescription for happiness to her female readers.
But Ismat herself was never known to have been flirtatious or a social butterfly. How could she thenprescribe to her younger generation something she didn’t practice herself? She had no moral right to peddle misogamy to her fans as a panacea for their problems. It’s a false prophet who would preach a gospel he wouldn’t act upon himself. On this particular point, Ismat comes out of her own rambling narrative as a rebel without a cause or commitment to her perceived and provocative ideals.
It’s possible that notoriety was grafted on her, very early in her literary career, by knee-jerk critics pushing panic buttons and raising alarms over her profanity, leaving her no choice but take that gratuitous moniker of a rebel in her stride and fashion her persona to live up to that acquired reputation. She morphed into a rebel quite unwittingly.
It’s equally likely that Ismat really relished going down that path, blazed for her by her unremitting detractors, in glory. Her will that she be cremated after death was her ultimate coup de grace: the numbing, silencing-till-eternity evidence that she was what they had made of her all her life. She had no remorse in living up to their rebellious caricature of hers, as much in death as in life.
Shakila Rafiq, perhaps, never intended to paint a portrait of her heroine in colours even slightly different from those Ismat desired to be painted in. But she has, quite accidentally, opened quite a few new windows for curious aficionados of Ismat to take a fresh peep into one of the most enigmatic personalities that ever strutted on the stage of Urdu literature. Shakila’s prose is commendably refreshing and she has transcribed her recorded interview in the style of a rapportage, which makes it so much more engrossing to read. In the process she has also included excerpts from writings on Ismat by some of her famous contemporaries, such as Krishan Chander and Manto, which lends weight and authenticity to her own narrative, impressions and conclusions.
This compact book may well light a fuse to trigger more copious researches into the life and work of a writer as unique and outstanding as Ismat. Along with Quratulain Hyder — whose recent death has caused as great a void as Ismat’s had earlier — she commanded both grudging and ungrudging respect from friends and foes. Both these icons of Urdu deserve much more than what little has so far been written about them. Shakila has set a model worth emulating by her peers.
Ismat Apa: Us ek sham ki guftagu
By Shakila Rafiq
Al Hamd Publications, Lahore
104pp. Rs150
