Lihaf Novel By Ismat Chughtai Pdf Download
Julia Heaslet
i agree, it's best to read tahira naqvi's translations. that's how i've read some of ismat's stories. i recommend tahira's own stories in a collection called attar of roses. would send you my copy if i could find it in what has become the rubble of my mother's basement.
did you know that ismat chughtai was in a film as well? the name escapes me, but it's got shashi and jennifer kapoor, and it has to do with the raj. ruchira? anyone?
Yes. She was the snarky old grandmother - the mother of Jennifer Kapoor's character, if I remember correctly.
That relationship wasn't quite clear to me when I saw the movie. Jennifer appeared to be playing an English woman but her mother (the Ismat character) was clearly Indian (Muslim?). Was the J.K. character then an Anglo-Indian married to an Englishman? And Nafisa Ali's character was then perhaps three quarters English? (I hate to sound like one of those race obsessed busybody anthropologists in the antebellum deep south.) What was intriguing in that movie was the level of social mingling that was depicted, even through marriage. Hindu/Muslim, English/Indian etc. Are we more self conscious of this practice now than the Indians were in the 19th century? And I am not speaking about the so called illicit liasons which we know occurred widely, but formalized marriages.
Welcome back to literary blogging, after what seemed like a long hiatus.
Excellent post, but I am hoping you will expand on a future posting about the censorship over religious sentiment today and "pornographic" literature in the past.
My understanding was that the current censorship stems from a reluctance to displease a group of people in the society as opposed to some fundamentally wrong thing. If some wrote a book lampooning The Great Flying Spaghetti presumably it wouldn't be censored. So its not that criticism if religion is looked down on these days (as pornography was then) but the fear of upsetting one community or the other is what drives banning of works of art.
I wonder if Professor Amardeep would now also carry a post on Ajeet Caur's (not Kaur but Caur as against her daughter's Cour - the name game becomes curiouser with some writers/painters who live literally by the word and its visual lure) short story "Lesbian" - a piece of writing which is so blatantly and self-righteously anti-lesbians.
I also suggest that we open up a genuinely critical debate about some of these grossly overrated wtriters rather than getting overwhelmed by the spurious cultural-studies potentials that some of the desi respondents here "sitting so far away from home" - mostly the inhabitants of north-south US campuses - are.
chandra,
ismat chughtai is not an overrated writer, in my opinion. panini has a problem with "the quilt" and how more than a few critics have approached it. it is an argument he has been addressing in previous posts. panini also talks about not privileging his readings over that of others (or the desire not to do so)but that doesn't quite show in the last paragraph of his last post.
Chandra, you're correct -- this post was about Ismat Chughtai, not lesbianism.
I don't agree with much that Panini Pothoharvi says, but I'm allowing his comments to stand. I don't have time or energy to fight, and I figure readers can make up their minds on their own about whether or not to pick up Ismat Chughtai's work.
Panini, I encourage you to use your own blog as a space where you can criticize in detail all the writers you feel are overrated.
Chandra:
Ana and I have had a bit of exposure to Panini when he decided to hijack a post about Saadat Hasan Manto to start his diatribe about "Lihaaf" and Ismat's derision towards lesbianism! Ismat is not overrated - she is a lively writer. Tahira Naqvi's translations are particularly enderaing, in case you cannot read her works in Urdu.
Panini is welcome to his own opinions regarding books, movies and writers. But so are we. There is little use in going off on a tangent and starting a rant about how wrong everyone else is, just because the discussion is not going in the direction that he wants it to go. Or because most of us don't know (or don't care) what the real worth of a particular book or a movie might be.
Also, it is of little use in insinuating that readers who enjoy Amardeep's posts are blind followers dazzled by his precocious intellect /good looks / glamor (take your pick). It is worth mentioning here that no one has been forced to read Amardeep's (or anyone else's) blog. A blog, although a public forum, is like an open house party in someone's living room. Although there is no formal invitation, a guest takes it upon himself/ herself to maintain a certain degree of common geniality. We can request that the author address such and such subject for our interest and pleasure, but it is entirely up to the author what ultimately is posted. Amardeep was a total stranger to most of us when we first stumbled upon his blog. We decided to come back because we find this a classy venue where subjects of a wide variety are addressed by the author in an interesting, informed and polished manner. Amardeep rarely urges us to agree with him and oftentimes we don't. But we love Amardeep precisely because he keeps all discourse courteous, relevant and non-threatening.
This is a blog for heaven's sake. Not the last word on all matters literary or political. Lighten up Panini. If you want a more scholarly discussion which goes into every social/anthropological/psychological aspect every piece of writing, start your own blog for the so inclined. Not all of us have the time or the inclination to devote to such minutiae. I read literature for my own private enjoyment and a little bit of dissection and background info are okay but not the kind of tortuous commentary you, Panini, want us to engage in. Heck, if I had enjoyed that, I would have studied literature and not chemistry.
Truly and honestly I am sorry about the last paragraph of my last post. It is unwarranted and unnecessarily provocative. At 24, I have still not been able to outgrown some of my 'infantile disorders'. I apologize - especially to Anna.
Having said that, I am a bit puzzled by Ruchira's response where she attributes a position to me which I never espoused. Says she:
"it is of little use in insinuating that readers who enjoy Amardeep's posts are blind followers dazzled by his precocious intellect /good looks / glamor (take your pick)."
where did I make such an insinuation. In fact, I would be myself greatly enamoured of Amardeep for all the above attributes cited by Ruchira.
I am absolutely new to blogging and I did not understand that it was driven by an unwritten hierarchy - an etiquette that leaves me not a little uncomfortable. But I believe these are "teething troubles" and that I will eventually get used to protocols of coexistence and intellectual tolerance.
I am afraid I cannot agree with the last para of Ruchira's last post. It betrays an intellectual lethargy which, irrespective of which discipline you belong to, is to put it mildly problematic.
I take the hint when Professor Amardeep says - "I encourage you to use your own blog as a space where you can criticize in detail all the writers you feel are overrated" - and feel enormously obliged were he to "allow" my acerbic and combative comments "to stand"!
Panini:
You get the picture. A blog is not grad school.
Yes, I was exaggerating a bit about Amardeep's good looks and glamor (not that he is lacking in either department). But I remember from one of your earlier comments something about his being a professor at 32 - I don't know what that has to do with anything. Not to mention the last paragraph in your last post which pretty much insinuated that most readers "here" are "sitting far away from home" and spouting off and/or accepting Amardeep's opinions without further independent examination. Which I took to mean that our sole introduction to these authors and Indian literature may be by reading Amardeep's blog. For most of us, home is now here. And some of us unbeknownst to you, came of age in India. So we are not unfamiliar with the milieu of "home" that you refer to and many are not reading these stories for the first time or through the filter of American sensibilities. You say you are twenty four (you sound wiser beyond your years) which makes you younger than both my adult children. So I understand the "infantile disorders" you refer to.
I took some of your previous comments to be a bit churlish and combative. I am glad that you saw some of them the same way. And yes, there is an etiquette for public discourse, not just on blogs, I would think. And call it intellectual lethargy, if you will. But a blog is read by a whole host of people, most of whom, unlike you and me, remain silent. It is unrealistic to expect this forum to lend itself to endless debate on a single issue that appeals to one or just a handful of readers.
I am a blogger myself. Most of us do it for fun - for me, that mostly constitutes criticizing George Bush and for Amardeep (who also has a full time job), it is a whole range of subjects. After making a post, it is unreasonable to expect the author to linger on a subject forever, until all his readers have been satisfied. I did detect from your tone that you were putting undue pressure on Amardeep and other readers to see things your way. That is not fair.
Dear Ruchira,
When you say "you get the picture" - I feel the imperious heat. I feel strangely threatened. It is a bit like George Bush talking down to Iran. This is precisely what I meant: When you shift spaces across continents - when you move from an underdeveloped to an overdeveloped habitation, the discourse no longer remains the same. This is a very basic lesson one learns as a student of sociolinguistics.
I am largely unmoved by your wisdom but for fear of sounding impolite I will not dwell on the subject any longer. I am a somewhat proud intellect and I deeply cherish this vanity.
For instance, I will never 'criticize Gerge Bush for fun'. In this vast world inhabited by the likes of Bush and Modi, I have lost my sense of fun and even humour. I am too fierce a secularist and, even if it sounds a bit self-congratulatory, too compassionate a leftist to be able to afford such sophomoric excitement.