ISMAT CHUGHTAI ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ismat Chughtai August
ISMAT CHUGHTAI
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ismat Chughtai (August 1915 – 24 October 1991) was an eminent Indian writer in Urdu, known for her indomitable spirit and a fierce feminist ideology. Considered the grand dame of Urdu fiction, Chugtai was one of the Muslim writers who stayed in India after the subcontinent was partitioned. Along with Rashid Jahan, Wajeda Tabassum and Qurratulain Hyder, Ismat's work stands for the birth of a revolutionary feminist politics and aesthetics in twentieth century Urdu literature. She explored feminine sexuality, middle-class gentility, and other evolving conflicts in modern India. Her outspoken and controversial style of writing made her the passionate voice for the unheard, and she has become an inspiration for the younger generation of writers, readers and intellectuals.
LIHAAF � � "Lihaaf" is a 1942 Urdu short story written by Ismat Chughtai. Published in the Urdu literary journal Adab-i-Latif, it led to much controversy, uproar and an obscenity trial, where Ismat had to defend herself in the Lahore Court as well for this work. She was asked to apologize which she did not and also won the case, after her lawyer pointed out that the story makes no suggestion to a sexual act, and prosecution witnesses could not point out any obscene words, and the story is suggestive and told from perspective of a small girl. In the coming decades it was widely anthologised, and became one of her most known works, besides Angarey which remained banned for several decades. Years later, she mentioned in detail the court trial in her noted memoir, Kaghazi Hai Pairahan (A Life in Words: Memoir). Though it received attention for its suggestion of lesbianism, it also deals with the insulated and suffocating life of a neglected wife in the feudal society. It became a landmark for its early depiction of sex, still a taboo in modern Indian literature, let alone Urdu literature.
THEME AND SIGNIFICANCE � “Lihaf” as a metaphor take the readers behind a curtain, through the shadows of quilt defying reality of the rocking and heaving left to the interpretation and understanding of the readers. In the narrative aspect, ‘lihaf’ also plays the role of a trope very well. The ‘quilt’ as a metaphor hides the lesbian relationship of Begum Jan and Rabbo. In spite of being surrounded by all material comforts; her female sexuality is never paid heed by her husband- neither needs nor her desires are acknowledged. Her sheer loneliness, detachment and depression locate the reason for the frustration in her sexual desperation.
� The narrator sees the things happening under a quilt and innocently and curiously narrates them but doesn’t understand the full import of the things happening. While the adult writer, Ismat Chughtai, want the readers to go beyond the bewilderment of the young narrator and the frightening shadows and wants us to understand the secrecy lied under the quilt. Later on, when she grows up to mature, she understands the whole process of the sexual play under the ‘lihaf’. The title- ‘lihaf’ is also a metaphor for concealment that lesbian or homosexual relationships were not recognized as a possibility for desire in the dominant culture of 1940 s in India.
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