By Sharjeel Usmani for TwoCircles.net
The Union Hall building of Aligarh Muslim University Students’ Union (AMUSU) is buzzing with supporters of the newly elected union. Inside the building, towards the left is the spacious office of students’ union president, Maskoor Usmani, wherein a meeting with several administrative officials of the university is being held. Among others, is present the chief of the building department of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), who is being confronted by the President regarding the restoration AMU’s significant buildings and its glorious past.
Usmani, the President of the Union, pulls out a piece of paper from his Sherwani pocket, perhaps with names of the buildings that he feels were not taken good care of, towards the chief. “Is it too difficult a task to put a name-plate at the Registrar’s lodge, telling Qurratulain Hyder was born here”, he asks. “Do you even know that she was born there”, he adds.
The meeting was held in the last week of December, last year. As of now, no progress on the demands of the union president can be seen, not at least at the Registrar’s Lodge where no board has been put to tell that Qurratulain Hyder was born in the building.
Qurratulain Hyder, affectionately called Ainee Aapa, was born on 20th January 1927 at the Registrar’s Lodge of AMU, while her father Sajjad Haider Yildarim was serving as the varsity’s Registrar. Her father himself was a well known Urdu short story writer, translator, and essayist. The inspiration of her name which literally means ‘calmness to the eyes’, came from a notable Iranian poetess, Qurat-ul-Ain Tahira. She completed her early education from Aligarh and then she moved to Indraprastha College, Delhi and Lucknow University’s Isabella Thoburn College with a degree in English Literature.
Ainee Aapa is among those few writers of Urdu fiction, who continue to guide every generation of writers in South Asia. She started writing at an early age of eleven, at the time when literature was mainly male dominated, like any other field, with people like Mulk Raj Anand and RK Laxman who had already become an established name in the field of short story writing by that time. Soon after completing her education, she moved to Pakistan, in 1947, to permanently live there. One thing unique about Ainee Aapa was the unapologetic tone in her writings. She, refraining from celebrating the independence, focused her writings on the conflicts and tensions people were subjected to –after the partition.
She’s most known for her magnum opus, ‘Aag Ka Darya’, published in 1959 during her stay in Pakistan. It is a long novel, starting off from 4th century BC to the creation of Pakistan after the partition of India. The novel caught the eyes of the critics quite early, for itself and Ainee Aapa’s literary career as well, and all these attentions were not necessarily positive. Her early work, for instance –‘Sitaron Ke Aage’ and ‘Mere Bhi Sanam Khane’ were regarded by the critics as ‘influence of western world’ and she was remarked ‘Maghrib Zada’ by many. However, her novel ‘Aag Ka Darya’ sent waves in the literary circles of the Indian subcontinent. The noted poet and critic Shamim Hanafi noted ‘until Aag Ka Darya was published, she was accused of being impressed by the west but soon as her magnum opus appeared, she was declared a supporter of Hindu Philosophy’.
During her time in Pakistan, she was working on documentary films, apart from her writings.
However, soon she had to leave Pakistan, of course leaving all these works undone. Her novel that was written in newly-formed Pakistan, in many ways, was responsible for her decision to leave Pakistan and settle in India. This piece in The Dawn, a national daily of Pakistan speculates various reasons of ‘why did Qurratulain Hyder left Pakistan for India’. She went to London firstly and finally returned back to India in 1960 and had lived here until her death.
Besides from being a novelist and short story writer, she also worked as a journalist for several radio and magazines to earn a living. From working with reputed publications like Imprint to being a member of the editorial staff of The Illustrated Weekly of India, she had even been a guest lecturer at several reputed universities of the country and the world. Some of these prestigious universities included the University of Chicago, Arizona, Wisconsin, and California. She then served as a visiting faculty at the Department of Urdu of the Aligarh Muslim University.
What makes Ainee Aapa special is the boldness and style of her writing. In the pre-independence era, illustrations of women writing were rare, or say negligible, and if not – were mostly unheard of. Ainee Aapa was one of the first women writers who succeeded in bringing women writing to the front. She is also credited with transforming Urdu literature by introducing the class of short stories to the readers, who previously have had only known the beauty of Urdu poetry. She used writings to challenge the stereotypes associated with people, especially with women, and with censorship being highly rampant at that time with her contemporaries like Sa’adat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chugtai, both Urdu short story writers facing court cases for including obscenity in their stories; Annie Aapa was bold and ridiculously impenitent. ‘So now one is not even allowed to bark’, she questioned the eminent writer Qudrat Ullah Shahab, after reading foul words published for her novel by critics.
She received numerous awards and honours in her lifetime. In 1967, she won the Sahitya Academy Award, the Soviet Land Nehru Award and the Ghalib Award in 1969. In 1989, for her novel, Aakhir-i-Shab ke Hamsafar (Travellers Unto the Night) she received the Jnanpith Award which is India’s highest literary award. In recognition of her exemplary contribution to Urdu literature, she also received the Padma Shree and Padma Bhushan by the government of India, in 2005. She was often referred as the ‘Grand Dame’.
She died on August 21, 2007, leaving behind an enduring legacy which lives on through her excellent pieces of literature.
(The Author is a student of Political Science at the Aligarh Muslim University)