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January 26, 2003
REVIEWS: Dear Anie ...
He hero-worships her, but then he is not the only one to be doing that, there are many many people who admire Qurratulain Hyder. She is a titanic figure in the world of Urdu fiction. But Khalid Hasan is no pen-pusher. He is a popular columnist and an eminent journalist. He has as many as 30 books to his credit, and like Hyder he is bilingual.
The last few months of 2002 saw the publication of two books in Pakistan featuring her writings. Daastan-e-ahd-gul is a collection of some of Qurratulain Hyder’s writings and interviews.
The one under review is Qurratulain Hyder ke khutoot: eik dost ke naam. The 44 letters were written to Khalid Hasan over a period of 17 years. The impairment of her eyesight deprived her of one of her favourite pastimes — exchanging letters. The slim volume also features five letters that Hasan wrote to Hyder. He was proud to find them in the collection of letters to and from Qurratulain Hyder, published in a volume titled Daman-e-Baghban.
Three of her letters are in English, the rest in Urdu, though on many occasions, writing in a hurry, she does insert English words for convenience sake. For instance, she uses the word columnist (faithfully reproduced in Roman alphabets), when column nigar could have served the purpose. She does sometimes use a Punjabi word, more in jest than in earnest, perhaps because Khalid Hasan’s first language happens to be Punjabi.
Her style (as also his) is conversational. There is no attempt to sound academic, even when she is providing information. One does get to learn something from her letters. For instance, she points out that there was one thing in common among Munshi Premchand, Sajjad Hyder Yildrim (which is how she spells her father’s pseudonym), Hasrat Mohani, Maulana Mohammed Ali, Agha Hashar Kashmiri, Fani Badayuni and Raza Ali Wahshat — they were all born in 1880.
This may be called trivia by some, but that cannot be said about her narration of Wajid Ali Shah’s stay with his loyal friend the Maharaja of Benaras, who made arrangements for Ustad Bismillah Khan’s ancestor to play the shehnai in honour of the deposed nawab. Mind you, this was when Wajid Ali Shah was a British prisoner and was being transported from Lucknow to Calcutta. This speaks highly of the Maharaja’s character. His loyalty to his friend was more important than the fear of incurring the wrath of the colonial power.
Khalid Hasan claims that when Kishwar Naheed was going to Delhi in 2001, he had asked her to get Hyder’s permission to publish those letters. Anie, as Hasan and everyone close to her call her, gave her consent. But that was not fair because she was not likely to remember the entire contents of her letters. Had she seen those letters, she would have expurgated some portions. At least her unflattering lines about Fahmida Riaz would have been deleted. It so happened that in an unguarded moment she wrote something disparaging about Fahmida Riaz. Hyder was particularly unfair to her sister. Later when Hyder learnt that Hasan had published the letter in one of his columns, she was infuriated. She wrote in English, “Khalid, needless to say, this is utterly disgusting...I don’t feel like writing anything else.”
Likewise the reference to Waqar Ahmed of the BBC in Hasan’s own letter is in bad taste and should have been dropped.
Hyder then started fearing that he would quote her, so she became careful with him. On one occasion she mentioned that she would avoid giving her opinion about someone for she feared he would publish her remarks. But when she wanted him to quote her, she said it in so many words. This was when she was recalling Javed Akhtar’s remark about Perveen Shakir’s early death. “Javed Akhtar, whom you have met, says, like Amrita Sher Gil, Perveen Shakir will also become a myth. Both of them were good looking and both of them died young. This you can quote unhesitatingly.”
These letters would help research students get some views which she may or may not have expressed elsewhere. For instance, she refutes the claim made by Khalid Hasan in print that “most of her great work was produced while she was living in Pakistan and was its citizen”. She asserts that the comment was a result of an upsurge of his patriotic feelings. “To begin with I have no claims of producing great work anywhere and at any time. And are you implying that on moving to India I haven’t done anything worthwhile? For God’s sake don’t involve me in this ‘Pakistani- Hindustani’ business.” Referring to the divide in literature, she writes in English, “It has become quite sickening.”
“In all my short stories you bring in the autobiographical element. In the story Photographer you find me. How sad! Just because a dancer, an important character in my story, returns, after 20 years, to the town where she had spent her early youth, it doesn’t make the story autobiographical.”
In the letters Hyder talks in an affectionate vein about Faiz and Bismillah Khan, the shehnai virtuoso. She also refers to Sadequain and his generosity in handing over his sketches to students in Aligarh, where he was invited to paint a mural for the Maulana Azad Library.
She clears the cobwebs regarding the year of her migration to India. That was in 1961, according to her. In some other context Hyder says during the reign of the Mughals and the nawabs of Oudh, only queens, who had given birth to male children, were awarded the title of Mahal. Not many people are aware of this.
Khalid Hasan’s introduction to the letters makes interesting reading, particularly when he says how and where he saw Anie for the first time but was too overawed to go and meet her. That was in Karachi. He met Hyder much later in Bombay after she had left Pakistan for good. It was the first of the many meetings. And yet his admiration for her remains undiluted. It has been summed up in the last line of his foreword to the letters: “What an outstanding lady is Anie! A great writer and a brilliant person!”
Qurratulain Hyder ke khutoot: eik dost ke naam
Compiled by Khalid Hasan
Aaj Publications, 316 Madina City Mall, Abdulla Haroon Road, Saddar, Karachi 74400
Phones: 5650623-5213916
ISBN 969-8379-54-1
96pp. Rs180
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