April 18, 2004

Zubaida Sultana is uncomplicated and straightforward, quite unlike the winding roads that lead to her home in Samanabad, Lahore. A writer who has written extensively for children, Zubaida Sultana’s recent series of stories for children, Sitaron ki Kahaniyan, revolves round mythical themes from ancient Greece with thrill and adventure woven into the storyline. Qadeem Uunaan ki Dev Malaen, one title in the series, has stories about princes and princesses connivingly implicated in mysterious plots; strong and fearless heroes being captured by serpents and dragons spewing fire, and deities rescuing princesses from deep trouble. All this reminds me of the Harry Potter experience that has mesmerized the west; Zubaida Sultana’s stories move only at a lighter pace.

In the sparingly furnished drawing room, as Zubaida Sultana unravels, I am overawed by the sheer volume that she has churned out during her writing career spanning 80 years. It was an experience meeting this woman of 93 — frail and with a wrinkled face that bears the ravages of time. The person behind this rather deceptively comely appearance is an author with a powerful and lively pen. As I catch a glimpse of the room, I spot a shelf tucked on one side loaded with the magazines, novels, short stories and books for children that she has produced. Many of them are old and tattered as they were printed in the pre-partition days, which she and her family have managed to preserve.

She talks about the “romantic social stories” she has written for adults. She is a romantic at heart who has carved out stories from the social milieu around her. “Romanticism is crucial. It is like the sugar coating which helps one to move on,” she says. Mahrukh, Mahjabeen, Sidra, are some of her novels for adults.

But Zubaida Sultana’s writing for children has achieved acclaim in the world of writers. She reminds you of the metaphorical old daadi who wears a satin white gharara and sits on her charpoy to narrate old fables and tales of the king, the prince and the princess. Two of them are Aik tha Badshah and Meena ki Jeet.

She has the imagination, creativity and liveliness that go into the making of a successful writer of children’s literature. With an understanding of the young mind, she can weave tales that keep the young reader engrossed for hours on end.

Her dreams and her romanticism have kept her resilient and going all these years. She has faced the tragedies of life with an inner strength which doesn’t come easily to everyone. She lost four of her sons out of the ten children she gave birth to, (six sons and four daughters) in tragic accidents. Her husband passed away when she was young and so she was left to fend for herself. She had to support a large family and thus a hobby she relished turned into a source of livelihood. It also meant that she had to write prolifically to meet popular demand. It goes to her credit that her writings did not suffer from a flight of fancy. Nor did her style show signs of staleness because of her prolixity.

When one of her sons died, Zubaida Sultana was totally devastated and being alone in the house became a nightmare for her. It was then that her relatives persuaded her to go and take up a job outside the home. She became a superintendent at the National College of Arts where she worked for seven years.

But the sufferings she endured did not close her mind to her environment. Sultana has managed to absorb the essence of many foreign stories she has read. Her exposure to foreign literature has matured her thoughts but she draws her themes from the environment she lives in.

“Anything that I notice or feel in the environment can trigger my creative juices. It keeps haunting me until it metamorphoses into the outline of a story. Just after partition, I remember I was taking my child to the doctor in a tonga when I happened to catch a glimpse of a bhatiyaaran on the way. She was sitting by the roadside, looking dejectedly at the passersby who weren’t buying anything from her. I saw the look in her eyes and kept thinking about it for days until one day I sat down to write a story on the woman. My father appreciated it tremendously.”

Her mentor, she recollects, was her father, Khan Ahmad Husain Khan, a sub-judge by profession who was avidly interested in the arts as well, especially poetry and fiction. She was born in the year 1911 in Jhelum and traces her family tree back into the Pathanzai family who lived in Swat where, according to the book, History of Lahore, the British took them into custody and sent them to Hajipur to be kept under house arrest.

Sultana’s grandfather, Khan Bahadur Dr Mohammad Husain Khan, a physician by profession, settled in Bhati Gate, Lahore after his retirement. Sultana’s father, the eldest child, also settled in Lahore after postings in various places.

Sultana nostalgically recalls how her father wrote a story on her behalf, which she wasn’t very happy about, and so she wrote one herself, “Padaash”. This was published in her father’s magazine, Shabab-i-Urdu in 1924. At that time she was 13 and in class 7. That launched her on her writing career and she began contributing jokes and short stories for children in the magazine under the generic heading of “Namakdaan-i-Zarafat”. She would also translate English stories into Urdu.

In 1936-37 she published two collections of her short stories. Along with a hectic writing spree, Zubaida Sultana carried on with her studies, going to a maktab to study the four books of the Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam, passing her Matric examination from McKlegon High school, working on her certificate of Munshi Faazil and then obtaining her Honours degree in Persian.

The magazine Shabab-i-Urdu was Ahmad Hasan Khan’s primary preoccupation after his retirement and also a training ground for his daughter, something she greatly treasures. Many of her articles were also published in other magazines such as Tehzib-i-Niswan in Lahore, and Ismat, Hamdard, and Sehat aur Kehkashan in Delhi and Shahab in Hyderabad Deccan. Of the more than 200 books authored by her, 80 are novels and most are for children. She has also written extensively many religious, and medical booklets and has contributed informative material on women and legislation for Taleem-i-Baalighan, and the National Commission for Literacy and Mass Education, Islamabad.

Suspense stories for children like “Purisraar Qila”, “Colonel Arif kay Tamghay”, “Shahzaaday ka Aghwa” were widely read and kept readers hooked on to a writer who was never really in the public eye. She chose to write in solitude. “The Writers Guild of which I was also a member used to be quite active in my days, and there I would get to meet many writers and readers. But after its collapse, I did not find a forum to meet like-minded people. By nature I am a private person and I don’t like to mingle in public. I sit in a corner and write to my heart’s content.”

Marriage in 1935 to her cousin, Naseer Warsi, did not put an end to Zubaida Sultana’s writing career. She was amply encouraged by her husband to write. “I read a lot and also liked many writers like Ghulam Abbas but could not absorb Ismat Chughtai or Manto as I found them too obscene. My husband used to discourage me from reading them as he believed such writers would ‘taint’ my writing.”

As it is time for me to leave, Zubaida Sultana hands me a list signposting of her long writing career that she has so diligently drawn up while waiting for me. I am quite astonished by her remarkable memory, which hasn’t lost its edge even at 93. She walks without help and while measuring out words to reply to my questions, she displays a rare will to communicate. “Had I not known how to write, I would have lost my sanity from the tragedies that have befallen me,” she says.

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