MUMTAZ Shirin figures prominently in Nisar Aziz’s autobiography. It is through Nisar Aziz’s book that we came to know about the agonizing last days of this distinguished writer, whose meteoric rise to prominence stands in a sharp contrast to her recession into oblivion in the later years of her life. Suffering from cancer, she spent her last days in a pathetic condition with no one to look after her. In this regard, Nisar Aziz seems to point out to a kind of callousness on the part of her husband, Samad Shaheen.
This account left me in a state of depression. What a sad end to a writer, whose start to her career was quite exhilarating. I was still in a depressive mood when I received, from Shehrzad Publishers of Karachi, a volume entitled Manto, Noori na Nari. It reminded me of the early years of Pakistan when Mumtaz Shirin, after being disillusioned with the progressive writers, had discovered Manto as the greatest short story writer of Urdu. Her interest in Manto grew to the point that she soon devoted herself solely to examining his short stories. She had planned to write a critical analysis of his fiction and bring it out under the title Noori na Nari. But her untimely death did not allow her to complete the project. However, despite being incomplete, it is, as we find here, a precious contribution to a variety of analyses of Manto’s works.
In his foreword to the book, Muzaffar Ali Syed has referred to her famous article written in 1943, which was meant to be a comprehensive survey of modern short stories of Urdu. He points out that in those years Shirin was averse to Manto to the extent that she totally ignored him. The reason for her aversion, according to Muzaffar, was Manto’s uninhibited attitude towards sex. The same is the reason for her aversion to Ismat Chughtai.
Those were the days when Shirin was more impressed with Krishn Chandr, though in her style of story writing she was quite close to Mohammad Hasan Askari than anyone else. That was what prompted her to get the foreword to her collection of short stories written by him.
In fact, her enthusiasm for Pakistan brought about a change in her outlook on life. In a strong reaction against the partition expressed in Krishn Chandr’s stories she sensed an anti-Pakistan attitude. This made her go against Krishn Chandr and the progressive writers. She, however, was soon able to trace a pro-Pakistan attitude in Qudratullah Shehab’s long-short story Ya Khuda, which was published in a book form with her foreword. The other writer who attracted her attention because of his pro-Pakistan thinking was Mahmood Hashmi. She wrote the preface to his collection of reportages Kashmir Udas Hai as well.
But those two writers could not keep her engaged for long. Very soon she outgrew them. She realized that in case of literature it is not enough to be merely pro-Pakistan. Any written piece, in this respect, should first have literary worth. With this realization, she approached Manto and found in him a genuine story writer. She discerned the fact that his stories carried a highly inspired creative expression and could also be read as writings expressive of Pakistani sensibility. Here she was in perfect agreement with Mohammad Hasan Askari, who had singled out Manto as a writer trying to make Pakistan a part of his consciousness. But while Askari was content to make some suggestions and throw a few hints, Mumtaz Shirin showed the patience of devoting herself for long to an in-depth study of Manto’s stories. She wanted to bring to light Manto’s vision of man, which seemed enshrined in his stories.
A number of portions from what Mumtaz Shirin had written appeared in different journals. They appeared to be a highly serious and illuminating study of Manto. But, unfortunately, she fell ill never to recover. Her untimely death did not give her the time to complete the ambitious project to her satisfaction.
Asif Farrukhi has compiled whatever there was available. He tells us that Samad Shaheen proved very cooperative in allowing him to sort out different manuscripts and papers, which enabled Asif to dig out the contents of the proposed book, with the exception of the last two chapters that, as evidenced by Samad Shaheen, had been written, but could not be found.
Mumtaz Shirin was perhaps the first to plan a detailed study of Manto’s short stories. Though in recent decades much has been written about Manto, this incomplete book has a distinct appeal as the study of a great writer by a critic who had deeply analyzed the 20th century fiction of the West, a fact that made her better equipped to make a fair assessment of Manto’s fiction.
Mumtaz Shirin chose to devote herself to analyzing fiction alone at a time when our critics in general regarded poetry as the genre worth studying. Her critical writings have a distinct place in Urdu criticism and need to be collected and published afresh.
MUMTAZ Shirin figures prominently in Nisar Aziz’s autobiography. It is through Nisar Aziz’s book that we came to know about the agonizing last days of this distinguished writer, whose meteoric rise to prominence stands in a sharp contrast to her recession into oblivion in the later years of her life. Suffering from cancer, she spent her last days in a pathetic condition with no one to look after her. In this regard, Nisar Aziz seems to point out to a kind of callousness on the part of her husband, Samad Shaheen.
