Ismat Chughtai has often been described as Urdu’s most courageous and also controversial woman writer, which is not to say that the epithet ‘controversial’ has worked to her disadvantage. Think Ismat: think delightful, fiery, provocative and well known feminist stories, never mind if they are occasionally heart breaking too. Ismat is a well known name today among literary circles as an Indian writer of repute. Many would however not be aware it was only in 1990 that the first English translation of her work appeared, that is, just a year before her death.
A modern reader might like to think that Ismat must have written quite a bit of what she wrote for an English reading audience, but that was not the case at all. Actually, there are few today who would know that some of the best feminist writing of the 20th century in the subcontinent, whether poetry or fiction, happened in Urdu. Urdu writing especially in the field of what is simplistically called ‘social-realist’ fiction could be provocative, if not delightfully obscene! Ismat’s style and subject matter are both so full of spice and so rich in cultural imagery that they almost make one think that she might be aiming, apart of her Urdu readership, also at a certain kind of readership of the future—the present readership of Indian literature in English.