Desicritics Comments on Qurratulain Hyder Passes - An Enigmatic Icon

Comment by Daagh

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 07:59:10 EST

Qurratulain Haider (Kur-tul Ji)'s world was rend apart by the horrible and disastrous Partition of India 1947. This tearing up was a civilisational loss and from that micro level, it reached and touched and tormented individual lives. Kur-tul Ji's entire corpus of writing is a lamentation for that historic, civilisational and personal loss ~ and a yearning that some day., man may overcome this emotion of exclusivity and learn to respect diversity.. not only to respect but also to appreciate it., i.e.

Comment by commonsense

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 10:27:49 EST

I met her once too...she was a bit grouchy! But who would grudge such a magical writer for being a bit grouchy, especially after meeting me! I remember once when the local All India Radio was interviewed her. The interviewer kept trying to get her first name right, but since it was quite a mouthful, kept tripping on it, producing a different sound each time. Until she decided, enough is enough, and stuck to "Kurtul-Jee"! Mayank has somewhere put a picture of her grave being dug up...a haunting image...

Comment by SA

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 08:57:09 EST

Hello, Temporal. Thanks for this great post. It is very poignant and well written. I am looking for a copy of The Street Singers of Lucknow and Other Stories - even an e-copy would do. Sterling Publishers listed a paperback on their site, but it's currently out of print. The ones on Amazon, etc., are beyond my budget. Do you know where I can find a copy? I would be very grateful for any help with regard to this. Thank you very much :)

Comment by temporal

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 06:52:58 EDT

a really moving tribute to Annie Apa HERE

Comment by Raza

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 04:39:35 EDT

Aaman and Temporal: I will soon write a subsequent post on Ainee Apa. Mayank's post was a lovely sequel to this moving piece.

Comment by Jawahara

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:59:26 EDT

I remember meeting her as a child when she visited Allahabad (we were very distantly related) to visit her cousins who lived there. She was quite eccentric :-) but oh so fascinating, and she became my vision of a writer. A great loss for the world of literature.

Comment by PH

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:33:30 EDT

For various reasons, I've put off buying Aag Ka Dariyah. This reminds me that I shouldn't wait anymore. "I suppose the rich inner universe makes up for the 'loneliness' syndrome in exceptional individuals. " Well said, Raza.

Comment by temporal

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:15:59 EDT

raza: and i second aaman:) (and if you have 'turkash' translate the perceptive passage from ms hyder's forward that deals with her interpretation of the maladies of partition)

Comment by Aaman

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 11:53:08 EDT

Raza, perhaps you can do a follow-up piece for us - let us memorialze her greatness.

Comment by Raza

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 11:46:17 EDT

Temporal Thanks for this piece. It is a sad day indeed. I'd quote from an old piece in the Outlook India: The product of a liberal, culturally elite, Muslim upper-class—as much at ease with Christopher Isherwood and cucumber sandwiches as with revolutionary Urdu poetry—by all accounts, Hyder has been no halcyon either in her personal or her professional life; the seas, rather, have rocked in her wake! At a time when contemporary Urdu literature was steeped in leftist concerns, Hyder, scandalously for some, wrote not about the proverbial peasant and plough but about her own privileged milieu and the destruction of its graceful composite culture. This stirred up a storm. The great Urdu troika of the Progressive Writers movement—Saadat Hasan Manto, Krishen Singh Bedi and Ismat Chugtai—scoffed at her as a renegade and the voice of a feudal bourgeoise; Chugtai even nicknamed her "Pom Pom Darling" in cruel parody. But Hyder's corpus is humbling, and by '57, with the publication of Aag ka Darya—a seminal novel which sweeps confidently over 25 centuries of history, from Chand-ragupta Maurya to Bahlol Lodhi and Wajid Ali Shah upto post-partition India and Pakistan—her position as a pathbreaking Urdu writer was undisputed. " says it all Raza