Ismat Chughtai’s story does not begin like a fairy tale. The girl was born in a small city in Uttar Pradesh, named Budaun, who was not ready to conform to the stereotypes of womanhood. She did not want embroidery hoops and veiled speaking. Rather, she would climb trees, play football and race bicycles with her brothers. She was electrically curious, her questions inexhaustible–and at the outset her piercing eye saw that the world wanted girls quiet, compliant, and invisible. But Ismat was not going to be erased. She did not grow up to be a silent voice in Urdu literature, to make the inaudible audible and the unseen visible.
Since childhood Ismat was surrounded by strong characters, her ayah looked after her, her brothers turned out to be her playmates who taught her to question the boundaries the world was trying to impose. She was relocated with her father under the government appointments and started experiencing the colors of Agra, Aligarh, and Jodhpur. Every city contributed to her mosaic picture of the world, and somewhere in all these varied sceneries she learnt the language of revolt – both in life and in words.
Ismat Chughtai- Against All Odds: Education, Love and Small Wars
At the age of fifteen, Ismat almost fell into the same pattern, which had been paved way back before her birth: an arranged marriage. That is what every good girl was to do. But she said: “Let me study.” Let me be something else. Amazingly, her parents went along with it. She attended college and broke the mould and was the first Indian Muslim woman to obtain both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Education. In those years, she discovered her own path, falling for words, for stories and a dream that went beyond the four walls of her home.
She spent her university years surrounded by the fresh air of the Progressive Writers Association, the initiation of a lifetime of ideas. That is where she began to write imaginary tales that she was afraid, at first, to call her own. Nevertheless, she could not resist the desire to write. Her first stories were published with people thinking they were her brother’s! But soon the world would hear Ismat as Ismat, the thunderous voice.
Rebellion Writing: The Stories that Shook the Society
What motivated Ismat to write the way she did? She was not at ease. The narratives of her heart could not be tamed in soft or courteous cartons, since she was seeing a world that could not listen to the pain of women and could not hear their happiness. Ismat wrote differently, she was raw, textured and honest. She painted everyday life with such enthusiasm that even the simplest activities, such as cooking, looking out of a window, quarrelling about family reputations, were epic.
Her tales focused on the inner emotional life of middle-class Muslim households which were rich in secrecy. She divested the prettily false society of its wounds and hungers long denied by society talk. Ismat made her characters, maids, widows, children, out of the streets, courtyards she knew and these characters breathed and stumbled and loved and broke, just like all the people around her.
Ismat Chughtai’s Lihaaf: The Tale that Burned the World
Lihaaf, or The Quilt is not only a story, but a feeling. It is written in 1942 and narrates the forgotten life of Begum Jaan whose wishes are disregarded by her husband. The relationship between her and her maid turns out to be a secret affair that goes under the covers of her blanket to become something that shakes the foundations of what was considered by the readers as acceptable. When Lihaaf was first published it was not applauded, it was anathematized. Ismat was under an obscenity trial, and people wished her story to be suppressed.
However, Ismat was not ready to apologize. She opposed the charges and she prevailed. The world made an attempt to subjugate her by diminishing all her efforts to this one daring tale. Later in her memoir, she wrote, the notoriety caused by the story made her sick of life. It turned out to be the stick they beat me with and everything I wrote thereafter was trampled upon by it”. Nevertheless, she never gave up writing. Actually, Lihaaf transformed lives. Years later the woman who inspired the story herself told Ismat that, Lihaaf changed her life, and flowers can grow even out of the fissures of shame and silence.
Ismat Chughtai: Unspoken Stories Behind the Word
Beyond the headline stories, Ismat Chughtai’s life is filled with scenes and tales rarely told. Not many realize that she used to tear up her first stories in fear of what she could become once it is exposed to the world. Or that she led her own life like those of her heroines in literature with that same boldness of independence. She got married to a filmmaker Shahid Lateef and made her foray into screenwriting, showing that her creativity could not be constrained by genre or anticipation.
Ismat was never short of company in her house, whether it was laughter, or arguments, writers or heated discussions about the ills of the world. She was not only a writer but also a living message, which encouraged her daughter and all other young women who ever read her work to challenge the tradition and demand freedom. Her memoirs are themselves full of such momentary details, such as the scent of the first rainfall or the memory of the touch of a friend, so that the reader feels like sitting at her side and hearing her relate the true stories behind her great legends.
Ismat Chughtai: Writings of Everyday Life
Though Ismat Chughtai is not primarily known for traditional ghazals or nazms, her stories often read like urgent poetry. In Gainda she employs the marigold as a metaphor of what happens to lower-caste women in the society–they are used, discarded, never given a chance to flower beyond the established limits. Her prose is even fiercer than any couplet, full of metaphors which prick at great injustice or envelop hope on the most feeble shoulders.
The lyric beauty and the stinging wit of her play, Green Bangles, and her story, Quit India, are built like the finest sher of a ghazal, are the echo of the pain and the strength of the people she writes about. Ismat knew the cadence of spoken words, poetry in the fight of freedom or the dreams of girls living in small towns.
Complete List of Ismat Chughtai’s Books and Writings
Ismat Chughtai was a prolific Urdu writer whose sharp storytelling and bold themes made her one of the pillars of Indian literature. Below is an extensive catalog of her work, including novels, short story collections, individual stories, plays, memoirs, and other significant writings.
Novels
- Ziddi (1941)
- Tehri Lakeer (The Crooked Line) (1943)
- Saudai (Obsession) (1964)
- Ajeeb Aadmi (A Very Strange Man) (1970)
- Ek Qatra Khoon (One Drop of Blood) (1975)
- Masooma (The Innocent Girl) (1962)
- Dil Ki Duniya (The Heart Breaks Free)
- Jangli Kabootar (Wild Pigeons)
Short Story Collections
- Kaliyan (1941)
- Choten (1942)
- Ek Baat (1945)
- Chhui Mui (1952)
- Do Haath (1955)
- Badan ki Khushboo (1979)
- Amarbel (1979)
- Thori si Paagal (1979)
- Aadhi Aurat Aadha Khwaab (1986)
- Ismat Chughtai Ke Afsane
- Fasadi
- The Quilt and Other Stories
- The Three Innocents & Others
- Quit India & Other Stories
Notable Individual Short Stories
- Lihaaf (The Quilt) (1942)
- Dheet
- Kafir (Infidel)
- Gainda (The Marigold)
- Khidmatgaar
- Gharwali (The Homemaker)
- The Wedding Shroud
- Tiny’s Granny
- Til (The Mole)
- Mera Bachcha (My Child)
- Jarein (Roots)
- Kacche Dhaage (Fragile Threads)
- Roshan
Plays
- Dhaani Baankein (Green Bangles)
Memoirs, Letters & Essays
- Kaghazi Hai Pairahan (Unfinished autobiography, published posthumously)
- A Life in Words: Memoirs
- My Friend, My Enemy: Essays, Reminiscences, Portraits
- In Her Own Words: Letters & Interviews
Other Writings
- Children’s stories: e.g., Teen Anari, Chidi Ki Dukki
- Pratinidhi Kahaniyan
- Obsession & Wild Pigeons
English Translations and Prominent Anthologies
- Lifting the Veil
- A Chughtai Quartet (includes The Heart Breaks Free, The Wild One, Obsession, Wild Pigeons)
- A Chughtai Collection: The Quilt and Other Stories, The Heart Breaks Free, and the Wild One
Additional Published Work and Adaptations
Many of Ismat Chughtai’s writings have been translated into multiple languages and republished in anthologies. Some of her stories, such as Lihaaf, Tedhi Lakeer, Masooma, and Dil Ki Duniya, remain cornerstones of modern South Asian literature. Several plays and screenplays authored or co-written by her have also contributed to Indian theater and cinema.
Ismat Chughtai’s body of work is vast, spanning from fiction to memoir, and each piece remains celebrated for its honesty and courage
Ismat Chughtai: Lessons of an Wild Spirit
It is tempting to look for neat morals in Ismat Chughtai’s life, but her lesson is both simple and wild: Be true, be unafraid, and tell your story even if your voice shakes. She had her own rules, she loved, she fought, and she wrote what the others could hardly even whisper. She was not only bold in her stories but in the manner that she went through life-making simple things into lessons of courage.
Ismat was given the Padma Shri not only because of writing but because she found a language to the people who were on the border of silence. She lived to a great age in the midst of love, scandal and an unbroken succession of readers anxious to know how words could ever create such a stir in the world. Her voice is as fresh as it was in her day, that merry, defiant voice that could be laden with unshed tears, as she leans over your shoulder to tell you to look honestly at life.
Ismat Chughtai: She Lives in Her Stories
To read Ismat Chughtai is to be reminded that stories are not just entertainment—they are lifelines, bridges between worlds, and sometimes, the only way to speak truths too dangerous for daylight. Her tales of laughter, rebellion, hope and pain, are like flowers in the dry earth of history, that one woman can make a difference not only in words, but in the world.
Ismat is not a member of libraries. She lives in those who dare to ask, who resist being sat down, who write their own stories, whether on paper, in kitchens or in the big wide open sky. In every young woman burning to change her destiny, Ismat Chughtai is alive.
Ismat Chughtai (1911–1991): the pen that set silence on fire, leaving behind stories that could never again be kept under wraps.
Also Read: Munawwar Rana: The Poet Who Wrote the World’s Tears
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