WHAT DOES URDU WRITER ISMAT CHUGTAI HAVE IN COMMON WITH FRENCH WRITER SIMON DE BEAUVOIR?

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Title: The Crooked Line

Author: Ismat Chugtai (Translated from Urdu by Tahira Naqvi)

Publisher: Speaking Tiger, 2019

Narrating the tale of a lonely child called Shaman, the novel, The Crooked Line, by Ismat Chugtai is considered to be one of her finest works. Written is an extremely poignant and evocative manner, Shaman’s story takes us through her experiences of growing up as a woman in a conservative Muslim family.

Ismat Chugtai is regarded as one of the most rebellious and provocative women writers in Urdu and continues to be a luminary till date. The Crooked Line was originally published in 1945 and was translated into English fifty years later, after it was compared to The Second Sex (1949) by de Beauvoir for its strong portrayal of gender and politics. However, the two books are starkly different in their approach with The Crooked Line being a novel while The Second Sex is a treatise; though it has always been argued that the former could be semi-autobiographical.

“To begin with, her birth was ill-timed.”

These powerful lines announce the arrival of Shaman, the youngest child in a large and affluent family. In a way, they also set the tone for what is yet to arrive in the novel. Everything about Shaman is encapsulated in these lines — ill-timed, ill-mannered and ill-fated. Tracing her journey from her childhood to her old age, this story is beautifully layered with deepest desires, darkest secrets and emotions interwoven with the fragility of human relationships.

Read the full review on Kitaab.

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Few voices in Urdu poetry have carried the weight of history, resistance, and deep personal introspection quite like Zehra Nigah. One of the first women to break into the traditionally male-dominated world of Urdu poetry, Nigah’s work stands as a testament to the power of words to illuminate, question, and challenge. The Story of Eve: Selected Poems, translated by Rakshanda Jalil, brings together some of her most powerful nazms and ghazals, showcasing both her literary elegance and her unflinching gaze at the human condition, particularly through the lens of gender, social injustice, and political turmoil.

The Urban Gaze : Reimagining the Village in Contemporary Indian Cinema

Indian cinema has long been fascinated with the village. From the earthy, socialist realism of Do Bigha Zamin (1953) to the melodramatic lament of Mother India (1957), the village once stood as both heartland and hinterland — a space of moral clarity, rustic struggle, and often unyielding fate. But as the urban middle class began to dominate cinematic production and consumption, the depiction of the village increasingly came to reflect an urban gaze, that is, a perspective shaped by distance, nostalgia, condescension, or even outright fantasy. In recent years, this urban gaze has taken on new shades, evident in the way mainstream and indie filmmakers alike have re-engaged with rural India. While some have tried to explore the village as a site of resistance, authenticity, or even horror, others continue to reproduce sanitized or exaggerated versions of village life that serve urban sensibilities more than rural realities.

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