09-12-2019, 04:12 PM
Gharwali: Chughtai’s ‘Dirty Story’
In Chughtai’s words, it is often thought that only men talk dirty, that’s not true; women also talk some really dirty stuff. She says that she would often discreetly listen to the women of the household sit and talk and writes what she heard in those dirty conversations.
Last month, after a long and tiring walk through the Daryaganj book market, I did finally find a shop near Jama Masjid that sold Urdu books. When I asked the bookseller for a collections of Ismat Chughtai’s stories, he put forward a collection called ‘Lihaaf aur degar afsane’ and mentioned with a mischievous face that this contains all the scandalous stories she wrote. I had already read Lihaaf, though in a different script, so fondly that I had almost committed all the words to my memory, so I decided to read another story. As I went through the index, I did find a truly scandalous story that I had been introduced to, but had never read. I came across Gharwali.
My introduction to Gharwali was through a play performed on the occasion of her 150th birthday. The play was different from the others I had seen in that it used obscenities quite liberally and had a few episodes that made it hard to believe that they were written by an Indian lady so long ago. At the time of the play, I had just been introduced to a bit of feminism and had also grown a curiosity to learn Urdu. Months later when I can finally read the Persian script, I read the actual text written by Ismat Chughtai and was pleasantly surprised to see that Chughtai actually wrote the dirty stuff they showed in the play.
In Chughtai’s words, it is often thought that only men talk dirty, that’s not true; women also talk some really dirty stuff. She says that she would often discreetly listen to the women of the household sit and talk and writes what she heard in those dirty conversations. The theme and language used in Gharwali are definitely a very frank reflection of those conversations. Being from a simple ‘Hindi-speaking’ family of Uttar Pradesh, with no formal education in Urdu, the language of Gharwali was quite at home for me, something I could never say for Manto. The words, the constructs, the tone was just like the one I’ve heard from people at my hometown.
Talking about the theme of the story, it talks about a woman Laajo who quite contrary to her name (the word laaj means shame in Hindi-Urdu) is a woman of little if any honour. By a stroke of luck, she gets hired by an honourable man, Mirza, first as an unpaid domestic help and later as his mistress. Laajo’s beauty was more than appreciated (pardon the understatement, if you will) by the young and old, much to the displeasure of Mirza, who had fallen in love with her. Despite Laajo’s disinterest in getting married (and her argument that she, as a lowly woman, does not deserve to be the lady of the house) the two get married. Lajo is re-christened to Kaneez Fatimah and her lehenga is replaced by a pyjama, which Lajo finds very restrictive. Under the fear of being named a uxorious husband, Mirza starts neglecting her and starts restricting all the liberty she earlier had. One thing leads to the other and the two get divorced, but realize that neither can without the other. In the end, the two are convinced that it was the institution of marriage that came on the way of their love and started living together as, what we now call, a live-in couple.
There are a lot of themes in the story and there is no way I can do full justice to that in this blog. Instead, I’ll only talk about what I found the most unusual about this story. The story is written with an unusual lack of fear of not being acceptable to most readers. Both the idea behind the story and its actual rendition in words are quite heretic, more so at the time when it was written. She not only turns down the institution of marriage as merely a way to control the sexuality of the woman, she does it through both subtle and explicit expressions.
In the narrative, Mirza, who loved Laajo for her householdery and would often keep thinking about her at work before marriage suddenly feels a pressure to exert his masculinity. In an attempt to not be seen as a joru ka ghulam (too fond of his wife), he would neglect her, visit prostitutes (like he did before meeting Laajo), hits her and restricts her movement out of the house. In an attempt to comfort her, he offers to keep a domestic help without realizing how much she values the control over her household. He doubts her fidelity and is extremely possessive of her sexuality. Chughtai emphasises that Mirza isn’t inherently so, but does this only after they are wed. This is largely the explicit part of criticism of marriage she attempts. Now comes the symbolism.
After her wedding to Mirza, Laajo’s lehenga is replaced by a pyjama. Laajo finds it uncomfortable since she does not like to have a piece of cloth between her legs. The pyjama which covers both legs completely is symbolic of curtailing the sexuality of the married woman as opposed to the lehenga that symbolized sexual liberty. The lehenga remains a central theme of the story, with Laajo often mentioning this to her allies, and Mirza even burning the lehenga when he saw her wearing one at home.
Without a thought about censorship, Ismat Chughtai uses words that one would normally expect to hear in a conversation like this on the streets, but would not expect to read in a magazine. She uses obscenities in the dialogues wherever appropriate especially in the ones spoken by Laajo, who has lived off the streets most of her life. She openly mentions Mirza visiting prostitutes, men peeking under Laajo’s lehenga as she jumped, the street boys glancing as she showered and Lajo’s displeasure at untying and re-tying the cord of her pyjama each time she went to the loo.
Thanks to my pathetic reading speed in Urdu, it took my as much time to read the short story as much I’d normally have taken to read a book. Truth be told, however, I enjoyed each minute of that slow-motion reading. Hopefully, I will have read the whole collection one day, however long into the future that day is!
Share this:
In Chughtai’s words, it is often thought that only men talk dirty, that’s not true; women also talk some really dirty stuff. She says that she would often discreetly listen to the women of the household sit and talk and writes what she heard in those dirty conversations.
Last month, after a long and tiring walk through the Daryaganj book market, I did finally find a shop near Jama Masjid that sold Urdu books. When I asked the bookseller for a collections of Ismat Chughtai’s stories, he put forward a collection called ‘Lihaaf aur degar afsane’ and mentioned with a mischievous face that this contains all the scandalous stories she wrote. I had already read Lihaaf, though in a different script, so fondly that I had almost committed all the words to my memory, so I decided to read another story. As I went through the index, I did find a truly scandalous story that I had been introduced to, but had never read. I came across Gharwali.
My introduction to Gharwali was through a play performed on the occasion of her 150th birthday. The play was different from the others I had seen in that it used obscenities quite liberally and had a few episodes that made it hard to believe that they were written by an Indian lady so long ago. At the time of the play, I had just been introduced to a bit of feminism and had also grown a curiosity to learn Urdu. Months later when I can finally read the Persian script, I read the actual text written by Ismat Chughtai and was pleasantly surprised to see that Chughtai actually wrote the dirty stuff they showed in the play.
In Chughtai’s words, it is often thought that only men talk dirty, that’s not true; women also talk some really dirty stuff. She says that she would often discreetly listen to the women of the household sit and talk and writes what she heard in those dirty conversations. The theme and language used in Gharwali are definitely a very frank reflection of those conversations. Being from a simple ‘Hindi-speaking’ family of Uttar Pradesh, with no formal education in Urdu, the language of Gharwali was quite at home for me, something I could never say for Manto. The words, the constructs, the tone was just like the one I’ve heard from people at my hometown.
Talking about the theme of the story, it talks about a woman Laajo who quite contrary to her name (the word laaj means shame in Hindi-Urdu) is a woman of little if any honour. By a stroke of luck, she gets hired by an honourable man, Mirza, first as an unpaid domestic help and later as his mistress. Laajo’s beauty was more than appreciated (pardon the understatement, if you will) by the young and old, much to the displeasure of Mirza, who had fallen in love with her. Despite Laajo’s disinterest in getting married (and her argument that she, as a lowly woman, does not deserve to be the lady of the house) the two get married. Lajo is re-christened to Kaneez Fatimah and her lehenga is replaced by a pyjama, which Lajo finds very restrictive. Under the fear of being named a uxorious husband, Mirza starts neglecting her and starts restricting all the liberty she earlier had. One thing leads to the other and the two get divorced, but realize that neither can without the other. In the end, the two are convinced that it was the institution of marriage that came on the way of their love and started living together as, what we now call, a live-in couple.
There are a lot of themes in the story and there is no way I can do full justice to that in this blog. Instead, I’ll only talk about what I found the most unusual about this story. The story is written with an unusual lack of fear of not being acceptable to most readers. Both the idea behind the story and its actual rendition in words are quite heretic, more so at the time when it was written. She not only turns down the institution of marriage as merely a way to control the sexuality of the woman, she does it through both subtle and explicit expressions.
In the narrative, Mirza, who loved Laajo for her householdery and would often keep thinking about her at work before marriage suddenly feels a pressure to exert his masculinity. In an attempt to not be seen as a joru ka ghulam (too fond of his wife), he would neglect her, visit prostitutes (like he did before meeting Laajo), hits her and restricts her movement out of the house. In an attempt to comfort her, he offers to keep a domestic help without realizing how much she values the control over her household. He doubts her fidelity and is extremely possessive of her sexuality. Chughtai emphasises that Mirza isn’t inherently so, but does this only after they are wed. This is largely the explicit part of criticism of marriage she attempts. Now comes the symbolism.
After her wedding to Mirza, Laajo’s lehenga is replaced by a pyjama. Laajo finds it uncomfortable since she does not like to have a piece of cloth between her legs. The pyjama which covers both legs completely is symbolic of curtailing the sexuality of the married woman as opposed to the lehenga that symbolized sexual liberty. The lehenga remains a central theme of the story, with Laajo often mentioning this to her allies, and Mirza even burning the lehenga when he saw her wearing one at home.
Without a thought about censorship, Ismat Chughtai uses words that one would normally expect to hear in a conversation like this on the streets, but would not expect to read in a magazine. She uses obscenities in the dialogues wherever appropriate especially in the ones spoken by Laajo, who has lived off the streets most of her life. She openly mentions Mirza visiting prostitutes, men peeking under Laajo’s lehenga as she jumped, the street boys glancing as she showered and Lajo’s displeasure at untying and re-tying the cord of her pyjama each time she went to the loo.
Thanks to my pathetic reading speed in Urdu, it took my as much time to read the short story as much I’d normally have taken to read a book. Truth be told, however, I enjoyed each minute of that slow-motion reading. Hopefully, I will have read the whole collection one day, however long into the future that day is!
Share this:
जिंदगी की राहों में रंजो गम के मेले हैं.
भीड़ है क़यामत की फिर भी हम अकेले हैं.
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