One can only bless publishers that are now determinedly reminding us of Hyder’s prolific writing, whether as a novelist or as a weaver of short stories. The perceptive introduction by Aamer Hussein, in this collection, captures some of the mystique that still shrouds Hyder. As he points out, she was nicknamed Pom Pom Darling by her contemporary Ismat Chughtai — and it was a hurtful barb. Chughtai was churning out raw, angry and always acerbic stories while Hyder’s, in contrast, are far more dreamy and romantic. It would be natural for a satirical writer like Chughtai to distance herself from Hyder’s style of writing — but it does not lessen the importance of Hyder’s work.

Hyder had a strong self-belief, which even encouraged her to translate her works into English. It led to some rather incongruous moments and, sometimes, clumsy dialogue. But, no doubt, during her lifetime there would be very few who could have corrected her as the stern Annie Apa or the supercilious Pom Pom Darling would have scuttled all attempts to edit her.

This delightful collection of stories has to be read bearing in mind the author’s eclectic tastes. They are amusing as well as wide ranging. The only story to which the word “traditional” can be applied is “Honour”. In this we meet the redoubtable, honour-bound Shamshad Begum who waits, like Miss Havisham, for her fiancé to return. When he finally does, with a “tawaif” in tow, Shamshad Begum rejects all his overtures and allows her wealth and estates to fall into ruin rather than succumb. As an elderly spinster, she is persuaded to become a teacher-cum-housekeeper. She retains her innocent hauteur and, in an ironical twist, unknown to her, her last job is in a brothel.

While other women fall, similarly, on bad times — as in the novella “Street Singers of Lucknow” and “A Night on Pali Hill” — the theme of women betrayed by no-good lovers is handled differently, every time. “A Night on Pali Hill”, for instance, is written like a play in which two eccentric Parsi spinsters scare away their accidental visitors, when they haul out a dead fiancé. But the most interesting stories are those with a time machine and an H.G. Wells-like twist — “Beyond the Speed of Light” where a rocket takes Padma into the past, and “Confessions of Saint Flora of Georgia that catapults two verbose skeletons into the future.

Annie Apa was well read and Pom Pom Darling could not help but show off that knowledge. And so, in many of these stories you get an overdose of characters and large chunks of real history as part of the narrative. However, that is precisely what lends a charming intensity to the tales. This collection is a valuable addition for those of us who cannot read her in the original.