Qurratulain Hyder’s jilted begum, eccentric spinsters and even a time machine
Qurratulain Hyder was both “Annie Apa” and “Pom Pom Darling” — it all depended on whom she encountered and what she wrote about. She could be sophisticated or gauche, western or ethnic, a time-traveller or a village innocent — and it is this constant mix that makes her intriguing. There is always an element of surprise when you read her as she was never content with writing about any single world. A ferociously intelligent woman, her ability to defy classification gave her, and her writing, multiple identities — but this also stole from her the legitimate fame and glory that should have been hers, during her lifetime. Given our penchant to pigeon-hole writers (S. Rushdie: Magical Realism, A. Roy: Avant-Garde Activist, etc), Hyder confounded us and, Houdini-like, escaped applause.

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.

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