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The two-day talkfest on Urdu icons Ismat Chugtai and Saadat Hasan Manto in Delhi last weekend was a delightful departure from what the capital’s long-suffering book-lovers are by now used to. The speakers weren’t your embedded Sahitya Akademi types, the sessions were framed wittily—“Pom Pom Darling and Lady Chengis Khan” for the literary feud between the two Urdu prima donnas Ismat and Qurratulain Haider, for example, a blend of literary gossip and stalwart speakers a la Jaipur litfest. Best of all, any speaker who exceeded the time limit was given the thumbs-down. No wonder an unusually enthusiastic audience crowded the sessions.
Tome Tome Dahlings
Literary feuds in the 1940s seem no different from what goes for literary debate now: one writer attacking a more successful rival for her privileged background. Poet Javed Akhtar, acquainted with both Ismat and Qurratulain, recalled how Ismat apa dismissed her rival’s Aag ka Dariya, claiming Haider had merely to dip into her father’s huge library to write it. A friend of Haider’s retorted: “Bombay’s public library is even larger...why don’t you go and write a book like hers then?”
