Women were supposed to receive letters, not to write them. So, it is more intriguing if the writer of the letters happens to be a woman. Since in history women have been the object of desire, their expression has been inhibited, stultified, circumspect, differential, and tentative compared to the total abandonment of men’s.

Letters were probably a good example to looking into the inner most recesses of the woman soul because it is meant to be something that is supposed to be between two individuals and not to go public like works of literature.

Safia was away from her husband, Jan Nisar Akhtar, because he had gone away for livelihood and that, too, as a lyrist to Bombay. This was then, as now, not a profession but a vocation that may have paid or paid not, and he had to really struggle to make two ends meet.

This was the great blossoming of the Progressive Writers Association, the crackdown on the Communist Party, the ultra conservative government in Maharashtra headed by Moraji Desai, and the growing demand within the film world of poets and writers.

She, unfortunately, was laid ill and had to be bedridden most of the time. And in that state, she wrote all those letters recalling the happy moments and hoping for better days in future and in that all caring for the husband as only a wife could.

She was well accomplished intellectually for she was the sister of one of the most brilliant poets of the Urdu, Majaz Lakhnavi. Like so many before him, he burnt his candle at both ends and died young after writing some of the most firebrand verses in the language while remaining within the legitimate territory called poetry. A rare combination to achieve as even the most accomplished of poets have struggled to reach it.

Jan Nisar Akhtar himself was a poet who was recognised and appreciated while he lived and though the wife was not a poet or a writer in the formal sense she did have the potential to be one as it is amply clear from the letters that he wrote.

In those days, it was also just the beginning of women starting to express themselves, and coming into the open to meet men at their own turf. From Bhopal, in those days she did her masters in education and got a job with the Hamidiya College.

Jan Nisar Akhtar had gone to Bombay and as it mostly happened with poets and artistes they needed support to keep the hearth warm. It either came from a well-heeled family background or from wives who had to slog, bring up the children, and so keep the marriage intact.

Her letters may appear to be swarming with maternal emotions, dripping with sentiment, and inundated with a concern that is not usual in literature that one reads -- they may be maudlin, too laden with feelings of melodramatic intent but they appear to be all very sincere as if coming from the bottom of her heart.

It could also be that in her state she was extra edgy about the well-being and good health, about being strong and properly looked after because her inner most traits are conditioned so and in ordinary circumstances she may have been more objective in writing about the outer world rather than her arcane emotional turmoil. But, probably, it was the state that she was in that she was able to write. Ordinarily, she may not have written at all or if so only in brevity. And the outpouring of emotions would not have welled enough into letters.

Among the Muslim women she must have been the first generation that has tasted the fruits of higher education and then also went on to do a job. And the fact of her being away from the husband made her write these letters, thus the talent as a writer was discovered by the force of circumstances and only later exposed to the wider world.

Everything about women was supposed to be hidden, secretive, and any disclosure next to public shame. They, in their modesty, were supposed to be silent, mum with lips stitched. This was the criteria of honour and family respect but here was one woman opening her heart and soul to express herself like a man.  She was, thus, breaking many norms, violating values, and breaking barriers and was on the course to legitimising in Urdu women’s expression as a strain of literature as well.