Ismat Chughtai was the first woman writer to be judged mainly on the basis of her writing ability, a thing that was rare in the time when she started to write.

Women and writing were two things apart and no one took their writing seriously. It was initially thought that women just did not have the ability to write and much that was published in the name of women was supposed to be written by men with a female pseudonym. Hardly any Indian woman had ventured forth to write in her name, and if there were examples to emulate, it were Hijab Imtiaz Ali Taj and Rasheed Jahan. The former wrote mushy romantic stuff while the latter who wrote in Angaray created a furore because it was by a woman and then it was about taboos, the areas which even men feared to tread. Rasheed Jahan became famous for her political activity, and of breaking new ground in her profession -- that of being a medical doctor.

Following are a few passages in original and translation.

Phir main ne chori chupe Angarey parhi -- Rasheed Apa hee mujhe aik aisi hasti nazar aaeen jinhoon ney mere main khudaitemadi paida ki -- main ney inhe apna guru maan liya. Aligarh ki choti zehar aalood fiza main wo bari badnamm theen -- meri saaf goi ko unhoan ne saraha aur phir main ne inki batai hui kitabain chaat daaleen.

On the sly, hidden from everyone I read Angarey. Rasheed Apa was the only one who tried to create in me a sense of self confidence. I accepted her as my guru. In the poisonous narrow minded atmosphere of Aligarh she enjoyed notoriety. She lent support to my brazenness and I lapped up the books recommended by her.

Chughtai stuck to her guns and continued to write despite much controversy that surrounded her writings. Some of the controversy and breaking new ground or being the first can be gleaned from her autobiography of sorts Kaghazi Hai Pairahan. Her being educated formally in a school and then college was enough to set her apart from her conservative mussalman ashraaf. She did not stop there by getting dutifully married and raising children but chartered a career of her own as a writer and activists of sorts.

Aik kumbakht kahani jaan ki museebat ho gai hai.

Is it that same wretched story that has become a bone stuck in my throat.

Lihaf ka label ab bhi meri hasti par chipka hua hai. Aur jise loag shuhrat kehte hain wo badnami ki surat main is afsane par itni mali ke ulti aane lagi. Lihaf meri chir bun giya tha aur kuch bhi likhon lihaf ki tahoan main dab jata tha.

The label of Lihaf was stuck to my being. And what people call fame reached me as infamy in such big doses through this story that it was nauseating. It was what I was teased with and whatever I wrote got buried in its folds.

It is not easy to translate her because her style is firmly rooted in her cultural tradition. The begmati language or the idiom that she used in her stories and particularly in her autobiography is very difficult to translate. A translation can easily kill of the soul of the original expression and a flat prosaic rendition can be the end result. It was a challenge that was accepted by Noor Zaheer, probably because she too comes from the same background and is more confident about capturing the spirit of the style, idiom and transferring it in translation or retain at least some of it. At times she does it almost literally

Mere dil main chor tha

There was in my heart a thief

Meri yeh halat thi keh khasyani billi khamba khsoote

My condition was like a cat with nothing to do

Bari apa jo unnees baras ki umar main bewa ho gai theen karwa neem bun gai theen.

Bari Apa who had become a widow at nineteen had returned and was as bitter as neem.

Main jaanti thi ke main apni khandani kaj bahsi per utar aae hoon.

I knew that I was resorting to my family trait of bickering

Chughtai was a fearless woman and only a fearless person can break so many barriers. Her style also has the freshness or the originality of experiencing something new or being the first to experience or exploring a new dimension that may not be exposed to someone who is not the first to experience it. This also called for originality of experience and a new language and this she was able to express in her richly textured begmati idiom. The translation of something that was original and totally new was thus not an easy task and hence needed greater imaginative skills from the translator as well.

In those early days just before partition, it was Manto who gave her the support she needed as they both faced charges of obscenity in court. The translation perhaps failed to capture the nuance of her expression

Dil main to pakhar dhakar ho rahi thi magar Manto ne aise sheh di keh mera dar nikal gaya.

My heart was conjuring up frightful outcomes but Manto was such a moral booster that I became completely unafraid

Mohsin ko to main ney yeh keh kar chup kara dia agar ziyada jaan khao gey to underground ho jaoon ge aur pach sao ka phitkaar baith jaye ga.

I shut up Mohsin with the warning that that if he irritated me too much I would go underground and he would lose his five hundred.

Wapas aa kar Mohsin aur Shahid mujh se khoob lare.-- aur Shahid to ssari raat larte rahe, Naubat talaaq tak aa gai.

On our return Mohsin and Abdullah fought with me and Shahid continued to fight through the night. At its height was divorce.

And then

Main khush qismat hoon key jeete je mujhe samajnewale paida ho gae. Manto ko to pagal bana diya tha. taraqi pasandon ne bhi is ka saath nahi diya. mujhe taraki pasadoan nain thukraya nahi aur na he sar par charhaya.Manto khaak main mil geya quoonke Pakistan main wo kangaal tha. main bohat asoda haal thi.filmoon sey hamari bohat achi aamdan thi aur adbi maut aur zindagi ki parwa na thee.aur wese bhi main taraki pasandoan ki khud bhi chamchi bani hui thi.bare zor shor se inqilab laa rahi thi.

I was fortunate that I found people who understood me in my lifetime. Manto was turned into a deranged crazy man. Even the progressives did not stand by him. They too neither rejected me nor praised me. Manto turned to dust because in Pakistan he was a pauper. I was quite well off. I earned well from films and did not care about the literary death of life. I would also say that in some ways I myself was fawning over the progressives and beating the drum of revolution all the time.

In the volume there are a few writings by others on Ismat Chughtai like Patras Bokhari and Manto and there are articles by her on Khawaja Ahmed Abbas, Asrarul Haq Majaz and Manto. All these articles, of course, have been translated from Urdu into English as if to supplement her autobiography.