About Mirza Azim Beg Chugtai

Mira Azim Beg Chugtai (1898-1941) was a prolific writer of Urdu short stories, novels, plays, pamphlets, and essays, and also a lawyer by profession, in pre-partition India. He was an active champion of womens rights and critical of religious hypocrisy, and his pamphlets on Women and Islam incensed the clergy. His fiction ranged from the delicate, romantic, and good-humouredly satirical, to incisive depictions of social violence. Amongst his first works are the novel Qisar-e-Sehra, which he wrote in the ninth grade, and the short story "Angoothi ki Musibat" that he wrote as a bet and which shot him to instant fame. His novel Shehzori has twice been adapted for Pakistani television. The story translated here, "Rumooz-e-Khamoshi," features in his collection Rooh-i-Zarafat published in 1931