Ismat Chughtai transcends generations. Who hasn’t heard of this blazing feminist, her furious womanhood and her aggressively progressive agenda? At some point, we’ve all been introduced to her short story Lihaaf; we’ve all felt uncomfortable, we’ve all marvelled at how something like this was published in Pakistan of all places, a place that our generation has seen only in its most extremist, fundamentalist form.

Chughtai is an important reminder of a different era, where a woman could be daring without facing fatal consequences. Which is why, upon being introduced to the latest translation of her work, I was immediately interested — although I found it left much to be desired.

The Three Innocents and Ors: Chughtai on Childhood has been translated by the veteran scholar and translator Tahira Naqvi. A lecturer of the Urdu language at New York University, Naqvi has previously translated the works of Saadat Hasan Manto, Munshi Premchand and Khadija Mastoor. Yet, despite her extensive expertise, The Three Innocents and Ors falls short of its potential. The syntax is garbled, the sentences meander and the colloquialisms are unpolished. In short, the translation is awkward — sometimes enough to distract from the subject matter.

Master storyteller Ismat Chughtai often strips away the rose-tinted hues with which reminiscences of childhood are imbued

With that said, the book, dealing with youth and childhood, is worth a read in order to be shaken out of mistaken notions of the idyllic beauty of younger times. Chughtai, in this semi-autobiographical book, exclaims, “Childhood! Everyone seems to be singing sweet praises of childhood. ‘A time of carefree living, filled with joyous moments,’ and ‘days spent in play,’ are generally ‘associated’ with childhood. ... I’d like to confess that I’m lucky to have survived that time and consider it fortunate that those uncertain times have passed.” The book is a combination of short stories and essays, all of which explore the unpleasant aspects of being a child in the subcontinent during Chughtai’s era: the beatings, the yelling, the screaming, the cursing, the painful ‘disciplining’, being duped by older family members and never being taken seriously. Chughtai strips away the rosy colours with which nostalgia paints memories of youth, laying stark all the unpleasant aspects of childhood.

The excerpt from ‘The Crooked Line’ (Tehrri Lakeer) is significantly uncomfortable: a dark story about a girl who can only be described as disturbed. Shaman, who gets beaten regularly, is being raised in a zoo-like house, has violent fits, refuses to bathe and lets dirt cake her skin. The story has several layers within it of poverty, abuse, latent sexuality and lesbian attraction. This excerpt is enough to intrigue one into reading the whole story, but perhaps with a smoother translation or in the original language.

‘Childhood’ is a personal essay recounting anecdotes from when Chughtai was young and the tedious rules she was made to follow, the tyranny of the Maulvi Sahib and the totalitarian Apa whose “position in the family was similar to that of Hitler and Mussolini.”

‘The Dust of the Caravan’ slightly changes the tune: it’s a story about Chughtai’s childhood friend from whom she was separated after Hindu-Muslim tensions peaked, and who she saw again years later with a heart-warming resolution.

For the most part, the book is more painful than delightful, but upon reading the titular story, one cannot help but smile.

The meat of the book is the story of ‘The Three Innocents’ (Teen Anaarri), which Chughtai claims in her foreword to be “an autobiography of [my] three [nephews].” Kakku, Belu and Teetu squabble and fight, irritate their teachers, envision a gurr [raw cane sugar] business and at one point are convinced by Munna Bhaiya to sniff shoes and chew on leather. The most symbolic moment may be when they learn about income tax: Sophie Aala sits them down and explains the concept, and this gives readers a concrete moment in their hands of when these children are first touched by adulthood. “Who was the damn fool who had created such awful rules and regulations in this world? Birds pecked their food all day and no one stopped them. Goats chewed on fodder whenever they felt like it. But humans had to eat at a particular time, sleep at a certain time, wake up at a certain time, and on top of everything else, pay income tax! Uff, this was all just too much!” It’s a smile-inducing moment; a sentiment that might be coming from children, but echoes all too strongly in our adult hearts as well.

As far as awkward translations are concerned, we have to acknowledge how difficult it is to translate from Urdu to English. Consider some plain logistic angles: English doesn’t have any terms for aap [formal ‘you’] versus tum [informal ‘you’], nothing for Urdu’s colourful expletives such as ullu ka patha and no word to distinguish between khala [maternal aunt] and phuppo [paternal aunt]. Translating is a monumental task, and one that is bound to create dissatisfied grumbling amongst those who speak both languages.

The Three Innocents and Ors is a quick, easy read and, at 132 pages, it can be consumed in a few days. Despite the awkward translation, the story of the three anaarri is enjoyable and may well provoke reminiscences of one’s own childhood and how one used to be. This book is not a Chughtai-esque hallmark that will stay with the reader in the way one expects her work to, but it is still entertaining: at parts amusing, at parts dark, and at all parts introspective.

The reviewer works for a non-profit organisation working on education in Pakistan

The Three Innocents and Ors
By Ismat Chughtai
Translated by Tahira Naqvi
ISBN 978-0199406029
Oxford University Press, Karachi
132pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 1st, 2017