By Intizar Husain
After leaving Lahore for Karachi, Hajra Masroor made a visit in October 1972. It was her first public appearance and a reception had been arranged in her honour, well-attended by writers and her admirers. Prominent among them were Professor Wiqar Azeem, who was in the chair, Professor Hameed Ahmad Khan and Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi. Speaking on the occasion Khan said that Hajra “possesses the courage to point out the unpleasant socio-economic realties in our society and depict them boldly in her stories.”
Hajra nostalgically recalled her years in Lahore, remembering in particular the house at Nisbet road, a place that provided her peace of mind, thus enabling her to concentrate on her writing.
She was perfectly justified in being nostalgic about her years in Lahore. She, along with her elder sister Khadija Masroor, arrived at a time when the progressive movement with which the two sisters were associated, was in its heyday. Soon a new literary journal named Naqoosh made an appearance under the editorship of Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi. Hajra was requested to assist Qasmi in the compilation of the journal. She felt honoured to work with the esteemed writer and readily accepted the offer. While working for the journal, Hajra soon found herself in the middle of an ideological battle between the progressives and the group of writers comprising Saadat Hasan Manto, Mohammad Hasan Askari and Mumtaz Shirin. She rose to the occasion and played her part well.
Of course, Hajra had already earned a name as a short story writer with the courage to write about things pleasant and unpleasant, hitherto unsaid, in the pre-Partition years. She had made her appearance during the forties at the heels of Ismat Chughtai, whose uncensored expression had served as a shock to the older generation and as an inspiration to younger writers.
But Hajra did not live long under Ismat’s influence. With her sharp talent she soon developed her own style of looking at things and depicting them. For instance, the way in which she captures the behaviour of a young girl with suppressed desires, moving cautiously under the watchful eyes of her hawkish grandmother. Well versed in the spoken idiom of UP households, Hajra wrote spontaneously on social themes, particularly man-woman relationships. She never seemed to be searching for words and expressions to depict intimate relationships. Her writing flows easily and her descriptions carry the stamp of spontaneity.
Even though these were the themes and style that won her early recognition, Hajra did not allow herself to become their prisoner. With time she outgrew her early writings and the stories she wrote in the latter phase of her life were of a different sort.
After the progressive movement had receded, Hajra seemed to have withdrawn from active literary scene. But that was the time she achieved maturity in her art.
It was left for Mumtaz Shirin who, ignoring her ideological differences with Hajra, took notice of this significant turn in Hajra’s work.
Hajra herself was so impressed by Shirin’s analytical study that she chose to include it in her collected works. In the foreword to the collected works, Hajra wrote: “Because of our ideological differences we were estranged from her [Shirin]. But she is a critic deeply in love with fiction. When my collection Tisri Manzil came out she made a survey of my short stories and plays in a way that I forgot about the estrangement. Now I feel compelled to include this survey in the collected volume of my short stories.”
In making a survey of Hajra’s short stories, Shirin sees them divided into three stages. The first stage is the period when Hajra seems bent upon exposing the bitter realities of our lives. In the second stage she aligns herself completely with the progressive movement. And Tisri Manzil stands as a representative of the third stage. Here Hajra, according to Shirin, judges life in an objective way and depicts it in a balanced manner. The story “Tisri Manzil” appears to her as among Hajra’s best. Shirin is right. In this story, we see a culmination of Hajra’s art. The story may be seen as among those few in Urdu literature in which the short story appears touching the heights of perfection.