B.A. FIRST YEAR THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY CHAPTER 4 KALLU BY ISMAT CHUGTAI

Ismat chughtai

Ismat chughtai was born into a middle class muslim family in 1915 and unlike most of the women specially muslim women of her time she had an education, worked at a job, married according to her choice. She was a rebel not only in life but in death as well. She was as per her expressed desire cremated and not buried ismat chughtai remains one of the most important literary figures of modern india.

She was one of the first muslim women to write novels and short stories. Tahira naqvi a pakistani critic consider as one of the four pillar of modern urdu short story. The other three are s.h. manto, krishna chandra, rajendra singh bedi, apart from writing short story and novels. She also wrote articles, essay and even film scripts she had begin writing short stories when she was a student at aligarh muslim university. 

She met her husband shahid latif at aligarh and married him in 1942. Shahid latif was deeply associate with the mumbai film industry. Chugtai for most part of her working life lived in mumbai and worked as the principal of girls college. She wrote the script and acted in the film junoon 1978. She was awarded the padma shri in 1975 for her contribution in urdu literature . She died on 24th october 1991.

Kallu ( story )

Kalu is the story of a poor young boy who is sent by his mother to stay with a well to do family in the hope that kalu with the help of this family will be able to make something of himself and improve his position in life. But he was made to work like a servant exploited by this family. Especially mamani he worked for only two rupees a month kalu bears all the indignity and hardship with a smile kallu liked salma bi, the youngest daughter of momani and the feeling seems to be mutual.

One day kallu while playing with salma bi ask her would she married to him salma bi innocently says yes. Mamani who is within walking distance of the conversation goes into a rage and throw a sandal at kallu which finds kallu's nose and he starts bleeding. And at the same time kallu's mother comes to meet and upon seeing kallu in this situation, she is very angry and quarrels with mumani a lot. Mamani throws both mother and son out of the house immediately after few years kallu returns to the same town as a young and handsome mister din the deputy collector once again the relationship between kalu now kaleem sahib for the family and he is accepted back into the family for precisely the same reason for which he was thrown out in the first place for expressing his desire to marry salma bi.