ناول ٹیڑھی لکیر کا سوانحی پہلو: عصمت چغتائی اور شمن کے کردار کا تقابلی مطالعہ

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DIMENSION OF ISMAT CHUGHTAI'S "TERHI LAKEER": A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE AUTHOR AND THE CHARACTER OF SHAMAN

Abstract

This article examines the well-documented autobiographical dimension of Ismat Chughtai's celebrated Urdu novel "Terhi Lakeer" (The Crooked Line), focusing on the parallels between the novelist's own life, as recorded in her autobiography "Kaghazi Hai Pairahan" and various interviews, and the character of Shaman, the novel's central protagonist. Drawing on the research under review, the discussion traces convergences in family background — including the large number of siblings, the relative neglect experienced amid many children, and the emotionally distant, at times harsh, maternal relationship — as formative influences shared by both the author and her fictional counterpart. The article further explores the educational journeys of Ismat and Shaman, the role of elder-brother figures (Azim Beg Chughtai and Munnay Bhai) as intellectual mentors, shared indifference to conventional adornment and grooming, an early immersion in an environment of brothers that shaped a tomboyish and combative temperament, and the recurring motif of homosocial and homoerotic attachment — represented in the novel through Shaman's relationships with Rasul Fatima, Najma and Miss Charan, echoing the author's own recollected attachments to figures.The article also considers shared ideological commitments to progressive and left-leaning politics, opposition to purdah, critical engagement with religious orthodoxy on questions of gender inequality, and the beginnings of both women's professional lives as schoolteachers. Throughout, the article maintains that while numerous episodes and character traits in "Terhi Lakeer" mirror events and sentiments documented in Chughtai's non-fictional writings, the author herself resisted a simple equation of the novel with autobiography, insisting instead that the work was assembled from fragments of many women's lives besides her own.