Playing host to EM Forster and Majrooh Sultanpuri

In a small, neat flat on Yari Road, there lives a frail and distinguished-looking woman of 78 who carries around her a whiff of the literary salons of the heady ’60s. Salma Siddiqui, wife of renowned Urdu novelist Krishan Chander and an author in her own right, has been living in Mumbai for 43 years.

Born in 1930 in Benares, Salma is the daughter of noted educationist of his time, Professor Rashid Ahmad Siddiqui. She grew up in Aligarh, where her father played mentor to stalwarts such as writer-filmmaker KA Abbas, poets Ali Sardar Jafri and Jan Nisar Akhtar. The poet Majrooh Sultanpuri stayed with her family for four years before embarking on his path to fame in Mumbai. “Our house was a hub where poets came to hone their skills,” recalls Siddiqui.

She speaks fondly of her alma mater, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). “We were guided by our British professors who were strict disciplinarians and committed to the cause of education.”

In 1943, when she was 13, Siddiqui happened to read Krishan Chander’s short story Annadata, and was deeply moved by it. “It is a touching tale of the Bengal famine of 1942, told  through the eyes of a British officer.”

Siddiqui married Krishan Chander in 1957 in Nainital. They moved to Bombay in 1962, and were part of the flowering of Urdu writing that occurred in the city under the umbrella of the Progressive Writers Movement.

Siddiqui remembers a story from those times. “Krishanji had written a long letter titled, An Open Letter to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah from a Prostitute. It described the pain and suffering of the refugees during the mass exodus of 1947. This fictional account used two girls, one Indian and the other Pakistani, as its protagonists. It was so moving that the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Morarji Desai, sent the police to Krishanji’s residence in Mumbai in search of the girls!”

Similary, the bureaucratic red tape around getting a passport inspired him to pen one of his most popular novels, Autobiography Of A Donkey.

 Siddiqui herself is the author of an acclaimed novel, Sikandarnama. “Sikandar was the name of our domestic help. He joined the household in 1936 and worked for us for more than 55 years.” The novel drew from his experiences.  “There is no one in the world like Sikandar,” she recalls.

“Once, the famous novelist EM Forster was visiting us in Aligarh. Sikander presented him with a paan to welcome him. When Forster was about to eat it, he remarked, ‘This is the first time I am seeing a foreigner indulging in the dirty habit of eating paan.” We sent him away on some excuse lest he did more such things.” Sikandar’s book was adapted into a teleserial called ‘Karname Sikandar Ke’, telecast in 1991.

It was an unusual personal tragedy that led to Siddiqui losing interest in writing. Three of her manuscripts — completed books — were destroyed in one monsoon, when water seeped into them. “It was a great loss for me. I lost some parts of my autobiography, too.”

Why doesn’t she write those parts again? “Who will read them today? Is this generation interested?”

Ever since her husband’s death in 1977, Siddiqui has been living by herself in Mumbai. And after witnessing a lifetime of exciting political upheavals, she is now content to deal with the machinations of her co-operative housing society. She doesn’t want her roof to leak again.

“Politics in those days were different. There was commitment among the politicians.” She recalls, “After Autobiography Of A Donkey,’ Krishanji came out with A Donkey In NEFA, which was severely critical of Nehru’s China policies. Despite this, when we met Nehru, he gave us a hearty welcome. They may have had opposing views, but they respected each other, and there were no personal animosities.”