WOMEN`S autobiographies in Urdu take us back to the times when women had a restricted role to play in the subcontinent`s conservative society. Such biographical accounts are often penned by women born in the early 20th Century, though women from a later era have written of greater and more active roles they assumed.

But Begum Hameeda Akhter Husain Raipuri`s autobiography, titled Ham Safar, or fellow traveller, is quite different and it honestly rings a truth mostly unheard of: a woman born in the subcontinent in 1918 spent a life that was full of interesting events and, while in her twenties and thirties, met luminaries such as the Quaid-iAzam, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojni Naidu, Khalida Adeeb Khanum, Moulvi Abdul Haq and some others.

Begum Hameeda Akhter Husain Raipuri was born on Nov 22, 1918, in Hardoi, UP, British India, into an educated and enlightened family. Her father Zafar Umer was a police officer and renowned writer of detective novels. Zafar Umer`s Neeli Chhatri, or the blue umbrella, arguably Urdu`s first detective novel, was a smashing success. In her autobiography she hasalso described, in her captivating style, some interesting events of her father`s life thathe hadnarrated to her.

In 1935, Hameeda was married to Akhter Husain Raipuri, a well-known scholar and fiction writer, who at that time was associated with Anjuman Taraqqi-iUrdu and was Moulvi Abdul Haq`s right hand. Sharing the same house with Moulvi Abdul Haq in Hyderabad (Deccan) in the same compound that housed Anjuman`s offices, Akhter and Hameeda became family members of Moulvi Sahib who never married.

It is usually assumed that Moulvi Abdul Haq, truly one of the most towering figures of Urdu, was a sombre and no-nonsense type of person. But Ham Safar tells us a different story. Moulvi Abdul Haq, deferentially called Baba-i-Urdu, appears in the pages of the book a cheerful, rather naughty, light-hearted and vivacious person who loved not only antique dictionaries and faded manuscripts but also natural beauty and goodfood,too.

Later on, she accompanied her husband when he travelled to France to earn a doctorate. After the Independence, they migrated to Pakistan and along with her husband she travelled to Somalia where Akhter Sahib served as an educational con-sultant to Unesco. She also visited several other European and African countries.

Hameeda Akhter has described all these interesting events, historic personalities and life`s experiences in a simple and extempore yet flowing and lovely style in her autobiography. The account of her meeting with Mahatma Gandhi at his ashram (monastic retreat) and counter arguments is something strange and relishing.

Gandhi Ji sent through her his salaam to Moulvi Abdul Haq, his rival in political and linguistic arena, and Abdul Haq`s remarks on this is also intriguing.

Surprisingly, she had never written anything before the autobiography, though she was an avid reader, especially of fiction.

But when her husband or fellow traveller for more than half-a-century, Dr Akhter Husain Raipuri, passed away in June 1992, she was devastated. Jamaeel Jalibi asked her to write down what she recalled. She expressed her inability, saying that she had never written anything before. Jalibi Sahib said: `Write as if you were talking to me`. She just did that, and she was 74 at that time. The simple, unvarnished but idiomatic style of a 74-year-old, first-time writer hooked the readers when the episodes began to appear in Afkaar, Karachi.

When published in a book form in 1995,the autobiography became quite popular and was ranked among the best ones penned by female writers. When the autobiography, her first book, appeared she was 77.

Ham Safar narrates some important events, or their details, that were left either unsaid or described cursorily by Akhter Husain Raipuri in his autobiography Gard-i-Raah. As put by Mushfiq Khwaja, Ham Safar supplements and complements Grad-i-Raah and sheds light on some details that Akhter Sahib had intentionally withheld. Khwaja Sahib was of the view that the autobiography serves as a picture gallery where portraits of some of the most prominent figures of the Indo-Pak subcontinent are hung. Ameena Azfar translated Ham Safar into English and Oxford published it under the title My Fellow Traveller.

Her two collections of pen sketches, Nayab Hain Ham and Chehre Muhre, are written mostly in the same evocative style and create vivid pictures of the personalities she knew so well. She also wrote a novel Wo Kaun Thi, or who was she? Begum Hameeda Akhter Raipuri died in Karachi on April 20, 2009.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com