Zahida Zaidi

• 
  Caption1
• 
  Caption2

Zahida Zaidi
Prof. Zahida Zaidi
Born	4 January 1930 Meerut, India
Died	11 January 2011(2011-01-11) (aged 81) Aligarh, India
Nationality	Indian
Occupation(s)	Writer and poet
Known for	Poetry in Urdu and English
Notable work	More than 30 books, and translations of Chekhov, Pirandello, Beckett, Sartre, and Ionesco

Zahida Zaidi (4 January 1930 – 11 January 2011) was am Indian scholar, professor of English literature, poet, dramatist, playwright, and literary critic. Her literary contributions include more than 30 books in Urdu and English related to social, psychological, and philosophical aspects, and the translation of the literary works of Chekhov, Pirandello, Beckett, Sartre, and Ionesco. She produced and directed several plays of Indian and Western authors in Urdu and English. She received the Hum Sab Ghalib Award for Urdu drama awarded by the Ghalib Institute, Delhi, and the Kul Hind Bahadur Shah Zafar Award.

Biography

Zahida Zaidi was born on 4 January 1930 in Meerut, India. She was the youngest of five daughters. Her father, S.M. Mustehsin Zaidi, taught mathematics at the University of Cambridge and was a well-known advocate in Meerut. He died when Zaidi was very young. Her paternal grandfather, K.G. Saqulain, was a noted social reformer, while her maternal grandfather, Maulana Khwaja Altaf Husain Hali, was an Urdu poet. An older sister, Sajida Zaidi, who died two months after her, was also a well-known poet and a professor of education at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU); the two were famously known as the "Zaidi Sisters" in the literary community. Though from a conservative Muslim society, she and Sajida stopped wearing the burqa as students at the AMU and rode their bicycles to class.

Her widowed mother moved the family from Meerut to Panipat and sent her girls to study at the AMU, as it was a premier educational institution. At AMU, Zaidi obtained the degrees of Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Master of Arts (MA) in English language. She continued her academic career in England, studying with a Modified Overseas Merit Scholarship at the University of Cambridge, where she obtained BA Honours and MA degrees in English. On her return to India, she taught English at the Lady Irwin College and Miranda House of the University of Delhi, and also at Women's College, AMU, from 1952 to 1964. She was appointed Reader in the AMU Department of English in 1964. In 1983 she became a Professor of English, and retired in 1988. Earlier, during 1971–72, she worked as a fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla.

Zaidi was a poet and dramatist of distinction in English and Urdu. Her translations into Urdu include the plays of Anton Chekov, Luigi Pirandello, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Samuel Beckett, as well as Pablo Neruda's poetry; these works were translated from the original versions in French, Italian, and English. She proficiently staged many of these plays. Besides drama, her interests included philosophy and religion, and Western, Indian, and Persian literature. Through her writings, she was fond of expressing an "existential and mystical strain" and had a knack for word-play. Her debut collection of poetry, Zahr-e-Hyat (Life's Poison) (1970), earned her the Urdu Academy Award in 1971. Her second poetry collection was titled Dharti ka Lams (Touch of Earth) (1975). Her poems titled Beyond Words and Broken Pieces were published in 1979. Her last book was Glimpses of Urdu Literature, which included a section on Nature in Iqbal's poetry.

Zaidi died in Aligarh on 11 January 2011.

Zahida Zaidi’s Play “Doosra Kamra”(This article was published in The Hindu) Professor Mohammad Asim Siddiqui

  In his highly acclaimed memoir “And Then One Day”, famous film actor Naseeruddin Shah talks about “a feasty lady in the English department” of Aligarh Muslim University who introduced him to Oliver Goldsmith’s “She Stoops to Conquer”, Eugene Ionesco’s “The Lesson” and “The Chairs”, Edward Albee’s “Zoo Story”, Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”, Anton Chekhov’s “A Proposal” and many other Continental plays. The ‘feisty lady teacher’ also directed the performance of these plays and in a chapter suitably titled “The Aligarh University Absurdists”, Shah fondly remembers this lady for her “perceptiveness and intellectual capacity” who “proved to be a benefactor in many ways”. “She introduced me to literature I might not otherwise have read”, writes Shah.
 This feisty lady was Zahida Zaidi(1930—2011) who has written numerous plays and has many collections of poetry in Urdu and English. She also wrote “Inqilab Ka Ek Din”, one of the few campus novels in Urdu. She also translated a number of Continental plays in Urdu. In the field of Urdu drama she is really a pioneer, a fact that has not always been acknowledged because the feisty professor of English was never a part of the literary politics of her time and she always spoke her mind without mincing words.
 Zahida Zaidi’s Urdu play “Doosra Kamra”(1984)(The Other Room) was performed recently at  Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Ambedkar University Delhi and Shimla’s historic Gaiety Theatre. A Dream Weavers Theatre Group Production, the gripping play of one -hour duration was directed by Madihur Rahman Suhaib.
  True to Naseeruddin Shah’s description, “Doosra Kamra” is an absurdist play which breaks away from the popular tradition of realism and romance. The plot of the play puts at the centre a working middle class couple, Suraj and Sonia(played by two young actors Shahrukh and Pratibha),who remain confined to their two- room house in an urban set up. The entire action of the play takes place inside one room of the house, with some visitors, most importantly their friend Shabana(played by Arsh)dropping in the house at some awkward moments.
  The other room gradually emerges as a very powerful and scary presence in the play, instilling fear in the two main characters and generating tension and uneasiness in the minds of the audience. The key elements in the play are chaos and clutter in the physical setting and their analogic equivalent in the form of the inexplicable, the mysterious and the unexpected haunting the psychic-emotional states of characters. If the space beneath the divan in the outer room hides Suraj’s clutter, the other room contains all possible clutter of Sonia. This is the room where naked dead bodies start appearing and then increasing in number, much beyond the comprehension of the protagonists and the audience.
  The minimalist use of stagecraft in the play ensures that the other room is not shown from inside and the audience remain doubtful whether Suraj and Sonia really see those bodies or they are living a bad dream. The props on the stage are also bare minimum—some clothes scattered in the living room, a water bottle and two glasses on the table, a sofa and a divan—but they do bring out the disorder in the lives of characters. Repeated references to burial and the characters’ obsession with closed doors and closed windows achieve a claustrophobic effect in the play.
The play makes a very good use of some iconic signs. Sonia’s act of lighting up cigarettes regularly not only reveals her an emancipated woman but also her troubled emotional state. Much in the manner of absurdist plays, the action in “Doosra Kamra” defies accepted logic and an easy cause and effect relationship between incidents in the play. The main characters become the victims of forces which they cannot understand, much less explain. Their worry to dispose of or bury those bodies somewhere in the house keeps them in a permanent state of fear and panic. The presence of the irrational in their lives affects them deeply but it cannot be explained by anyone.
Like in many psychological plays in “Doosra Kamra” the line between dream and reality is blurred. Shabana’s dream appears real to her in terms of its effects. Sonia’s interprets her dream in Freudian terms. Suraj and Sonia keep wondering if the irrational in their life is a dream or it is real. In fact, they seek some kind of opening from their troubled state not by desiring the fulfillment of a beautiful dream but rather in the break of their nightmarish dream-like existence. 
  Continental absurdist drama was not devoid of its element of topicality and its share of humour. “Doosra Kamra” subtly touches themes of marital incompatibility and suppressed sexuality. It also has an ironic take on the so called emancipated woman. Suraj and Sonia share a very cold relationship which is dominated by Sonia all the time. These themes are realized with a lot of subtlety and there are never any loud moments in the play. Use of chaste Urdu expressions imparts a sophisticated air to the play. 
There is rich humour in the play though no broad smiles and uproarious laughter. The humour is very ably brought out by the timing of the actors, especially by Shahrukh, who also got an award for his performance in both Jamia and Ambedkar University. Adding something to the character of Suraj, Shahrukh is able to maintain the same troubled face throughout the play and deliver his funny lines with a deadpan expression. But an element of morbidity touches even the humorous side of the play especially in those risque lines where Suraj blames Sonia for staring at those naked male bodies.
   The inexplicable in Zahida Zaidi’s powerful absurdist play can also appear incredulous in a different sense today. The audiences’ permanent state of doubt about what is real or unreal in their world of image-created reality can open another line of investigation for the play.  

References

http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/ample-room-for-interpretation/article8737572.ece