http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/08/non-fiction-a-100-year-old-journey-just-as-riveting-today.html
While Atiya was unable to finish her course because of ill health, her travelogue, Zamana-i-Tahsil, was serialised in Tahzib-un-Niswan and in 1921, published as a book. Atiya’s Journey not only contains an English translation of Zamana-i-Tahsil, under the title “A Time of Education,” but also a biography that provides the context to the travelogue as well as a wealth of other information about Atiya, her pioneering family, and her cosmopolitan marriage to artist Samuel Rahamin (a man who adopts her name as his own).
Atiya was among the most remarkable women of her generation. She belonged to the distinguished Tyabji family in Bombay, women from which were among the first Indian Muslims to give up the purdah and participate in public life. Educated at a convent school in Pune, Atiya started contributing to family notebooks, both in English and in Urdu, from a young age.
Although the biography by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley and Sunil Sharma, the authors of Atiya’s Journey, does not cover the details of Atiya’s life after marriage, it does capture her dazzling personality and glimpses of the new horizons marriage opened out for her — the exhibitions she organised in the United States, her speeches on women’s rights, her book on Indian music, and the dances she choreographed.
Lambert-Hurley and Sharma suggest that in Pakistan, Atiya Fyzee is chiefly remembered as the muse to two great Urdu poets, Shibli Nomani and Allama Iqbal. Few in Pakistan, where she migrated to in 1947, knew of her earlier, extensive activities in undivided India, Britain, Europe and the US. And after the partition, financial constrains meant she did not travel again.
The authors provide an illuminating analysis of her friendships with both poets. Iqbal, however, is particularly relevant to Zamana-i-Tahsil because the journal was written at the time when Atiya and Iqbal met and became close friends, yet he is hardly mentioned at all. To fill the gaps, the authors refer to Atiya Fyzee’s slim, but famous book, Iqbal, which was published shortly before the partition in 1947 and presents a ‘revised’ version of their friendship. Atiya’s Journeys includes extracts from Iqbal in the appendices and also places it within a broader historical context.
However, the focus of Atiya’s Journeys remains Zamana-i-Tahsil, which begins with Atiya’s departure for England from Bombay. She starts with describing her mixed emotions at leaving her loved ones behind in India and goes on to give details of the ship she is travelling on, “the biggest steamboat of the P&O Company”. Her fascination comes through in comments on the cabins, the music room, the gleaming brass and silver and “the bearers (both men and women)”.
When she finally arrives at her destination, Atiya declares: “How can London be described and how can it be imagined without being seen! Such streets and what a grand city and the shops!” Her wonder and excitement, which doubtless must have been shared by her readers in distant India, spills over.
Atiya is also impressed by her colleagues at the Maria Grey Training College, who she finds to be very learned. She remarks: “After college, these fiendishly clever girls play the game of hockey…. they do gardening. They work right along with gardeners.” She adds: “Our lady teachers who lecture are each more capable and outstanding than the other.” Atiya also notes details such as the British enthusiasm for fresh air: “these people leave the windows completely open in the winter season.”
While she is in London, Atiya receives many visitors, including her brother, Ali Azhar Fyzee and her cousin Vazirunissa Latif. There are also visits to the Maharaja and Maharani of Baroda and invitations to the elegant homes of the Princesses Catherine and Sophia Duleep Singh, Flora Sassoon and others. Music recitals, sightseeing, a trip across Europe are all incorporated into her account which vividly captures multicultural London at the height of the British Empire.
Atiya’s Journey is illustrated by rare photographs and enriched by excellent notes and appendices. It is a truly valuable book, which brings to life a pioneering woman who has virtually vanished into myth and mystique, not least because she and her husband were expelled from their Karachi home, Aiwan-i-Rafat, in their old age, by a petty bureaucrat. They died in penury and little has been done to honour their memory since.
The reviewer is a writer and critic
Atiya’s Journeys: A Muslim Woman from Colonial Bombay to Edwardian Britain
(BIOGRAPHY)
By Siobhan Lambert-Hurley
and Sunil Sharma
Oxford University Press, New Delhi
ISBN 0-19-8-6833-6
307pp. Indian Rs550
NON-FICTION: A 100-year-old journey, just as riveting today
The story of a remarkable woman, which had sadly been all but forgotten, has been brought to life thanks to the recently-published book, Atiya’s Journeys: A Muslim Woman from Colonial Bombay to Edwardian Britain. The book chronicles Atiya Fyzee Rahamin’s life, a Muslim woman from Bombay, who in 1906 received a government scholarship to attend teachers training college in London.
While Atiya was unable to finish her course because of ill health, her travelogue, Zamana-i-Tahsil, was serialised in Tahzib-un-Niswan and in 1921, published as a book. Atiya’s Journey not only contains an English translation of Zamana-i-Tahsil, under the title “A Time of Education,” but also a biography that provides the context to the travelogue as well as a wealth of other information about Atiya, her pioneering family, and her cosmopolitan marriage to artist Samuel Rahamin (a man who adopts her name as his own).
Atiya was among the most remarkable women of her generation. She belonged to the distinguished Tyabji family in Bombay, women from which were among the first Indian Muslims to give up the purdah and participate in public life. Educated at a convent school in Pune, Atiya started contributing to family notebooks, both in English and in Urdu, from a young age.
Although the biography by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley and Sunil Sharma, the authors of Atiya’s Journey, does not cover the details of Atiya’s life after marriage, it does capture her dazzling personality and glimpses of the new horizons marriage opened out for her — the exhibitions she organised in the United States, her speeches on women’s rights, her book on Indian music, and the dances she choreographed.
Lambert-Hurley and Sharma suggest that in Pakistan, Atiya Fyzee is chiefly remembered as the muse to two great Urdu poets, Shibli Nomani and Allama Iqbal. Few in Pakistan, where she migrated to in 1947, knew of her earlier, extensive activities in undivided India, Britain, Europe and the US. And after the partition, financial constrains meant she did not travel again.
The authors provide an illuminating analysis of her friendships with both poets. Iqbal, however, is particularly relevant to Zamana-i-Tahsil because the journal was written at the time when Atiya and Iqbal met and became close friends, yet he is hardly mentioned at all. To fill the gaps, the authors refer to Atiya Fyzee’s slim, but famous book, Iqbal, which was published shortly before the partition in 1947 and presents a ‘revised’ version of their friendship. Atiya’s Journeys includes extracts from Iqbal in the appendices and also places it within a broader historical context.
However, the focus of Atiya’s Journeys remains Zamana-i-Tahsil, which begins with Atiya’s departure for England from Bombay. She starts with describing her mixed emotions at leaving her loved ones behind in India and goes on to give details of the ship she is travelling on, “the biggest steamboat of the P&O Company”. Her fascination comes through in comments on the cabins, the music room, the gleaming brass and silver and “the bearers (both men and women)”.
When she finally arrives at her destination, Atiya declares: “How can London be described and how can it be imagined without being seen! Such streets and what a grand city and the shops!” Her wonder and excitement, which doubtless must have been shared by her readers in distant India, spills over.
Atiya is also impressed by her colleagues at the Maria Grey Training College, who she finds to be very learned. She remarks: “After college, these fiendishly clever girls play the game of hockey…. they do gardening. They work right along with gardeners.” She adds: “Our lady teachers who lecture are each more capable and outstanding than the other.” Atiya also notes details such as the British enthusiasm for fresh air: “these people leave the windows completely open in the winter season.”
While she is in London, Atiya receives many visitors, including her brother, Ali Azhar Fyzee and her cousin Vazirunissa Latif. There are also visits to the Maharaja and Maharani of Baroda and invitations to the elegant homes of the Princesses Catherine and Sophia Duleep Singh, Flora Sassoon and others. Music recitals, sightseeing, a trip across Europe are all incorporated into her account which vividly captures multicultural London at the height of the British Empire.
Atiya’s Journey is illustrated by rare photographs and enriched by excellent notes and appendices. It is a truly valuable book, which brings to life a pioneering woman who has virtually vanished into myth and mystique, not least because she and her husband were expelled from their Karachi home, Aiwan-i-Rafat, in their old age, by a petty bureaucrat. They died in penury and little has been done to honour their memory since.
The reviewer is a writer and critic
Atiya’s Journeys: A Muslim Woman from Colonial Bombay to Edwardian Britain
(BIOGRAPHY)
By Siobhan Lambert-Hurley
and Sunil Sharma
Oxford University Press, New Delhi
ISBN 0-19-8-6833-6
307pp. Indian Rs550
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