The Influence of Popular Culture in the Short Story Lihaaf by Ismat Chughtai

Abstract

Culture is an abstract term that creates its own individuality. The consequential new culture that evolves out of the people is popularly regarded to be popular culture. The basic aim of the paper is not to showcase popular culture as different from the ancient/traditional culture but to show significance of culture in the present context. In Lihaaf (1942), the story is framed from a point of view of a small girl whose voice can be interpreted as the voice of the mass, and who tries to find out about the secret that goes on under the quilt but is terrified by the sound that is coming out of the quilt. The story describes the representation of the character to that of the difficulties faced by women in terms of traditionalism versus modernity. Basically, Lihaaf is set within a zenana, a conservative Muslim household society where the story engages with sexual politics but within a quilt or a lihaaf. The female sexuality between Begum Jaan (the wife of Nawab Sahib) and Rabbo (Begum Jaans domestic help) which forms the essence of Lihaaf highlights the popular culture. The sexual libido is the basic nature of human which helps in the process reproduction. The libido between two opposite sex is accepted in society but the libido between the same sexes is an offence. But popular culture has been helpful to some extent to eradicate the misconceptions of the society. The story by Ismat Chughtai is a very crucial topic to be talked upon as because an individual is the identifier of its own desires not the society. As per society is concern the society is established through the number of different individuals that lives in. Thus, popular culture as portrayed in Lihaaf has broken many norms of society which helped in unifying of the masses.