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Reading this book was a deeply moving experience for me. With marvelous detail and precision, Rakhshanda Jalil has sketched, in words, the life and work of Dr Rashid Jahan who was the daughter of Shaikh Abdullah and his wife, Waheeda Begum, the founders of the first women's school and college in India. Jalil evocatively captures the impact of Rashid Jahan's liberal family atmosphere and education on her later development as a physician, a member of the Communist Party of India (CCPI), one of the founders of the Progressive Writer's Association (PWI) and an active participant of IPTA (Indian People's Theater Association). Although Rashid Jahan died just shy of turning 50 she accomplished more than may others do, who live much longer. It is this life, both brave and exemplary, that Jalil describes in this volume.
In this book of 248 pages the first 109 pages titled “Life & Times” are devoted to a description of Rashid Jahan's life; the details of her family background; the way she was raised; the different facets of her education both as a young girl and then as a physician; her marriage; her early work as a writer; her devoted work as a physician, and her work as a writer and dramatist. We are led to the end of Rashid Jahan's life, when suffering from uterine cancer, she traveled with her husband to Moscow for treatment. She died there on July 29, 1952, at the age of 49. Following this section of the book there are a few pages of photographs that serve to highlight the description of Rashid Jahan and important people in her life as described in earlier pages. The next section of the book titled “Stories & Plays” has English translations of 10 of Rashid Jahan's short stories and two of her plays.
The section of the book that is mostly biographical has been divided into four chapters, the first of which is taken up with the description of Rashid Jahan's parents and their evolution into major educators in India. The second chapter, titled “Rashid Jahan ‘Angarey Wali’” des