Hajra Masroor

Hajra Masroor ( born 17 January 1930, died 15 September 2012) was a Pakistani writer. Masroor established herself with her short fiction stories, known as afsana in Urdu literature. Her elder sister, Khadija Mastoor was also an accomplished short story writer and novelist.

Personal life
Hajra Masroor was born on 17 January 1930 in Lucknow, India to Dr. Dr Tahawwar Ahmad Khan who was a British Army medical doctor and Anwar Jahan Begum, a published writer. Her father had suddenly died after a heart attack at a young age of 38. She had five sisters including another well-known writer Khadija Mastoor and a younger brother, Khalid Ahmad who also became a poet, playwright and a newspaper columnist. Her family was mainly raised by her mother. She began writing from her early childhood.

After independence of Pakistan in 1947, she and her sisters migrated to Pakistan, and settled in Lahore. An Urdu writer in his book wrote that no one knew Hajra was engaged with famous Urdu poet Sahir Ludhianvi but once in a literary gathering Ludhianvi pronounced a word wrongly, Hajra criticised him, he got angry and engagement was broken. Later, she married Ahmad Ali Khan, who was the editor of daily Dawn for 28 years. They were married for 57 years before he died in 2007. They have two daughters.

Career
Hajra Masroor began writing short stories from an early age. Her short stories published in the literary magazines had received high appreciation from Urdu literary circles. She edited literary magazine Naqoosh with Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi. Qasmi was also a friend of hers and her sister. She made her place in the history of Urdu literature and Urdu fiction with bold imagination and writing of short stories in a non-traditional way. She wrote simple yet effective prose, had a down-to-earth style of writing. Her early collections of short stories included Chirkey (1944), Hai Allah, and Chori Chuppay. Her collected plays were published as Woh Log. She also wrote the script of Suroor Barabankvi’s film Aakhri Station.

She wrote several books of short stories in which she raised the social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men. Hajra Masroor was one of the torchbearer of the Progressive Writers' Movement as well as one of the pioneers of feminism in the subcontinent.

Death and legacy
Hajira Masroor died on 15 September 2012 in Karachi, Pakistan.

Awards and recognition

 * Pride of Performance Award in 1995 by the President of Pakistan
 *  Aalmi Frogh-e-Urdu Adab Award.