Syeda Hameed was nine years old when her first story was published in Shankar’s Weekly in 1951. It was the start of a prolific writing career that would include the translation and editing of four volumes of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s works, and translations of Hali, Ghalib, Faiz and Sarmad Shaheed. But the story, ‘You Have to Learn to Make Friends’, also held within it the seeds of much that was to define her life in years to come. Born of an incident when she was boycotted by the neighbourhood children because her name was ‘Syeda’, it made her aware of her Muslim identity for the first time and, in time, of the need for peace between Hindus and Muslims, Indians and Pakistanis. To this end, she went year after year with iconic journalist Kuldip Nayar and others to the Wagah border to light a candle on the stroke of midnight on August 14/15, and in 2000, took a ‘bus of peace’ to Lahore, and met women who, like their sisters from ‘the other side’, yearned to forge bonds of friendship.

Before this, returning to India after 17 years in Canada with her Pakistani husband, Syed Mohammad Abdul Hameed—a marriage that ended in heartache—she had built her life around the fight for human rights. As a Member of the National Commission for Women and, later, the Planning Commission, she travelled across the country listening to the dispossessed, and taking up their causes—among them, Sajoni Kisku, a Santhal woman who was beaten and tortured for the ‘sin’ of picking up the plough when her drunken husband could not; 19-year-old Maimun from Nuh who was gang-raped for marrying outside her gotra; and Tang Kumar of the Andamans, who lost his entire family at sea and built a new life for himself as ‘captain’ of his village.

Syeda writes of many such encounters that gave meaning to her life, and of some extraordinary people who shaped it: her mother, Aziz Jahan Begum of the royal Rampur family, and her father, the educationist Khwaja Ghulamus Saiyidain; her uncle, the writer and cinema legend Khwaja Ahmed Abbas; Indira Gandhi, with whom she worked briefly; and Khushwant Singh, the grand old Sardar who was her literary mentor.

Sensitive, deeply human, intimate and often moving, this is an inspiring record of a remarkable Indian life.