Insha'iya

Ataleeq Bibi (The Wife as Tutor): Curtain Lectures from an Urdu Household

اتالیق بی بی

Chaudhry Muhammad Ali Rudaulvi

Fourteen nights, fourteen lectures. Every night, once the lamp is turned down, a respectable gentleman of a small town in Oudh is told exactly what is wrong with him: the five rupees he lent a friend, his hookah, his club and the Freemasons, the friend who stayed till one and ate the chicken, the fair with its swings, the children's winter clothes, the pretty young relation who laughs when he comes in, the new magazine that wants women to go out in the burqa, and the hundred rupees he gave away at the lodge. He hardly gets a word in, and each chapter ends with his report to the reader of how at last he fell asleep. Chaudhry Muhammad Ali Rudaulvi (d. 1959), landowner of Rudauli, adapted Douglas Jerrold's Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures (1846) into a wholly Indian comedy written in the rich spoken Urdu of the women's quarters, full of proverbs, oaths and curses. Complete Urdu text (Urdu Wikisource; archive.org AtaleeqBibi gives the date 1916) with a facing English translation, introduction and glossary. Cite as: Chaudhry Muhammad Ali Rudaulvi, Ataleeq Bibi, tr. urduintranslation.com (2026), https://www.urduintranslation.com/works/ataleeq-bibi. The first two chapters are free to read.

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