Ismat Chughtai was born on 21 August 1915 in Uttar Pradesh, the ninth of ten children. After completing her secondary schooling, she studied at Isabella Thoburn College for her Bachelor of Arts before moving on to Aligarh Muslim University where she obtained her Bachelor of Education. It was here that she met Rashid Jahan, a leading progressive writer who inspired her to write ‘realistic and challenging female characters’. After completing her education degree, she began working as the headmistress at an Aligarh-based Girls school. While working in Aligarh, she continued her writing, publishing short stories and plays, including Intikhab. In 1942 she moved to Bombay, where she married her long time friend Shaheed Latif and published one of her most famous stories Lihaaf, which saw her being tried at the High Court for its suggestion of female homosexuality. She was exonerated during the trial but nevertheless despised the media attention the trial had brought to her claiming that writing after the trial felt like getting crushed by a weight. Ismat continued writing though, published a semi-autobiographical novel and another novel, Tedhi Lakeer, which chronicled the lives of Muslim women in community. Into the 1960s, she continued to publish novels but also ventured into Bollywood, writing screenplays for a number of films. In the late 1980s, she was diagnosed with Alzhemiers, which essentially put a stop to her writing and she passed away on 24 October, 1991 at her home in Mumbai. After her death, a number of her writings were translated into English, renewing interest in Urdu literature and marking her status as one of the most significant contributors to Urdu literature during the 20th century.In 1994, Shamima was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent intense radiation and chemotherapy. During her battle with cancer, she became the Editor of Al-Qalam, pushing the publication to becoming a flagship of progressive Islam in South Africa. In 1997, she performed hajj for the first time and later wrote about it in “Journey of Discovery: A South African Hajj”, which was published in 2000 after her death. She passed away on 8 January 1998 after a relapse of cancer. One of the funeral prayers was performed by a close female friend of hers who led both men and women in prayer in accordance with her wishes.