'[Syeda Hameed] has spent her life working for the poorest, for

women and for secularism. I witnessed her work for ten years as

Member, Planning Commission. Her story opens new vistas and a

new vision for all who read it.'-Dr Manmohan Singh

'This is more than a memoir. This is history. Not as chronology, not

as pedagogy, not as apology but as a soul's life-story drawn by the

wing-flaps of bitter-sweet recall on the skies of truth-telling.'- Gopalkrishna Gandhi

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 husband, Syed

Mohammad Abdul Hameed-a marriage of both happiness and 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.