The work was hailed as something of a landmark in the '50s. In this enterprise she became a nag and a good candidate for the title of ''Aunt Agatha'', straight out of Wodehouse whom she described ''as culturally the wrong influence'', one who would be a wall between me and ''high seriousness''. Whether Wodehouse came in the way of my intellectual evolution is debatable, but Aunt Agatha's PhD came in the way of her marriage. In Avadh's Shia community in post-Partition India, for a young woman to be attractive and cultured was an essential precondition for the marriage market but a PhD too intimidating for the young men on show. She was overqualified.
Occasion produces the man.
Ultimately Saiyid Ka zim Imam, some sort of a scion of the decaying Avadh aristocracy and an engineer, took up the challenge. But there was a twist to the story which, in the context of deteriorating Indo-Pak ties, became something of a tragedy. She went to Beijing with her husband where she taught Urdu literature at the university. The cultural revolution uprooted them from China as well. Bravely, she set up the Indo-Pak Friendship Association in Pakistan.