New Delhi, Jan 18:
Veteran journalist and writer Humra Quraishi, who died due to heart failure and diabetic complications, was known as an advocate for truth, justice and as a champion for the marginalised.
Quraishi breathed her last at a hospital in Gurugram on Thursday, her daughter Sarah Quraishi told PTI. She was 70.
Born in Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh on April 25, 1956, Quraishi worked as a Delhi-based writer and columnist. Having spent long years covering Kashmir as a journalist, Quraishi published “Kashmir: The Untold Story”, a volume of her collective writings based on her coverage of the region, followed by a novel, “Meer”, a love story based in the Valley.
Some of her other noted works include “Views: Yours and Mine”, “More Bad Time Tales”, and contribution to anthologies “Chasing the Good Life: On Being Single” and “Of Mothers and Others”.
Quraishi also worked with journalist-author Khushwant Singh on a number of books and publications, including “Absolute Khushwant” and “The Good, The Bad and The Ridiculous”.
In “The Good, The Bad and The Ridiculous”, the duo profiled the likes of Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishna Menon, Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, Amrita Sher-Gil, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Mother Teresa, and Faiz Ahmad Faiz in what can be termed an “intimate, irreverent modern history” of the subcontinent.
Tributes pour in on social media platform X after Quraishi’s passing.
Kashmir-based journalist Majid Maqbool remembered Quraishi as a journalist “who wrote humanly about Kashmir”.
“Kashmir’s newspapers, writers and senior journalists who knew her well: write about her Kashmir engagement honestly, without making it about yourself!” he said.
Columnist-author Sunetra Choudhary shared that Quraishi used to “donate all the proceeds from her books to charity”.
“The wonderful journalist and writer Humra Quraishi is no more. Her books on Khushwant Singh and Kashmir and her columns stand out for their depth and I only recently learnt that she used to donate all the proceeds from her books to charity. She really went too soon,” Choudhary posted on X.
Tamil poet and Lok Sabha MP Thamizhachi Thangapandian mourned “the loss of a dear friend and an extraordinary literary voice”.
“Humra was more than just a writer; she was a truth-seeker, a compassionate chronicler of human resilience, and an advocate for the silenced. Her words carried immense power, bringing light to stories that needed to be told with courage and grace,” Thangapandian wrote.
She further noted that Quraishi’s work, “spanning the pain of Kashmir to universal human struggles”, was a testament to her fearless pursuit of truth.
“Rest in peace, Humra Quraishi. One of my first friends in the Delhi literary community. We used to speak for hours, but so much remains unsaid,” poet Sahana Ahmed said on X.
Journalist Yusuf Jameel said that her stories on and from Kashmir “stood testimony to her professional integrity”.
Quraishi is survived by daughter Sarah and son Mustafa.–(PTI)