Abhijit Das: Long ago, I once went to Pakistan on an invitation from my muslim school friend.

On an evening we were strolling across a busy Chowringhee like famous street in Karachi city now full of luxurious shoppings.

When we came close to its intersection with the Mohammed Ali Jinnah Road, my friend said to me, this street was formerly Elphinstone Street (in name of the British who defeated and ended the Maratha Kingdom in India), since 1960 named under a Kolkata born Bengali-  Zaibunnisa Street.

I became extremely curious to know more of this Bengali lady in whose name there is a major arterial road in Karachi city connecting with the road in the name of the founding father of the nation of Pakistan.

She was born to a literary family in Calcutta in 1921. She grew up in a tightly-knit Anglo-Indian household filled with Bengali thinkers and philosophers of the age, as her father`s house at 48, Jhowtalla Road,  Kolkata was something of a meeting place for the Calcutta literary circle that included Nazrul, Tarashankar Bandopadhaya,  Pramathanath Bishi and Kobisekhar Kalidas Ray like contemporary elites.

She was schooled at the Kolkata Loreto House Convent, a lonely child, and took to writing poetry as a means to express her thoughts and emotions.

She wrote for many Indian newspapers, and was the first Muslim woman to write a column in an Indian newspaper.

She married Khalifa Muhammad Hamidullah (son of a librarian of the Imperial Library in Calcutta), head of Bata`s operations in Pakistan. She moved to Pakistan after her marriage.

She became a pioneer of Pakistani literature and journalism in English, and also a pioneer of feminism in Pakistan. She was Pakistan`s first female columnist (in English), editor, publisher and political commentator.

In 1955 she became the first woman to be included in press delegations sent to other countries and the first woman to speak at the 1000th year of the ancient Al-AzharUniversity in Cairo, Egypt founded in 970 AD by the Fatimid Caliphate.

During 1960`s, her highly critical editorials in `Karachi Mirror` of President Ayub Khan led to his abdication ironically doing exactly what she had advised him to do.

In 1970 she became Deputy Leader of the Pakistani delegation to the United Nations General Assembly.

She went into seclusion since her husband`s death in the 1983 until her death in 2000.

Can there be a bigger role model for Bengali women than this lady?

Note: ZAIBUNISSA HAMIDULLAH is the daughter of Bengali writer, nationalist and barrister-at-law, S. WAJID ALI.