Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: Award-winning author and dramatist Fatima Surayya Bajia who wrote plays and adapted classic Urdu novels for Pakistani radio and television was remembered on the occasion of her birth anniversary. Born on September 1,1930 in Hyderabad Deccan, India, she was the eldest among ten siblings and “Bajia” means older sister.
Although, she did not attend a formal school, she was well educated at home and became a pioneer for women in the fields of literature and the media. When the family moved to Pakistan after partition, they brought with them a library containing several thousand books.
These were trying times for the family and Bajia eventually took on the responsibility of raising her nine siblings—who included the painter, writer, and television personality Anwar Maqsood, the poet and screenwriter Zehra Nigah, and celebrity chef Zubaida Tariq by earning money by sewing dolls and designing clothes.
Fatima Surriya Bajia began her writing career with an Urdu daily in 1960. From there, she started writing radio plays and working with PTV soon after the network was founded. After the success of her televised serial Auraq, she went on to write hundreds of popular plays and adaptations with a strong emphasis on women, children, and Urdu culture. Baija was known for spending long hours at work and taking a close interest in all details of production from set design to costume design and makeup. She was awarded Pride of Performance Award in 1996 and Hilal-i-Imtiaz in 2012. Bajia died on February10, 2016 in Karachi, at the age of 85 from throat cancer.
