 She died at age twenty-six when Akhtar was just three.As a child, Akhtar became fond of reading and saved money to buy books in Hindi (a major register of Hindustani written in the Devanagari script), but could not read Urdu (another major register of Hindustani written in the Perso-Arabic script) as fluently.At age twelve, his school teacher asked him to help organize the school library, and his command over Hindi was so strong that, apart from reading it, he began writing in the language, and "his first story “Parajit” (Defeated) was published in Madhuri, a reputed literary journal, when he was only 16 years old."