Kaifi Azmi met the love of his life in Hyderabad...

kaifi Azmi was an extraordinary man who wore many hats with elan. a rebel with a cause, the doyen of Urdu literature left an indellible mark with his work as a communist, lyricist, writer and social activist par excellence. Even as the world pays homage to one of the greatest Urdu poets of 19th century on his birth
centenary, his daughter Shabana Azmi offered Hyderabadis a rare glimpse of Kaifi Azmi, the man, lover, doting husband and father. Excerpts from Shabana’s talk at

Hyderabad Literary Festival

.

I USED TO LIE TO MY FRIENDS THAT MY FATHER WAS A BUSINESSMAN
Abba was very different, and it was a fact that I found difficult to accept as a child. Unlike all my friends’ fathers, he neither went to office nor did he wear trousers and shirt nor speak English. He wore kurta-pyjama all day and honestly I didn’t get him. In fact, I used to lie to my school friends that he was a businessman, worried about them judging me for being the daughter of a poet, who did not have a job to do. He gifted me a black doll and when I told him that I wanted a blonde doll with blue eyes, he gently said that black was beautiful too and that I must learn to love my doll. It was only much later that I realised what a virtue it was that he was so different!

A SERIOUS WRITER WITH A GREAT SENSE OF HUMOUR
Those familar with his writing think of Abba as serious, fierce person, but in reality he was gentle soul with a great sense of humour. he could win over anyone with his words. One day I heard him calling my sister-in-law, gulab ka phool, a moniker he used to address me as a child. When I heard it, I angrily asked, ‘Abba, aap Tanvi ko keh rahe the gulab ka phool? Mujhe lagta tha aap sirf mujhe bolte ho meri gulab ka phool. To woh kehte, arre nahi bete tumne galat suna. Main to usey gobhi ka phool keh raha tha...’ Well, he later begged me not tell my sister-in-law that he said that. He was also very clever in the way he dealt with my mother. One day, when he was accompanying my mother (Shaukat) to the railway station, her footwear broke. She was supposed to perform at a play and she was furious and started yelling at him for not buying her new footwear. So he took her juthi, got it mended outside the station and returned it to her. Along with it, he even gave `150. When my mother asked him where the money came from, he didn’t give an answer. Later in the evening, after the play was done, when she asked the director for her money, he replied, “Kaifi sahab ne toh 150 rupayein yahan aane se pehle hi le liye.” And my mother realised he’d made her happy with her own money. He was so chalu!

A 1947 LOVE STORY THAT BEGAN IN HYDERABAD
The story of how he won my mom’s heart is epic! They first met when he came to Hyderabad to attend the Progressive Writers Conference in February 1947. After the conference, he participated in a mushaira in the evening. My mother was seated in the front row and was really mesmerised by Kaifi sahab’s recital of his famous poem ‘Aurat’, which was extremely progressive for that time. ‘Uth meri jaan mere saath hi chalnaa hai tujhe, Zindagi jehad mein hai sabr ke qabu mein nahin, Nabz-e-hasti ka lahu kanpte aansoo mein nahin, Udne khulne mein hai nakkhat kham-e-gesu mein nahin, Jannat ik aur hai jo mard ke pehlu mein nahin, Uski aazad ravish par bhi machalna hai tujhe, Uth meri jaan mere saath hi chalna hai tujhe...’ After listening to it, my mother, decided that she wanted to marry this man who thinks so respectfully about women. Post the mushaira, a huge crowd of girls surrounded abba, Sardar Jafri and Majrooh Sultanpuri. Those days, shayars were like rockstars and were worshipped by the public. Mummy said that a bunch of college girls gathered around him like bees. So, she glanced at him and then turned to Sardar Jafri for an autograph. Later when the crowd dispersed, she approached him for an autograph and he wrote a very bad shayari in her autograph book. She got furious and walked up to him, asking why he wrote such bad lines, to which he said, ‘Why did you go to Sardar Jafri first?’ That’s how their love story began. My mother was already engaged to someone else then, but she broke it off, and the rest, as they say, is history.

HE ENTERED FILMS TO SUPPORT THE FAMILY
My father left a comfortable life to join the Communist Party of India, and was part of the Progressive Writers Movement. As a result, a large portion of his income would go to the Communist party, leaving the writers with only a paltry ` 40 per month. We lived in a

commune

in Bombay and it was very difficult to run a family with that money. Many writers who got married and started a family, moved to the more lucrative film industry. Abba too was one of them. He started his film career in 1951 with Buzdil, directed by Ismat Chugtai’s husband Shaheed Latif.

HIS B’DAY IS A MYSTERY TILL DATE
It is believed that Kaifi saheb was born in January 14, 1919, but no one knows whether he was really born on that day. When we used to ask our dadi (grandmother), she too had no clear answer, so, it is a vague assumption we all have. S Sukhdev, who was a very good friend of Abba, told him one day, ‘why don’t we celebrate your birthday on January 14?’. He agreed, and that’s how we started celebrating his birthday every year on January 14.