IT IS rare to find people whose deeds match their words, particularly among poets who often dream of an imaginary world. Kaifi Azmi, who passed away on May 10, was in this sense indeed an exception. He was true to his ideology — socialism, and true to his commitment to help the poor and the downtrodden. He could have stayed in the comfort of his cottage in an upmarket suburb of Mumbai with his wife, but he spent the better part of the year in his ancestral village Mijwan in Azamgarh district of the UP. Despite the after-effects of a stroke that plagued him for around 25 years, he stayed and worked there for the good of his fellow villagers even during the long hot summers of the UP. That was a passion with him.
When I first interviewed him in 1977, he told me that the hamlet he was born in was considered a Godforsaken place even by the postman, who would not take the trouble of delivering letters there. At the adjoining larger village where there was a post office, the postman concerned would look for someone who was going to Mijwan, and would hand over the mail to the person. There was no road leading to Mijwan and when Kaifi took it up with the authorities to build one, the villagers looked at him with suspicion. The road was built, and so was a small hospital.
The town was also electrified, thanks to Kaifi’s efforts. He also saw to it that the girls’ school was constructed at about the same time as the school for boys. The Hindus and Muslims in the village lived amicably for generations, and Kaifi, rightly or wrongly, thought that building of places for worship would create a cleavage between the two communities, so he didn’t opt for a mosque or a mandir.
Kaifi Azmi was a truly secular person, which is why he was a very unhappy man during the riots that took place in the wake of Partition. More recently the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and the anti-Muslim riots in the post-Babri Masjid demolition period saddened the poet immeasurably. One can be sure that the carnage in Gujarat must have depressed him in what were his twilight days. He wrote against communalism in much the same way as he raised his voice against injustice and oppression.
The third time I interviewed him was in Mumbai in the nineties. “Has your faith in socialism been shaken by the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of socialism in its former republics?” I asked him. “Look, my faith was not in the Soviet Union, it was, and still is, in socialism. I shall remain a socialist all my life,” he said with conviction resounding in his rich resonant voice.
But I am sure he must have suffered when Soviet Union broke up, as indeed he did when the Communist Party of India split into two. He expressed his lamentation beautifully in his poem Awara Sajdey, which was also the title of his third collection, published in Pakistan by Maktabaye Danial. This came 26 years after his second collection Aakhri Shab was published in 1947. His first was Jhankar (1943). Its authorized edition was never printed on our side of Wagah.
Kaifi Azmi’s was a family of landlords. The year of his birth is not known. When I first asked him about it in the seventies, he said: “At that time there was no tradition of noting the birth date of the newborns. I couldn’t ask my elders because after Partition all of them migrated to your country. Whenever someone asks me my birth date, I say, ‘I was born in enslaved India, lived the better part of my life in independent India, and will die in Socialist India’.”
When he was reminded about the slim chances of socialism coming to his country years later, he said: “Socialist revolution is bound to come. It should have been here by now. Perhaps we didn’t try hard enough, but I am sure India will become a Socialist country. If not in my lifetime, then maybe in your lifetime, or even after that.”
But what did happen to him shortly before his death was the fellowship that was bestowed on him by the prestigious Sahitya Akademi. Years ago he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Vishwa Bharati University. Imagine this happening to a man who was not highly educated in the conventional sense of the word.
His elders had wanted him to become a theologian and so he was sent to a seminary, Sultanul Madaris, where he shocked everyone by forming a students’ union, and engineered a strike that lasted several months. The Communist Party of India discovered Kaifi about the same time. He became a card holder of the party at the age of 19 and was sent to Bombay to promote trade unionism among workers in the metropolis, which he did.
The boy who won deafening applause when he read his first poem at a mushaira, while he was still 11, blossomed into a very fine poet. The revolutionary in him found expression in his muse, but there was no slogan-mongering in his verse, as was the case with some other poets of the Progressive Movement. He was subtle and, therefore, more effective. No less a person than Krishn Chander, writing on his poetry, appreciated the subtlety in his expression and the incurable optimism in his tone. While referring to the romance in his poetry, in the preface to Awara Sajdey, Faiz said that Kaifi never used the cliched and traditional imagery of romantic poetry.
Kaifi was in love with Urdu and he once returned the official award, Padma Shri, to the Indian government for neglecting the language. He was also dismayed by the fact that the language was given a communal colouring by both the Hindus and the Muslims. “Isn’t it an irony that a language which is a bond between the people who follow three major religions in the subcontinent — Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism, is being considered only the language of the Muslims,” he lamented.
Kaifi Azmi, who was Akhtar Husain Rizvi before he adopted the pseudonym, was one of those who popularized Urdu among the masses by writing lovely film lyrics, starting with his first song Rote rote guzar gayi raat re, which he penned for Shahid Latif’s movie Buzdil in 1953. He may have written fewer songs than other leading film poets, but in sheer beauty of his lyrics, there were not many peers of Kaifi. If one were to compile a list of beautifully written film lyrics in Urdu/Hindi movies, the list would be headed by the immortal number from Shola aur Shabnam — Jane kya dhoondti rehti hai ye aankhen mujh mein / Raakh ke dher mein shola hai na chingari hai.
There were many immortal numbers by Kaifi, the ones that come to my mind are: Tum itna jo muskura rahe ho / Kya gham hai jisko chhupa rahe ho (Arth); Zara si aahat hoti hai to dil poochta hai (Haqeeqat); Kyoon mujhe itni khooshi de di ke ghabrata hai dil (Anupama) and Waqt ne kya kya haseen sitam / tum rahe na tum, hum rahe na hum (Kaghaz Ke Phool). Kaifi didn’t stoop to the level of the common denominator, he expected the common man to appreciate meaningful film lyrics. And in this he was highly successful. Proof, if proof be needed, are his several scintillating hit numbers.
And, as Siddharth Bhatia, a Canada-based journalist, writing Kaifi’s obituary, rightly said, Kaifi’s lyrics didn’t appeal to the listeners, except for those with a developed literary taste, in one or two hearing, they grew on them and once they did, they stayed.
Kaifi was perhaps the only film writer to have written the dialogue of a movie — Chetan Anand’s Heer Ranjha — in verse. Those who saw the movie said that the dialogue were just as inspiring as the songs that he penned for Madan Mohan, the brilliant composer of the film. His other notable achievement was the screenplay and dialogue of the progressive movie Garam Hawa. His name also appeared on the titles as one of the two story writers, he shared the credit with no less a writer than Ismat Chughtai.
Kaifi and his wife Shaukat Azmi, whom he married in 1947, were actively associated with IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association). In fact, he was its president for many years. Shaukat Azmi acted in some plays and a few movies. If their daughter Shabana Azmi inherited social awareness and the strength to fight injustice from her father, she got her innate acting talents from her mother. Kaifi’s son is Baba Azmi, a cinematographer, and his son-in-law Javed Akhtar, who is currently the most sought after film lyricist and an Urdu poet of no mean reputation. Not many people know that way back in the late sixties, when his friends and fellow communists, Ali Sardar Jafri and V.K. Dubey of HMV, made a long play record of Ghalib’s poems and recitations of his letters, they decided to use the highly expressive voice of Kaifi Azmi. As one who has made so many copies of the recording since the LP is no longer available, I was overwhelmed with the response. Much of the credit also goes to composer Khayyam for his memorable tunes, and to the two great singers, Begum Akhtar and Mohammed Rafi.
More recently, Kaifi played himself in a telefilm. No copy, authorized or illegal, of the work is unfortunately available in Pakistan. But what we have — his inspiring poetry, both in his books and his movies — is bound to continue to enthral millions. And for the hundreds of villagers in Mijwan, there will be an extra word of gratitude for making theirs a model village.
IT IS rare to find people whose deeds match their words, particularly among poets who often dream of an imaginary world. Kaifi Azmi, who passed away on May 10, was in this sense indeed an exception. He was true to his ideology — socialism, and true to his commitment to help the poor and the downtrodden. He could have stayed in the comfort of his cottage in an upmarket suburb of Mumbai with his wife, but he spent the better part of the year in his ancestral village Mijwan in Azamgarh district of the UP. Despite the after-effects of a stroke that plagued him for around 25 years, he stayed and worked there for the good of his fellow villagers even during the long hot summers of the UP. That was a passion with him.
