Kaifi Azmi
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| Born: | 1919 Mejwaan, Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh |
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| Occupation: | poet, lyricist, songwriter |
Kaifi Azmi (Urdu: کیفی اعظمی) (b. 1919 - d. May 10, 2002) was an Urdu and Hindi lyricist, poet and songwriter.
Kaifi Azmi was born as Akhtar Hussain Rizvi into a family of landlords in the small town of Mejwaan, in the district of Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh. His father, Syed Fateh Hussain Rizvi, though a landlord, took up employment first in a small native state called Balharah as a tahsildar and later, he worked in other areas of Uttar Pradesh. He decided to send his sons to schools imparting modern education, including English, against the stiff opposition of his relatives. However, Azmi could not get this opportunity because his elders wanted him to become a theologian. He was admitted to Sultan Al-Madaris, a reputed seminary in Lucknow. However, his nonconformist nature created many problems for the authorities of the seminary. He formed a Students' Union and asked all the students to go on strike to get their demands fulfilled. The strike continued for a year and a half. Though the strike was called off, he was expelled from the seminary. This was the end of his elder's dream of training him to become a theologian. Azmi could not seek modern education but he passed various examinations in Lucknow and of Allahabad universities that helped him acquire command over Arabic, Persian and Urdu.
During this period, the leading progressive writers of Lucknow noticed him. They were very impressed by his leadership qualities. They also saw in him a budding poet and extended all possible encouragement towards him. Consequently, Azmi began to win great acclaim as a poet. His initiation into poetry was even more interesting. At the age of eleven, he somehow managed to get himself invited to a Mushaira and over there, he recited a ghazal, rather a couplet of the ghazal which was very much appreciated by the President of the Mushaira, Mani Jaisi, but most of the people, including his father, thought he recited his elder brother's ghazal. When his elder brother denied it, his father and his clerk decided to test his poetic talent. They gave him one of the lines of a couplet and asked him to write a ghazal in the same meter and rhyme. Azmi accepted the challenge and within no time, he completed a ghazal. This particular ghazal was to become a rage in undivided India and it was sung by none other than the legendary ghazal singer, Begum Akhtar. He, however, abandoned his studies of Persian and Urdu during the Quit India agitations in 1942 and shortly thereafter became a full time Marxist when he accepted membership of the Communist Party of India in 1943. At the age of 24, he joined the Communist Party and started activities in the textile mill areas of Kanpur. As a full time worker, he left his life of comfort, though he was the son of a zamindaar. He was asked to shift his base to Bombay, work amongst the workers and start party work with a lot of zeal and enthusiasm and at the same time would attend Mushairas in different parts of India. In 1947, he reached Hyderabad to participate in a Mushaira. There he met a beautiful woman named Shaukat, the two fell in love and were married. Shaukat Kaifi later became a renowned actress in theatre and films. They had two children together. They are Shabana Azmi (b. 1950), a renowned actress of Indian cinema and Baba Azmi, a film cameraman.
Like most of the Urdu poets, Azmi began as a ghazal writer, cramming his poetry with the repeated themes of love and romance in a style that was replete with clichés and metaphors. However, his association with the Progressive Writers' Movement and Communist Party made him embark on the path of socially conscious poetry. In his poetry, he highlights the exploitation of the subaltern masses and through them he conveys a message of the creation of a just social order by dismantling the existing one. Yet, his poetry cannot be called plain propaganda. It has its own merits; intensity of emotions, in particular, and the spirit of sympathy and compassion towards the disadvantaged section of society, are the hallmark of his poetry. His poems are also notable for their rich imagery and in this respect, his contribution to Urdu poetry can hardly be overstated. He published three anthologies of poetry, Aakhir-e-Shab, Jhankaar, and Awaara Sajde.
Azmi's stint in films includes working as a lyricist, writer and actor. His early work as a writer was mainly for Nanubhai Vakil's films like Yahudi Ki Beti (1956), Parvin (1957), Miss Punjab Mail (1958) and Id Ka Chand (1958). But perhaps his greatest feat as a writer was Chetan Anand's Heer Ranjha (1970) wherein the entire dialogue of the film was in verse. It was a tremendous achievement and one of the greatest feats of Hindi film writing. Azmi also won great critical accolades for the script, dialogues and lyrics of M.S. Sathyu's Garam Hawa (1973), based on a story by Ismat Chughtai. Azmi also wrote the dialogues for Shyam Benegal's Manthan (1976) and Sathyu's Kanneshwara Rama (1977). As a lyricist and songwriter, though he wrote for numerous films, he will always be remembered for Guru Dutt's Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) and Chetan Anand's Haqeeqat (1964), India's greatest ever war film. Some notables films for which he wrote lyrics include Uski Kahani (1966), Bawarchi (1972), Pakeezah (1972), Hanste Zakhm (1973) and Razia Sultan (1983). He also played the memorable role of Naseem's grandfather in Naseem (1995), a touching film centered around the destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya.
Kaifi Azmi has won various awards and has been honoured by various national and international awards. This include the Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy Award, the Soviet Land Nehru Award, the Sahitya Academy Award for his collection Awaara Sajde, the Maharashtra State Urdu Academy's Special Award for his contribution to Urdu literature and the Afro-Asian Writers' Committee's Lotus Award. He has won the National Award and the Filmfare Award for the screenplay and dialogue of Garam Hawa. Azmi was also the subject of a documentary film called Kaifi Azmi (1979), directed by Raman Kumar.
Kaifi Azmi passed away on May 10, 2002 at around the age of 83, following various cardiac and respiratory infections. He left for the Hereafter leaving behind his wife, daughter and son. His death has been a terrible loss for all of us, especially for Urdu literature.
