Kaifi Azmi Lyricist - Page 2

Birthplace: Azamgarh, U.P.
Profession: Poet, Bollywood Film song Lyricists
Family: Wife - Shaukat Azmi, stage artist, writer; Daughter - Shabana Azmi, Bollywood actress, Social worker, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha.
Born to a family of landlords in Majwan in the district of Azamgarh, UP, Kaifi Azmi was fortunate in having a liberal and modern father. His father took up a job as a tahsildar in various small towns in Uttar Pradesh. Although his father wanted Kaifi to have a modern "English" education, pressure from relatives who wanted him to be a theologian saw him admitted to the Sultan-ul-Madris seminary in Lucknow. He soon ran into trouble with the authorities there, organizing a union and launching a strike, which ran one-and-a-half years. Once the strike was called off, Kaifi Azmi was expelled and there ended his relatives' ambitions. Denied the kind of education he and his father wanted, Kaifi Azmi took courses at Lucknow and Allahabad universities that helped him acquire a command over Urdu, Arabic and Persian. Kaifi Azmi - The revolt within Kaifi, like most of the Urdu poets, began as a ghazal writer cramming his poetry with the oft-repeated themes of love and romance in a style that was replete with cliched similes 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 poems 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. Such poetry serves a social purpose and in this respect Kaifi can be called a successful Progressive poet. The choice of his themes does not leave much scope for him to make rich his poetic creations aesthetically. In many of his poems his phonation is a bit louder, the style is direct and closer to rhetoric. Yet, Kaifi's poetry cannot be called plain propaganda. It has its own merits; intensity of emotions, in particular, the spirit of sympathy and compassion towards the disadvantaged section of society are the hallmarks of his poems. Kaifi's poems are also notable for their rich imagery and in this respect his contribution to Urdu poetry can hardly be overstated. Azmi Saab's stint in film includes working as lyricist, writer and almost an actor! His early work as storywriter 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 great feats in Hindi Film writing. Kaifi Azmi Saab 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. The film, chronicles the plight of the minority Muslims in North India and is set in Agra after the first major partition exodus. Balraj Sahni played to perfection the central role of an elderly Muslim shoe manufacturer who must decide whether to continue living in India or to migrate to the newly formed state of Pakistan. 'Garam Hawa' remains today one of the most poignant films ever to be made on India's partition. Azmi also wrote the dialogues for Shyam Benegal's 'Manthan' (1976) and Sathyu's 'Kanneshwara Rama' (1977). Kaifi Azmi - Film career As a lyrics writer though he wrote for numerous films, he would always be remembered for Guru Dutt's 'Kaagaz ke Phool' (1959) and Chetan Anand's 'Haqeeqat' (1964), India's greatest ever war film. In the former who can forget 'Bichde Sabi Baari Baari' or 'Waqt ne Kiya Kya Haseen Situm' and 'Hoke Majboor Mujhe Usne Bhulaya Hoga' or 'Kar Chale Hum Fida Jaan-o-Tan Saathiyon' in the latter. The last mentioned patriotic song causes goose p***les even when heard today. Some other notable films for which he wrote the lyrics include 'Uski Kahani' (1966), 'Bawarchi' (1972), 'Pakeezah' (1972), 'Hanste Zakhm' (1973) and 'Razia Sultan' (1983). He also played a memorable old man in 'Naseem' (1995),a touching film centered around the destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya. The film is set in June-December 1992, the days preceding the demolition of the Masjid on December 6, 1992 by Hindutva fanatics. Naseem (Mayuri Kango) is a schoolgirl belonging to a middle class Mumbai based Muslim family. She enjoys a warm relationship with her aged ailing grandfather (Azmi Saab). With increasing horror the family watches on their TV the news of the build up at Ayodhya while the grandfather regales her with stories of life in pre-independence Agra. The grandfather dies on December 6 coinciding with the news of the destruction of the mosque. Azmi Saab's brilliant performance provides not just a reminder but a literal embodiment of the cultural traditions at stake those tragic days. It was a performance his daughter, multiple National Award winning actress Shabana Azmi, was proud of. Kaifi Azmi passed away in Mumbai on May 10, 2002 following cardiac and respiratory infection. Time waits for none. This time it was Kaifi Azmi, the poet extraordinaire, who had to move on. Death came after a prolonged illness of 45 days.

The Best of Kaifi Azmi
Song	Movie
Baharon Mera Jiwan Sanwaaro	Aakhri Khat
Ye Nayan Dare Dare	Kohraa
Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam	Kaagaz ke Phool
Chalte Chalte Yun Hi Koi Mil Gaya Tha	Pakeezah
Tum Itna Jo Muskura Rahe Ho	Arth
Dhire Dhire Machal Ai Dil Beqarar	Anupama
Chalo Dildaar Chalo	Pakeezah
Aane Waala Kal Ek Sapna	Phir Teri Kahani Yaad Aayi
Ye Duniya Ye Mehfil	Heer Ranjha
Dekhi Zamane Ki Yaari	Kaagaz ke Phool
Mana Ho Tum	Toote Khilone

Awards
Award	Contribution towards
Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy Award	Aawara Sajdey
Soviet Land Nehru Award	Aawara Sajdey
Sahitya Academe Award	Aawara Sajdey
Maharashtra State Urdu Academy's Special Award	Urdu literature
Lotus Award	Afro-Asian Writers' Committee

Kaifi Azmi, 1925-2002

Kaifi Azmi, the renowned Urdu poet and lyricist, was born in 1925 in Mijwan, Azamgarh District, Uttar Pradesh. He died in Mumbai on May 10, 2002, fifteen months after recording for the Library of Congress in New Delhi. At the time of his death he was one of the last remaining representatives of the Progressive Writers Association, a writers' association that wielded unparalleled influence during India's freedom struggle.His poetry remains solidly rooted in the tradition of Urdu poetry with its ardent longing for intense emotions and passionate espousal of radical causes. His poems celebrate love, compassion and human equality. The lyrical beauty and powerful expression of his film songs have captivated millions. Despite the political and economic shifts in India, he retained his idealism and remained to the end optimistic of a socialist future for India. This optimism was reflected in poetry replete with dreams of a socialist egalitarian society in which the voice of another fellow human being will be felt like melodious music. "I was born in enslaved India, have lived in independent secular India, and God willing, I will die in socialist India." (The Indian Express, September 9, 1998)

Kaifi Azmi received many awards and accolades including the Soviet Land Nehru Award and Sahitya Akademi Award. In 2000, he was conferred the first Millennium Award by the Delhi Government and Urdu Academy. He was the recipient of "Padma Shri" one of the Indian Government's highest civilian awards. The Maharashtra government conferred the Dnyaneshwar award on him in 1998.

The Library of Congress owns nine of his works.
Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago

aavaaraa sajde


ik yahii soz-e-nihaa.N kul meraa sarmaayaa hai
dosto mai.n kise ye soz-e-nihaa.N nazr karuu.N
ko_ii qaatil sar-e-maqtal nazar aataa hii nahii.n
kis ko dil nazr karuu.N aur kise jaa.N nazr karuu.N?

tum bhii mahaboob mere tum bhii ho dil_daar mere
aashnaa mujh se magar tum bhii nahii.n tum bhii nahii.n
Khatm hai tum pe masiihaa_nafasii chaaraagarii
meharam-e-dard-e-jigar tum bhii nahii.n tum bhii nahii.n

apanii laash aap uThaanaa ko_ii aasaan nahii.n
dast-o-baazuu mere naakaaraa hue jaate hai.n
jin se har daur me.n chamakii hai tumhaarii dahaliiz
aaj sajde vohii aavaaraa hue jaate hai.N

duur manzil thii magar aisii bhii kuchh duur na thii
leke phiratii rahii raste hii me.n vahashat mujh ko
ek zaKhm aisaa na khaayaa ke bahaar aa jaatii
daar tak leke gayaa shauq-e-shahaadat mujh ko

raah me.n TuuT gaye paa.Nv to maaluum huaa
juz mere aur meraa rah_numaa ko_ii nahii.n
ek ke baad Khudaa ek chalaa aataa thaa
kah diyaa aql ne tang aake 'Khudaa ko_ii nahii.n'

andeshe


ruuh bechain hai ik dil kii aziiyat kyaa hai
dil hii sholaa hai to ye soz-e-mohabbat kyaa hai
vo mujhe bhuul ga_ii iskii shikaayat kyaa hai
ranj to ye hai ke ro-roke bhulaayaa hogaa

vo kahaa.N aur kahaa.N kaahif-e-Gam sozish-e-jaa.N
us kii rangiin nazar aur nuquush-e-hirmaa.N
us kaa ehsaas-e-latiif aur shikast-e-armaa.N
taanaazan ek zamaanaa nazar aayaa hogaa

jhuk ga_ii hogii javaa.N-saal umango.n kii jabii.n
miT ga_ii hogii lalak Duub gayaa hogaa yaqii.n
chhaa gayaa hogaa dhuaa.N ghuum ga_ii hogii zamii.n
apane pahale hii gharonde ko jo Dhaayaa hogaa

dil ne aise bhii kuchh afsaane sunaaye ho.Nge
ashk aa.Nkho.n ne piye aur na bahaaye ho.Nge
band kamare me.n jo Khat mere jalaaye ho.Nge
ek-ik harf jabii.n par ubhar aayaa hogaa

us ne ghabaraake nazar laakh bachaa_ii hogii
miTake ik naqsh ne sau shaql dikhaa_ii hogii
mez se jab merii tasviir haTaa_ii hogii
har taraf mujh ko ta.Daptaa huaa paayaa hogaa

bemahal chhe.D pe jazbaat ubal aaye ho.Nge
Gam pashemaan tabassum me.n Dhal aaye ho.Nge
naam par mere jab aa.Nsuu nikal aaye ho.Nge
sar na kaa.Ndhe se sahalii ke uThaayaa hogaa

zulf zid kar ke kisii ne jo banaa_ii hogii
ruuThw jalvo.N pe Khizaa.N aur bhii chhaa_ii hogii
barq ashvo.N ne ka_ii din na giraa_ii hogii
rang chehare pe ka_ii roz na aayaa hogaa

hoke majabuur mujhe us ne bhulaayaa hogaa
zahar chup kar ke davaa jaan ke Khaayaa hogaa

kaifi Azmi (1925 -2002)

Veteran lyricist, poet and writer Kaifi Azmi passed away in Mumbai on May 10, 2002 following cardiac and respiratory infection. Uncertain about his date of birth Azmi Saab however was certain that he was born in enslaved India, grew old in Independent India and that he would die in Socialist India. He was born as Akhtar Husain Rizvi, in a small hamlet, Majwan, in the district of Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh in a family of landlords. His father Syed Fateh Husain Rizvi, though was a landlord, but took up employment first in a small native state, Balharah, as a tahsildar and later on 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 Saab could not get this opportunity because his elders wanted him to be a theologian. He was admitted in Sultan-ul-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 for getting their demands fulfilled. The strike continued for one and half year. Though the strike was called off, he was expelled from the seminary. This was the end of his elders' dream to train him to be a theologian. Azmi Saab could not seek modern education but he passed various examinations of Lucknow and Allahabad Universities that helped him acquire command over Arabic, Persian and Urdu languages. During this period the leading progressive writers of Lucknow noticed him. They were very much impressed by his leadership qualities. They also saw in him a budding poet and extended all possible cooperation and encouragement to him. Consequently, Azmi Saab began to win great acclaim as a poet. His initiation into poetry was most interesting. At the age of eleven he, somehow, managed to get himself invited to a Mushaira and over there 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 that 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 Saab accepted the challenge and within no time completed a ghazal. That particular ghazal was to become a rage in undivided India sung by none other than the legendary ghazal singer, Begum Akhtar and went thus: Itna to Zindagi Mein Kisiki Khalal Pade Hasne se ho Sukoon Na Rone se Kal Pade. He however abandoned his studies of Persian and Urdu during the Quit India agitations of 1942 and shortly thereafter became a full time Marxist when he accepted membership of the Communist Party in 1943. He was asked to shift base to Mumbai and work among the workers and started party work with 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 with Shaukat, fell in love with her and both got married. Shaukat Kaifi, later on, became a well known actress of theatre and film. Like most of the Urdu poets, Azmi Saab began as a ghazal writer cramming his poetry with the oft-repeated themes of love and romance in a style that was replete with clichs 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 poems 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, the spirit of sympathy and compassion towards the disadvantaged section of society are the hallmarks of his poems. 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, Jhankar and Awaara Sajde. Recently Penguin came out with a translation of his poems in English - Selected Poems Kaifi Azmi. Azmi Saab was also an active member of Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) and in later years its president. His role in theatre was very important — he ensured that even after the communist movement started dying, its cultural component was kept alive. Once or twice he got young writers to produce plays and perform them at the Bhulabhai Desai Hall to collect funds for the Communist Party. Azmi Saab's stint in film includes working as lyricist, writer and yes even actor! His early work as story 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 great feats in Hindi Film writing. Azmi Saab 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. The film, chronicles the plight of the minority Muslims in North India and is set in Agra after the first major partition exodus. Balraj Sahni played to perfection the central role of an elderly Muslim shoe manufacturer who must decide whether to continue living in India or to migrate to the newly formed state of Pakistan. Garam Hawa remains today one of the most poignant films ever to be made on India's partition. Azmi also wrote the dialogues for Shyam Benegal's Manthan (1976) and Sathyu's Kanneshwara Rama (1977). As a lyrics writer though he wrote for numerous films, he would always be remembered for Guru Dutt'sKaagaz ke Phool (1959) and Chetan Anand's Haqeeqat (1964), India's greatest ever war film. In the former who can forget Dekhi Zamaane ki Yaari Bichde Sabi Baari Baari or Waqt ne Kiya Kya Haseen Situm and Hoke Majboor Mujhe Usne Bhulaya Hoga or Kar Chale Hum Fida Jaan-o-Tan Saathiyon in the latter. The last mentioned patriotic song causes goose p***les even when heard today. Some other notable films for which he wrote the lyrics include Uski Kahani (1966), Bawarchi (1972), Pakeezah (1972), Hanste Zakhm (1973) and Razia Sultan (1983). He also played a memorable old man in Naseem (1995),a touching film centered around the destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya. The film is set in June-December 1992, the days preceding the demolition of the Masjid on December 6, 1992 by Hindutva fanatics. Naseem (Mayuri Kango) is a schoolgirl belonging to a middle class Mumbai based Muslim family. She enjoys a warm relationship with her aged ailing grandfather (Azmi Saab). With increasing horror the family watches on their TV the news of the build up at Ayodhya while the grandfather regales her with stories of life in pre-independence Agra. The grandfather dies on December 6 coinciding with the news of the destruction of the mosque. Azmi Saab's brilliant performance provides not just a reminder but a literal embodiment of the cultural traditions at stake those tragic days. It was a performance his daughter, multiple National Award winning actress Shabana Azmi, was proud of. Kaifi Saab has won various awards and he has been honoured by various national and international institutions. These include the Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy Award, the Soviet Land Nehru Award and 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 also won the National Award and Filmfare Award for the screenplay and dialogue of Garam Hawa. Azmi Saab was also the subject of a documentary film Kaifi Azmi (1979) made by Raman Kumar. His son Baba Azmi is a reputed cinematographer while son-in-law Javed Akhtar is a well known writer, lyricist and poet and daughter-in-law Tanvi, a fine actress in her own right.

Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago

Kaifi Azmi: Symbol of resistance

RANJIT HOSKOTE remembers a poet of extraordinary gifts.

THE radical and the poet do not always occupy the same personality with ease. The rival personae can contradict each other, so that the poetry is pulled one way and the other, between the extremes of sterile formalism and sloganeering. It takes a poet of extraordinary gifts, like Kaifi Azmi, to craft a poetic idiom capable of projecting grief, anger and exaltation while also maintaining a high degree of stylistic vigour. For Azmi, who died in Bombay on May 10, poetry was a form of resistance, an articulation of the self's protest against the dominance of stifling orthodoxies and the pathologies of power. The celebrated Urdu poet, who also reached a wide pan-Indian public through his contribution as a film lyricist of distinction, was a member of the Progressive Writers' Movement, which also included his contemporaries, Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Ali Sardar Jafri. Urdu poetry had made a transition from the courtly Mughal era into the epoch of colonial modernity after the Great Uprising of 1857; but it received a vital shock of contemporaneity with the advent of the Progressives, who brought into their writing an awareness of the sufferings of the colonised masses, an empathy with a proletariat oppressed by the triple yoke of feudalism, colonialism and industrialism. The background from which Azmi emerged would seem, at first sight, to be an unlikely matrix for a poet of resistance. He was born more than eight decades ago as Syed Athar Hussain Rizvi, into a zamindar family at Mizwan, Azamgarh, in what was then the United Provinces (the nom de plume that he adopted celebrates his birthplace). His early education followed the traditional pattern laid down for male children of his class: he studied Arabic and Persian with a maulvi at a madrassa, a training in the classics that was to serve his writing as a bed-rock, even though he was to depart widely from Urdu classicism in terms of his choices of subject and tone. The Quit India movement of 1942 was a formative experience of political radicalisation for the young Azmi. He was fired equally by the nationalist zeal to oppose the British colonial regime and the socialist desire to overturn the deep-rooted feudalism of Indian society and redress the poverty of the Indian masses. Not surprisingly, he joined the Communist Party of India at the age of 19, and wrote for its organ, Qaumi Jung (People's War). Moving to Bombay in the 1940s, he lived, at first, in communes in Andheri and Nagpada, before shifting to Janki Kutir, in what used to be the garden suburb of Juhu, where a number of poets, artists, film and theatre people lived. The Bombay of 60 years ago was on fire with the Communist labour movement, which formed, alongside the Congress-driven nationalist movement, an important strand in the widespread unrest that confronted the British in the last decade of the Raj. Bombay's Communist labour movement was later systematically destroyed by the city's Congress politicians and the regionalist-communitarian thugs they created, but the 1940s were years of boundless optimism. Azmi and his fellow poets took active part in rallies and marches, agitating shoulder-to-shoulder with the workers to whose cause they lent intellectual support. When the Leftist Indian People's Theatre Association was set up, the poet was one of the earliest members. Azmi's immediate audience, in this period, was the Urdu-reading public of Bombay, especially the residents of the inner-city areas of Madanpura and Nagpada. Many inhabitants of these enclaves, wedged between the markets and the docklands, were descended from refugees from the United Provinces, who had escaped famine, poverty and the British reprisals after the Uprising of 1857. The only link these people had to the lifeworld of their ancestors was their language. To these readers, Azmi spoke in the voice of immediacy, honing a poetic sensibility that would challenge the demons of injustice, bigotry and exploitation in a series of collections, including Jhankar, Aakhri-e-Shab, Awara Sajde and Sarmaya. We may observe, parenthetically, that one of Bombay's tragic narratives is the story of the shrinkage and disappearance of Urdu as one of that cosmopolitan city's languages. A variety of factors have conspired to bring about this disappearance, not least of which is the ghettoisation effect that brands Urdu as a language for Muslims alone (which has not, historically, been true). On the other hand, the felicities of Urdu poetry and prose entered the consciousness of a vast, national audience through the medium of the popular Hindi cinema; for which masters of Urdu prose, such as Sadat Hasan Manto, wrote scripts, while many of the Progressives, Azmi included, provided lyrics. While necessity may have led Azmi to compose lyrics for the movies, this did not result in a dilution of his adherence to literary standards. His lyrics, especially those written for films directed by the legendary Guru Dutt, endure in the mind and on the tongue: among these memorable songs are "Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam" (from "Kagaz ke Phool") and "Kar chale hum fida jaan-o-tan saathiyon" (from "Haqeeqat"). The last decade was shadowed, for Azmi, by the double violation of the values that had been integral to his life. The globalisation process brought with it an unprecedented consumerism, an insensitivity of privilege towards dispossession, an abdication of social responsibility towards those without opportunity and entitlement. Neo-tribalism, in the form of the savage forces of Hindutva, mounted a systematic assault on the secular charter of the Republic. Like a great many Indians of sensitivity, Azmi was shaken by the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, and was prompted to write a deeply moving poem, "Doosra Banwas" (Rama's Second Banishment to the Forest). Ayodhya marked the beginning of the end of the secular Republic, as envisaged by the Constituent Assembly, a process that has culminated in the hideous triumph of the murderers and rapists who have challenged Constitutional order with impunity in Gujarat.

No film has captured the predicament of the Indian Muslim after Partition as compassionately as M.S. Sathyu's film classic, "Garm Hawa" (with which Azmi was associated), did. The film ends with the young son of a Muslim family electing to stay on in India; symbolically, he joins a protest march, marking his participation in the wider national public sphere outside the community. After Ahmedabad, many Muslims must wonder what place they have in a future national public sphere dominated by the Hindu Right; and it is heart-breaking to think that such questions must have confronted Kaifi Azmi in the final months of his life.

Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago

Kaifi Azmi

 

 

 

 

A moment

 

Life is the name given to a few moments

and from those perhaps that one moment

in which two eloquent eyes

rise above the cup of tea

and sink straight into the heart.

Do not utter a word today

I, too, shall be silent

just sit here by my side

with this gift of pain

this warmth of feelings

who knows, this very moment

somewhere on a faraway mountain-top

the snow may actually start melting

 

 

Life

 

Darkness seems to be seeping into

every pore of mine

The spark in the eye will vanish

I will feel no more, nor will I think

Centuries have scorched this body of mine

Before my daughter's soft hands give

A cool caress to my hot face

Before my son's strong body lends strength

To this weak and crippled frame

Before my wife's lips drink

The heat of my lips

The body aflame for long will turn to ashes

And then the ashes will scatter themselves

 

 

 

Toys

 

The boat here is made of sand, froth goes into making the boatman

The train is fashioned out of wood, the elephant mother of pearl

These heavy machines those light ones are made of plastic

The wheels are moulded from wax, they can neither stop nor move

Ashes make up this earth here and dust makes up the fields

Clothes are stitched of steam and houses built with smoke

Magic goes into making the canal, prayers make up the bridge

Such are the toys that make music of those few plans

 

 

 

Taqseem hua mulk to dil ho gae tukre
Har seenay mein toofan wahan bhi thha yahan bhi
Har ghar mein chita jalti thee lahratey thhe sholay
Har shahr men shamshan wahan bhi thha yahan bhi
Geeta ki koi sunta na Quran ki sunta
Hairan thha iman wahan bhi thha yahan bhi
 
The land is divided, lives are shattered
Storms rage in every heart; it's the same here and there
Funeral pyres in every home; the flames mount higher
Every city is deserted; it's the same here and there
No one heeds the Gita, no one heeds the Koran
Faith has lost all meaning here or there
 
At the end, it serves to heal it, by pointing out that the real struggle extends to and thereby unites both countries.
 
Jo door se toofan ka karte hain nazarah
Un ke liye toofan wahan bhi hai yahan bhi
Dharay main jo mil jao, ban jaoge dhara
yeh waqt ka elan wahan bhi hai yahan bhi
 
Those who view the storm from afar
See no difference between here and there
To join in and become a part of it
this is the call of the times, here and there

Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago

Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago

   

 

 

 

 

 

Kaifi Azmi once said in an interview "I, was born in ghulaam Hindustaan, am living in an Aazad Hindustaan and will die in a socialist Hindustaan." Kaifi Sahab is one of the greatest lyricist of the Hindi cinema.

He was born as Akhtar Hussain Rizvi, in a small town, Mejwaan, in the district of Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh in a family of landlords. His father Syed Fateh Husain Rizvi, though was a landlord, but took up employment first in a small native state, Balharah, as a tahsildar and later on 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 Saab could not get this opportunity because his elders wanted him to be a theologian. He was admitted in Sultan-ul-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 for getting their demands fulfilled. The strike continued for one and half year. Though the strike was called off, he was expelled from the seminary. This was the end of his elders' dream to train him to be a theologian. Azmi Saab could not seek modern education but he passed various examinations of Lucknow and Allahabad Universities that helped him acquire command over Arabic, Persian and Urdu languages.

During this period the leading progressive writers of Lucknow noticed him. They were very much impressed by his leadership qualities. They also saw in him a budding poet and extended all possible cooperation and encouragement to him. Consequently, Azmi Saab began to win great acclaim as a poet. His initiation into poetry was most interesting. At the age of eleven he, somehow, managed to get himself invited to a Mushaira and over there 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 that 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 Saab accepted the challenge and within no time completed a ghazal. That particular ghazal was to become a rage in undivided India sung by none other than the legendary ghazal singer, Begum Akhtar and went thus: 'Itna to Zindagi Mein Kisiki Khalal Pade Hasne Se Ho Sukoon Na Rone Se Kal Pade..'. He however abandoned his studies of Persian and Urdu during the Quit India agitations of 1942 and shortly thereafter became a full time Marxist when he accepted membership of the Communist Party in 1943. At the age on 19 he joined the Communist Party and started activities in the textile mill areas of Kanpur. As a full time active worker, he left his life of comfort though he was a son of a Zamindaar. He was asked to shift base to Mumbai and work among the workers and started party work with 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 with Shaukat, fell in love with her and both got married. Shaukat Kaifi, later on, became a well known actress of theatre and film.

Like most of the Urdu poets, Azmi Saab began as a ghazal writer cramming his poetry with the oft-repeated themes of love and romance in a style that was replete with clichs 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 poems 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, the spirit of sympathy and compassion towards the disadvantaged section of society are the hallmarks of his poems. 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, Jhankar and Awaara Sajde.

Azmi Saab's stint in film includes working as lyricist, writer and yes even actor! His early work as story writer was mainly for Nanubhai Vakil's films like Yahudi ki Beti (1956), Parvin (1957), Miss Punjab Mail (1958) and Idd 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 great feats in Hindi Film writing. Azmi Saab 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 lyrics writer though he wrote for numerous films, he would always be remembered for Guru Dutt's Kaagaz ke Phool (1959) and Chetan Anand's Haqeeqat (1964), India's greatest ever war film. Some other notable films for which he wrote the lyrics include Uski Kahani (1966), Bawarchi (1972), Pakeezah (1972), Hanste Zakhm (1973) and Razia Sultan (1983). He also played a memorable old man in Naseem (1995),a touching film centered around the destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya

Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago

Intishar
Kaifi Azmi

kabhii jumuud kabhii sirf intishaar saa hai
jahaaN ko apnii tabaahii ka intizaar saa hai

Manu ki macchlii na kashtii-e-Nooh aur ye fizaa
ke qatre qatre meN tuufaaN be-qaraar saa hai

maiN kisko apne gariibaaN ke chaak dikhlaaooN
ke aaj daaman-e-yazdaaN bhii taar-taar saa hai

sajaa-saNvaar ke jisko hazaar naaz kiye
usii par Khaaliq-e-Kaunain sharm-saar saa hai

sab apne paaNv pe rakh-rakh ke paaNv chalte haiN
Khud apne kaaNdhe per har aadmii savaar saa hai

jise pukaariye miltaa hai Khandar se javaab
jise bhii dekhiye maazii ke ishtehaar saa hai

hu'ii to kaise bayaabaaN meN aa ke shaam hu'ii
ke jo mazaar yahaaN hai, meraa mazaar saa hai

ko'ii to suud chukaaye, ko'ii to zimmaa le
us inqilaab kaa, jo aaj tak udhaar saa hai

A translation (by Falstaff)

Sometimes aroused, sometimes indifferent,
The world awaits its own destruction.

No warning, no ark will save us now;
Every drop of this air is restless with storms.

To whom shall I speak of the fraying of my collars,
When even the Creator is dressed in rags?

He whom we were proud of, celebrated -
It is he who stands ashamed, in the eyes of God.

Each man walks in his own footsteps now
Each man carries his weight on his own shoulders.

No matter whom you call the ruins will answer
No matter where you look the past is advertised.

How did we come to this? In the twilight
Of this wilderness, every grave is as my grave.


Let someone pay the price, let someone lay claim
To the debt of this revolt, that still lies heavy upon us.


Kaifi Azmi (yes, that is right, Shabana Azmi's father). One of the major Urdu poets from India.
Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago