While agitating for the rights of his fellow students at the Sultan-ul Madaris, Kaifi met a galaxy of intellectuals in Lucknow: first and foremost the leading Urdu writer, Ali Abbas Hussaini, who in turn, introduced him to Ehtesham Husain, the foremost Marxist critic and academic; Azam Husain, the editor of the daily Sarfaraz; and Ali Sardar Jafri, the firebrand student leader and budding poet who would remain a lifelong friend and comrade. By now, having abandoned all plans of becoming a maulvi, Kaifi continued his studies in Arabic and Persian by taking several private examinations. As poetry and politics began to play an increasing role in his life, his goal of sitting for the F.A. examination as a private candidate and eventually studying in a college was thwarted. Kaifi got drawn into the nationwide agitation for swaraj (self-rule) and satyagraha (the civil disobedience movement) launched by Mahatma Gandhi. He began to join the prabhat pheri processions, reciting his own poetry as he went from house to house at the break of dawn.4 His first brush with the police came when he was building a bonfire of imported clothes in front of a textile shop in Lucknow’s Aminabad neighbourhood. Later, when he moved to Kanpur and came in contact with the labour unions, his contact with the communist party strengthened and his world view became more sharply polarized between the privileged and the unprivileged. Soon his poems began to be published—both in literary magazines and in overtly left-leaning journals such as Qaumi Jung, edited by Sajjad Zaheer in faraway Bombay, a city that was fast establishing itself as the beating heart of the new and vibrant Progressive Writers’ Movement (PWM).

While still a lad cutting his teeth as a poet, Kaifi had decided that if he were to make a name for himself outside the hinterland, in the glittering mushaira circuit of the big cities, he could not remain un-mentored and untutored; like all good poets, he would need islah (correction) from an ustad (teacher). And so he sought out Maulana Safi, one of the leading ustad poets in Lucknow. Safi saheb heard the young poet recite ‘Itna to zindagi mein kisi ki khalal padey/Hansne se ho sukun na roney se kal padey’ and, instead of taking him on as a disciple, offered words of sage counsel that would remain with Kaifi all his life. Maulana Safi cautioned him against the pitfalls of the wah-wahs and the adulation that can lead one astray; instead, he urged the boy to keep reading and writing. The flaws in his writing would shed themselves like dry leaves, the master said, and the strengths would keep sprouting like fresh new leaves. And so it happened . . .