By 1944, a large number of progressive writers had begun to flock to Bombay. Josh Malihabadi, Akhtar ul Iman, Krishan Chandar and Saghar Nizami were in Poona, but the lure of the silver screen drew them to the city that was home to the biggest film industry in Asia. By the time the Second World War ended, some of the most dynamic writers of the age had gathered in Bombay from different parts of undivided India: among the Urdu writers there were Rajinder Singh Bedi, Hameed Akhtar, Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Rifat Sarosh, Niyaz Haider, Hajra Masrur and Khadija Mastur, Saadat Hasan Manto, Miraji, Vishwamitra Adil, Ismat Chughtai and her husband Shahid Latif to name a few; Hindi writers Upendranath Askh, Nemichandra Jain, Amritlal Nagar, Balraj Sahni, Prem Dhawan; Marathi writers Mama Warerkar and Anna Bhau Sathe; and Gujarati writers Bakulesh Swapnath and Bhogilal Gandhi.

It is to this Bombay that Kaifi Azmi brought his Hyderabadi bride, Shaukat Azmi, to live in the commune in Andheri. Kaifi had met Shaukat in Hyderabad where he had gone to attend a mushaira and promptly fallen in love. Shaukat records her meeting with Kaifi, her marriage to him despite the differences in the family background and status, her arrival in Bombay to live as the wife of a comrade in a commune in her memoir Yaad ki Rehguzar (‘The Pathway of Memory’). Shaukat notes her first impressions thus: ‘We went to Kaifi’s tiny room . . . there was a loosely strung jute charpai with a dhurrie, a mattress, a sheet, a pillow . . . a chair . . . some books, piles of newspapers, a mug and a glass. The simplicity of this room touched my heart . . .’7

Shaukat provides a luminous account of her new life in the company of gregarious comrades: Zaheer and his wife Razia and their two daughters, the affable duo of Muneesh and Mehdi,8 Jafri and his wife Sultana who took Shaukat under her wing and taught her the ways of coping in a commune; the parsimonious Party Treasurer Comrade Ghate (who nevertheless grudgingly parted with Rs 100 to the newly-weds); and P.C. Joshi who comes across in her narrative as a benevolent despot. Shaukat’s nikah with Kaifi was witnessed by nearly all the progressive writers from Bombay; it was followed, naturally enough, by a mushaira with Majaz reciting ‘Aaj ki Raat’ (‘Tonight’) and the bride being presented a copy of the groom’s second collection of poetry, ‘Aakhir-e-Shab’ (‘The End of the Night’), dedicated to her. Shaukat describes Kaifi and his friends, who would become her fellow-travellers, thus: ‘They were enlightened and humane individuals who were struggling to create a new world for the poor, the destitute and the hungry. Although they were from different parts of India, these people were like one family where everyone was addressed as “Comrade”, which at the time meant an evolved human being.’9