Today girls are negotiating more space for themselves. A word of caution for them though; when we talk of rights we must not forsake responsibility. Marriage is a process of constant adjustment. Compromise is not a bad word. It is the oil that lubricates any relationship. When we empower our daughters, we must also work to empower our sons so they find the strength to break out of their patriarchal mindset and learn to respect their wives as equal partners. Young women are no longer willing to be treated as appendages to their husbands; they want to be individuals in their own rights. Only then can marriage become the most fruitful of all relationships.

A good marriage makes space for differences, arguments and disagreements because underneath it rests a bedrock of love, trust and true friendship—which is what I shared with Kaifi.

Shaukat Azmi

December 2018

Footnotes

1 In the introduction to his collected works, Kaifiyaat, Kaifi describes this encounter; as a young boy freshly arrived from the village, he pushes a stool against a small high window and peers into a small room in the Shia seminary. He sees his maulvi sahab lying in bed and two or three other maulvis sitting huddled around him while a young boy, the same age as Kaifi, is reading aloud from Angarey. All through the reading, the maulvi saheb would exclaim ‘Lahaoul willa quwwat . . .’ to express his horror and disapproval of the book’s contents and pinch the hapless boy’s cheeks simultaneously. Angarey, comprising nine short stories and one play by four young writers namely, Sajjad Zaheer, Ahmad Ali, Mahmud-uz-Zafar and Dr Rashid Jahan, was published in December 1932 and banned by the colonial administration in March 1933 in the face of fierce condemnation from Muslims, especially the Shia community, for hurting their religious sentiments. The government of the United Provinces confiscated and burnt as many copies of the book as it could; the handful that survived were read surreptitiously. The secrecy about the book, and the desire to read it despite the directives (both religious and lay) not to, added to the intrigue and drama behind Angarey.

2 This ghazal, ‘Itna to zindagi mein kisi ki khalal padey/Hansne se ho sukun na roney se kal padey’, was composed by Kaifi and recited at a mushaira at Bahraich. It was received very enthusiastically by the audience and eventually reached Begum Akhtar who set it to music and turned it into a nationwide phenomenon in pre-partition India.

3 Kaifi talks of writing at least one poem every day during the strike to foster a sense of solidarity and fervour among his fellow students. These years at the madrasa would prove to be defining ones in an entirely unexpected way, one that his parents could never have foreseen when they sent him to train to be a maulvi.