Cover

Dedication

Translator’s Dedication

To Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar ... who carry the legacy forward

Foreword

For Abba with Love

Early 1990s

He was always different, a fact that didn’t sit too easily on my young shoulders. He didn’t go to ‘office’ or wear the normal trousers and shirt like other ‘respectable’ fathers but chose to wear a white cotton kurta-pyjama twenty-four hours of the day. He did not speak English and, worse still, I didn’t call him ‘Daddy’ like other children, but some strange-sounding ‘Abba’! I learned very quickly to avoid referring to him in front of my classmates and lied that he did some vague ‘business’! Imagine letting my school friends know that he was a poet. What on earth did that mean—a euphemism for someone who did no work?

Being my parent’s child was, for me, unconventional in every way. My school required that both parents speak English. Since neither Abba nor Mummy did, I faked my entry into school. Sultana Jafri, Sardar Jafri’s wife, pretended to be my mother and Munish Narayan Saxena, a friend of Abba’s, pretended to be my father. Once in the tenth standard, the vice principal called me and said that she’d heard my father at a recent mushaira and he looked quite different from the gentleman who had come in the morning for Parents’ Day! Understandably, I went completely blue in the face and said: ‘Oh he’s been suffering from typhoid and has lost a lot of weight, you know’ . . . and made up some sort of story to save my skin!

It was no longer possible to keep Abba in the closet. He had started writing lyrics for films and one day a friend of mine said that her father had read my father’s name in the newspaper. That did it! I owned him up at once! Of all the forty children in my class, only my father’s name had appeared in the newspaper! I perceived his being ‘different’ as a virtue for the first time. I need no longer feel apologetic about his wearing a kurta-pyjama! In fact, I even brought out the black doll he had bought me. I didn’t want it when he first gave it to me. I wanted a blonde doll with blue eyes, like all the others had in my class. But he explained, in that quiet gentle way of his, that black was beautiful too and I must learn to be proud of my doll. It didn’t make sense to my seven-year-old mind but I had accepted him as ‘weird’ in any case and so I quietly hid the doll. Three years later, I pulled it out as proof that I was a ‘different’ daughter of a ‘different’ father! In fact, I now displayed it with such newfound confidence that instead of being sniggered at by my classmates, I became an object of envy. That was the first lesson he taught me, of turning what is perceived as a disadvantage into a scoring point.

When I opened my eyes to the world, the first colour I saw was red. Till I was nine years old we lived at Red Flag Hall, a commune-like flat of the Communist Party of India (CPI). A huge red flag used to greet visitors at the entrance. It was only later that I realized red was the colour of the worker, of revolution. Each comrade’s family had just one room; the bathroom and lavatory was common. Being party members had redefined the husband–wife relationship of the whole group. Most wives were working and it became the responsibility of whichever parent was at home to look after the child. My mother was touring quite a lot with Prithvi Theatre and in her absence Abba would feed, bathe and look after both my brother Baba and me, as a matter of course.

In the beginning, Mummy had to take up a job because all the money Abba earned was handed over to the party. He was allowed to keep only Rs 40 per month which was hardly enough for a family of four. But later when we were monetarily better off and had moved to Janki Kutir, Mummy continued to work in the theatre because she loved being an actor. Once, she was to participate in the Maharashtra State Competition in the title role of Pagli. She was completely consumed by the part and would suddenly, without warning, launch into her lines in front of the dhobi, cook, etc. I was convinced she’d gone mad and started weeping with fright. Abba dropped his work and took me for a long walk on the beach. He explained that Mummy had very little time to rehearse her part and that as family it was our duty to make it possible for her to rehearse her lines as many times as she needed to or else she wouldn’t win the competition—all this to a nine-year-old child. It made me feel very adult and very included. To this day, whenever my mother is acting in a new play or new film, my father sits up with her and rehearses her cues.

She participates in his life equally; at a price of course! She fell in love with him because he was a poet. However, she learned soon enough that a poet is essentially a man of the people and she would have to share him with his countless admirers (a large number of them female!) and friends. When I was about nine years old, I remember an evening at a big industrialist’s home. His wife, a typical socialite, announced in a rather flirtatious manner, ‘Kaifi Saheb, my usual farmaish, the “Do Nigahon Ka” something something . . . You know, folks, Kaifi Saheb has written this nazm in praise of me.’ And Abba, without batting an eyelid, started reciting this poem which was in fact written for my mother. I was outraged and started screaming that the poem was written for my mother and not for this stupid woman. A deathly silence prevailed and my mother said, ‘Hush, child, hush,’ but I am sure unke dil mein laddoo phoot rahe thay! Mummy took me into a corner and said that I wasn’t to take such things to heart—after all, ‘Abba’ was a poet and such were his ways—he didn’t seriously mean that the poem was written for this lady, etc. I would hear nothing of it. Needless to say, that was a poem Kaifi Azmi could never use again and that woman still hates me!

Amongst his female friends Begum Akhtar was my favourite. She would sometimes stay with us as a houseguest. In fact, Josh Malihabadi, Firaq Gorakhpuri and Faiz Ahmed Faiz would stay with us too despite there being no separate guestroom, not even an attached bathroom. Luxury was never the central concern of these artists; they preferred the warmth of our tiny home to the five-star comforts available to them. I was fascinated by the mehfils at home. I would sit up in rapt attention, not even half understanding what they recited, but excited nevertheless. Their beautiful words fell like music on my young ears. I found the atmosphere fascinating—the steady flow of conversation, the tinkering of glasses, the smoke-filled room. I was never rushed off to bed; in fact I was encouraged to hang around, provided I took the responsibility for getting up in time for school the next day. It made me feel very grown-up and included.

Soon I started attending mushairas—Sahir Ludhianvi was popular, Ali Sardar Jafri greatly respected, but Kaifi Azmi had a different magic. He was always amongst the last to recite, his deeply resonant voice pulsating with vigour, drama and power. Baba and I used to be fast asleep on the stage, behind the gao-takiyas, and would invariably wake up to the thunderous applause that resonated each time his name was announced. I never saw him either surprised or flattered by the applause. In fact, to my mother’s despair, he would never come home and tell her how the mushaira went. A non-committal ‘Theek thha’ was all she could extract from him. Years later, when I was about eighteen, I remember prodding him to tell me which nazm he had recited and what the audience response was like. My mother said briefly, ‘Don’t even try; he’s not going to tell you. Over the years I have trained myself to bury my curiosity in a newspaper when Kaifi comes back from a mushaira.’ But I would have none of that. I sat across Abba’s chest and tickled him pink till he said, ‘Chhichhore log apni tareef karte hain, jis din bura padhoonga, aake bata doonga.’ (Only the lowly sing their own praise; I’ll tell you the day I recite badly.)

He never treated his work as special. Even when he came back from a song recording, he never brought the cassette back home. A far cry from young lyricists today, who subject all their guests to their latest song, goading them to say ‘Wah-Wah’! He never actually puts pen to paper till the night of the deadline. Then there is a furious cleaning of drawers, numerous letters that get replied to, a number of inconsequential things that get attended to. I’m sure the creative process is occurring simultaneously over the radio blaring, children laughing, children’s friends over, taash going on in the house. The family is never made to hush up because he is writing; in fact the door of his study is always open so he can keep in touch with the outside world as well. I once changed the position of his desk away from the door because I felt he needed greater privacy. Mummy protested he would hate it. Came evening and predictably Abba made her change it back to the original position. He writes only with a Mont Blanc pen and has a huge collection of them. Every now and again, he takes them all out, looks at them lovingly and then puts them back under lock and key. When a friend of mine presented me one, Abba pinched it although he possessed three identical ones and wrote my friend a ‘cute’ letter giving reasons why the pen was safer with him than with me!

Few people know that he has a tremendous sense of humour and can be a first-rate mimic. He can laugh repeatedly at family jokes and makes Mummy act out incidents he finds funny again and again. He laughs till tears spill out of his eyes. Looking at his serious face, could anyone believe that!

I was once trying to put his eye drops for him. He has the tiniest little eyes in the world and would blink furiously every time I touched them. Inevitably, the drops would spill over to his nose or ear. Suddenly, he held my hand and started narrating a tale. ‘There was a young prince once who was the despair of his father’s life because he could do nothing well. The king finally found a marksman who swore he would turn the young prince into a skilled archer. After about six months the prince decided to display his skill. Swish-swosh went his arrows all over the room and felled everything within sight. Finally the king and the teacher decided the only way they could be safe was to stand right in the centre of the target since that was the only place the prince’s arrow would never reach!’

When I looked at Abba quizzically to figure out what the story meant, he said with a straight face, ‘Apni taraf se tum eye drops mere kaan mein dalo, aankh mein khud-ba-khud pahunch jayenge!’ (Why don’t you try putting the eye drops into my ears, I am sure they will reach my eyes on their own.)

He is very fond of good food and cannot eat a meal without gosht. He’s hugely ‘superior’ about being an UP-ite and will not condescend to eat Hyderabadi food, even though Mummy has tried to cajole him over the fifty-two years they’ve been married! Each time we eat khatti daal, a separate arhar ki daal is cooked for him and woe betide the person who unmindfully picks up the khatti daal ka spoon to serve him his arhar ki daal! He never serves himself and you are never to ask him what he would like to eat. Mummy’s trained eye knows almost by a process of osmosis what he should be served and in what quantity. When I protest that this is dadagiri, Mummy says she was warned by her mother-in-law that unless she served him, he would get up from the table hungry rather than open his mouth and say yeh cheez aur chahiye! The only time he does ask for more is when I cook something. Unfortunately, cooking is not one of my talents and the family runs for miles if they’re made to suffer the ordeal of my cooking. But Abba behaves as though he is tasting the best of Avadh’s culinary delicacy! He fools nobody but I am touched nevertheless.

There is much that he and Javed have in common. Both have a strong sense of propriety, are extremely takkaluf-pasand and cannot brook mediocrity. Both are hugely political animals. I used to deliberately stay away from politics and pride myself on not reading the newspaper as a reaction against all the politics that was discussed constantly in the house. But when I got involved with Javed and heard him and Abba have their discussions (I used to listen from a distance) I gradually started taking an interest. In discovering Javed I was rediscovering Abba, getting in touch once again with Urdu poetry and passionate politics, realizing how deep into my father’s ways my roots were.

I got involved with Javed, a married man, which made my mother very unhappy. All my well-wishers predicted disaster for the two of us. All around me there was tremendous pressure to break up with Javed. With my heart pounding I turned to Abba, ‘Do you think Javed is the wrong man for me?’

‘He is not wrong, his circumstances are,’ came the reply.

‘But what if he can change the circumstances? Trust me, the marriage was over long before I came into the scene,’ I said quietly.

There were no further questions asked. He didn’t probe, didn’t want to know the details of what that meant. He trusted me enough to take me for my word and gave me his blessings. That was one of the most momentous decisions of my life. Had Abba said no, I wonder if I would have had the courage to defy him—not because I’m frightened of him but because in the most personal of matters he can be relied upon to make the most objective judgement. There are instances without number when I have turned to him for advice. He never gives an opinion unless it is asked for, which is a far cry from Mummy and me who can’t help but dole it out mostly to unwilling ears!

In the early years of my career I was so immersed in my films that I knew little about what was happening in the world outside and was content within my own bubble. I remember Tariq Ali and Saeed Akhtar Mirza expressing their dismay at my being such an unworthy daughter but Abba put no pressure on me or ever said, ‘You should do this or that.’ I think he was confident that meri mitti itni geeli thhi ke ankur to phootega hi. (My soil was so fertile that the plant would eventually take root.) And so it did.

My childhood was spent travelling with my mother’s Prithvi Theatre on one hand, and on the other, mazdoor kisan meetings in Madanpura with my father. There used to be red banners everywhere, a lot of naare-baazi and a lot of protest poetry. As a child I was only interested in these rallies because the labourers pampered me. Imperceptibly, however, my roots were catching soil. The films I was doing started leaving their imprint on me and I started getting involved with women’s issues, the rights of the homeless and the need for communal harmony. Today when I’m at a demonstration, participating in a padyatra or in a hunger strike, it is merely an extension of what I saw happening around me as a child.

In 1986, a big slum had been demolished at Cuffe Parade in Bombay to make way for a hostel for MLAs. The slum dwellers had knocked on every door to get alternative accommodation which was their due by law but no one was willing to pay any heed to them. I joined Anand Patwardhan and three slum dwellers from Sanjay Gandhi Nagar on an indefinite hunger strike. On the fourth day of the strike my blood pressure started falling and my mother was beside herself with fear. To her dismay, Abba, who was in Patna, sent me a telegram saying, ‘Best of luck, Comrade!’

On another instance I decided to join Swami Agnivesh and Asghar Ali Engineer on a padyatra for communal harmony from Delhi to Meerut. When I went to say goodbye to the family, I was nervous and uncertain. I had been amply warned that it was very dangerous for an actress to be roaming the streets of Uttar Pradesh as my clothes would be ripped off, stones would be thrown, etc. The whole family was reflecting the tension. Mummy, Baba, his wife Tanvi and Javed were all hovering around me but not saying a word. I walked into Abba’s room and hugged him from behind. He pulled me up in front of him and said, ‘Arrey meri bahadur beti darr rahi hai? Jao, tumhe kuchh nahin hoga.’ His eyes were completely fearless. It was as though a fresh burst of oxygen had been pumped into my bloodstream. Needless to add, the padyatra was a big success. It was yet another instance of my having relied on his judgement and passing the test with flying colours.

As a father, I have always taken Abba for granted, but as a poet I continue to be overwhelmed by his work. I cannot claim to know or even understand all his work but I find his poetry striking for its strong imagery, its sheer power and its broadness of vision. His most personal problem transcends itself in a much larger vision so that his struggle no longer remains his own, but becomes the struggle of all human beings. Whether it’s my work with slum dwellers, women or against communalism, there’s always a nazm of Abba’s to guide me, to inspire me to carry on the struggle. Thus ‘Makaan’, ‘Aurat’ and ‘Behroopni’ have become the pillars on which my work rests.

He is a rare poet who practised what he preached. There is no dichotomy in his life between word and action. The poet who had challenged patriarchy forty-five years ago in his nazm ‘Aurat’ . . .

Zindagi jehd mein hai sabr ke qaabu mein nahiin

Nabz-e-hasti ka lahu kaanpte aansu mein nahiin

Udne khulne mein hai nikhat ḳham-e-gesu mein nahiin

Jannat ik aur hai jo mard ke pahlu mein nahiin

Uss kii azaad ravish par bhii machalna hai tujhe

Utth meri jaan mere saath hii chalna hai tujhe

. . . had in life, always encouraged his wife, daughter and daughter-in-law to become self-reliant and seek self-fulfilment. The poet who pointed out the irony of the construction worker being turned out of the very building he had built in ‘Makaan’ . . .

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