Shabana Azmi remembers her legendary poet-activist father Kaifi Azmi   

People don’t know this, but he had a tremendous sense of humour. I remember once I was putting eye-drops in his tiny eyes. The drops kept falling all over his face. He told me about this inept prince who was taught archery and who broke everything in the house during practice. Then he said, ‘Put the drops in my ears they’ll go in my eyes.’ He said such lines with a poker face. He always made digs at the strange procedure in our films where tunes came first and lyrics were written into them later. ‘It’s like first digging a grave and then trying to fit a corpse into it. But I constantly keep fitting the corpse into the grave, so everyone thinks I’m a good lyricist’ he said.

You know I took my father for granted, as all children tend to. But as a poet he continues to overwhelm me each day even four years after his death. Whether it was his poem Makaan or Aurat…they’ve been a great source of inspiration. In Hindi cinema, along with Sahir, Majrooh, Jaan Nissar Akhtar and Shailendra, my father raised the standards of film lyrics. They were often deceptively conversational ,like Kuch dil ne kaha…..kuch bhi nahin….As a film lyricist he was a mixture of simplicity and poetically. Take these lines from Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Satyakam, Kissi ka na ho jiss pe saaya mujhe aisi din aisi raat do/Main manzil to khud dhoond loongi mere haath main zaraa apna haath do/ Qadam-do-qadam tum mera saathdo….And when Lataji sang these lines by my father….what can be said? You know what was exceptional about my father?

He never spoke at home about his work. My most favourite Kaifi Azmi lyrics?Hmmmmm… Koi kaise yeh bataaye ke woh tanha kyon hai/whojo apna tha who aur kisika kyon hai/yehi duniya hai to phir aisi yeh duniya kyonhai/yehi hota hai to aakhir yehi hota kyon hai?…The simplicity of these lines kill me. Imagine, a spouse-deserted woman (in thef ilm Arth) being faced with these lines!….That sense of commitment which artistes of my father’s generation had , has been missing. But slowly it’s coming back in my film fraternity. I like it when film people come out to involve themselves with social issues.

I want to share an incident with you about Abba. The last time he ever got out of bed was 14 January 2002 which was his birthday. I had gone down to Mijima (our village in Azamgarh) to meet him. From early morning I had been sitting waiting for him to finish meeting all the villagers. Finally my father hauled himself out of bed and asked my mother for some money. No one had the guts to ask this very old and frail man where he was going off to with his man-Friday. Forty-five minutes later he came back, all drained out. He looks at me and says,‘ Mere gaon wale tumhara subah se bheja chaat rahen haina? Main apne chidiya ke liya khaas taur se woh samose lekar aaya hoon jo ussey bahut pasand hai.’That was the last time he moved out of bed. When Abba passed away I realised nothing prepares you for the loss of a parent…NOTHING! I was completely devastated. But now years later I feel his spirit envelopes me like the air I breathe. I remember him with celebration. I do not remember him with sorrow….My brother Baba Javed, his poem ‘Ajeeb Aadmi’ on my father…these have helped me heal.

My mother was a remarkable companion to my father. It was an amazing relationship. I was attracted to Javed because he was exactly like my father. In getting to know Javed I got to know my father. Like Abba, Javed is a feminist. My father had this complete dependence on domestic matters on my mother. Even I’ve to buy all the clothes and shoes for Javed. Likewise the tailor who stitched my father’s kurta-pyjamas never saw his face. Neither Abba nor Javed have seen the kitchen in the house. Nor can they fix anything around the house. But both can do anything if they set their heart on it. Javed fights to win. I fight to play the game…..My brother Baba is an extreme introvert. He shared an extremely deep relationship with my father. Baba’s wife Tanvi, who’s the most talkative person in the world, would run out of the room when Abba and Baba were together. They just shared silences.

Abba was everything to me. I continue with his good work in our village. He was my comrade, I remember when I went on my padyatra from Delhi to Meerut. There was so much tension. But when I went to my father he caught my face in his hands and said, ‘Meri bahadur beti jaa rahi hai? Jao tumhein kuch nahin hoga. Sirf kaamyab hoke lautogi.’It was like a gust of oxygen pumped into me. Ours was an open house during Abba. It continues to be so. My reference point and the choices in life will always come from him, his poetry, work, life and courage.”