When Shabana Azmi speaks of her legendary father, poet and lyricist, Kaifi Azmi, her entire being is bathed in sunshine. “My earliest memory of Abba (father Kaifi Azmi)… sitting on a writing table in his kurta-pyjama smoking incessantly and writing till the wee hours of the morning. As a child, I was convinced a poet was a euphemism for someone who didn’t have any work. Daddies were supposed to put on trousers, shirts, and ties and go out to work. In fact, when people would ask me what my father did, I said he was a businessman and quickly changed the topic. Oh, the follies of innocence!”
Shabana acknowledges not only her father’s all-pervasive charisma but also his sense of humour. “My father was a really gorgeous-looking man with a beautiful voice. 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.”
Shabana says Kaifi Saaf was not comfortable with the way songs were traditionally written in our films. “ 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.”
Shabana continues to discover new facets of her father’s genius. “As a poet, he continues to overwhelm me each day, even so many years after his death. Whether it was his poem Makaan or Aurat… they’ve been a great source of inspiration. My concern for slum-dwellers started with my father’s poem Makaan, which talks of the irony of the construction worker who builds a building with his sweat and blood but isn’t allowed to enter it. 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: Kuch dil ne kaha…..kuch bhi nahin…. As a film lyricist, he was a mixture of simplicity and poeticality. Take these lines ‘Kissi ka na ho jiss pe saaya mujheaisi din aisi raat do/ Main manzil to khud dhoond loongi mere haath main zaraa apna haath do/ Qadam-do-qadam tum mera saath do’…. 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.”
Adding, “My most favourite Kaifi Azmi lyrics? Hmmmmm… ‘Koi kaise yeh bataaye ke wohtanha kyon hai/who jo apna tha who aur kisika kyon hai/yehi duniya hai to phir aisi yeh duniya kyon hai/yehi hota hai to aakhir yehi hota kyon hai?… ’. The simplicity of these lines kill me. Imagine, a spouse-deserted woman (in the film 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.”
