Kaifi Azmi (born Athar Husain Rizvi; 14 January 1919 – 10 May 2002) was an Indian Urdu poet. He is remembered as the one who brought Urdu literature to Indian motion pictures. Together with Pirzada Qasim, Jaun Elia and others he participated in many memorable Mushaira gatherings of the twentieth century. His wife was theatre and film actress Shaukat Kaifi.
Biography
Early life
Azmi was born into a Shia Muslim family in the village of Mijwan in Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh. He got his title from the city of the same name.
Family
He was from a family of artists. His three brothers are also shayars (poets). Azmi was married to Shaukat Azmi. They have a daughter, Shabana Azmi who is an actress, and a son, Baba Azmi, a cinematographer. Azmi's daughter-in-law Tanvi Azmi is also an actress.
During Partition, he was underground in Aurangabad, as he was hounded by the British police for being a "card-carrying communist". His parents and his five brothers took the ship from Bombay to Karachi. By the time he surfaced, their ship had left.
He was denied a visa for Pakistan for several years despite the fact that his family lived there, because he was a communist.
Career
Writings
At age eleven, Azmi wrote his first ghazal in Bahraich Itna To Zindagi Mein Kisi Ki Khalal Pade and somehow managed to get himself invited to a mushaira and over there, he recited a ghazal, rather a couplet of the ghazal which was very much appreciated by the president of the mushaira, Mani Jaisi, but most of the people, including his father, thought he recited his elder brother's ghazal. When his elder brother denied it, his father and his clerk decided to test his poetic talent. They gave him one of the lines of a couplet and asked him to write a ghazal in the same meter and rhyme. Azmi accepted the challenge and completed a ghazal. This particular ghazal was to become a rage in undivided India and it was immortalised as it was sung by legendary ghazal singer, Begum Akhtar. Azmi abandoned his studies of Persian and Urdu during the Quit India agitations in 1942 and shortly thereafter became a full-time Marxist when he accepted membership of the Communist Party of India in 1943. During this period, the leading progressive writers of Lucknow noticed him. They were very impressed by his leadership qualities. They also saw in him a budding poet and extended all possible encouragement towards him. Consequently, Azmi started to win great acclaim as a poet and became a member of Progressive Writers' Movement of India. At the age of twenty-four, he started activities in the textile mill areas of Kanpur. As a full-time worker, he left his life of comfort, though he was the son of a zamindar. He was asked to shift his base to Bombay, work amongst the workers and start party work with a lot of zeal and enthusiasm.
Poetry
Like most of the Urdu poets, Azmi began as a ghazal writer, cramming his poetry with the repeated themes of love and romance in a style that was replete with clichés and metaphors. However, his association with the Progressive Writers' Movement and Communist Party made him embark on the path of socially conscious poetry. In his poetry, he highlights the exploitation of the subaltern masses and through them he conveys a message of the creation of a just social order by dismantling the existing one. Yet, his poetry cannot be called plain propaganda. It has its own merits; intensity of emotions, in particular, and the spirit of sympathy and compassion towards the disadvantaged section of society, are the hallmark of his poetry. His poems are also notable for their rich imagery and in this respect, his contribution to Urdu poetry can hardly be overstated. Azmi's first collection of poems, Jhankar was published in 1943.
In 1944, he wrote a poem Ab Agli Id Ek Azad Pakistan Main Hogi — one of the works written by leading Progressive Writers of Urdu campaigning for Pakistan — although he later became bitter about the partition.
His important works including anthologies of poetry, were Aakhir-e-Shab, Sarmaya, Awaara Sajde, Kaifiyaat, Nai Gulistan, an anthology of articles he wrote for Urdu Blitz, Meri Awaaz Suno, a selection of his film lyrics, and the script of Heer Ranjha in Devanagari.
His best known poems are Aurat, Makaan, Daaera, Sanp, and Bahuroopni.