SHABANA AZMI
HER FUTURE BEGINS NOW
Who says she’s fifty years old?

It seems like only yesterday when I met Shabana Azmi. She had just finished her graduation from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. She had

then joined the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, which was in its formative stages. She was brilliant, an opinoin her teachers were unanimous about and they honoured her with a gold medal. She was one of the leaders of a whole army of talented young men and women out to give filmmaking a new character, a new colour, a new class. She didn’t look like an actress at all. She was simple, simply not the kind of girl, I could believe could make it as an actress in Hindi films.

Today, twenty-five and more years later, she has proved herself not only as one of the greatest actresses, the pride, the rare jewel, who has brought honour to the country and places all over the world where cinema is respected and honoured. Shabana, today, is a household name in the places wherever they talk about good great world cinema. Shabana in the years that she has been around has given the actress a new dimension, an actress, all the big actesses, all the best filmmakers all the most learned critics and even the common cinegoers found difficult to describe and only knew that she forced them to know that she was not a common, every day singing, dancing, crying actress of Hindi films till then. Today, as Shabana turns fifty (she celebrated her birthday with her very close friends and perhaps spent most of her time musing over the time that has moved like a hailstorm and the name that she had made for herself as a powerful actress and the miles she has to go before she has to fulfill her personl ambition). That day she must have also thought of how different she was, how hard she has worked to be different, to be the Shabana she is today. Mother India is proud of this daughter.

Daughter of the great Urdu poet Kaifi Azmi and actress Shaukat Kaifi (the only daughter of parents like these giants had to be a Shabana Azmi nothing less, nothing more, an actress more than just a very good actress, a woman who has made both womem and men aware of the sheer power of the Indian woman-if she learns, if she knows, if she fights for her rights, her rights which are rightly hers. Shabana Azmi is a symbol of the woman out to prove that she is no longer the "daasi" (slave) of the man, the woman who will blush when she is called her man’s pairon ki daasi, or his pair ki jhooti, his mannequin, his plaything. Shabana, today, is the hope for all women both present and future, a symbol which says that the Indian woman has taken it so far and is in no mood to take it any further. I just don’t wish her on her fiftieth birthday, I salute her for all that she is doing and all that she is sure to do in the time to come. Shabana came at the right time, a time when the Indian woman was gradually surrendering to the brutal force of man. Shabana has come a very long way. The Shabana I had seen in my guru, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas’ house that morning has grown into a modern day cult figure. In a country where they look down on women since time began she had made the woman and the world arround her realise that the woman is as strong or even stronger than man when wounded, a tigress ready to face any threat, spiritual, physical, psychological, social or political. She has made man aware that he can’t and must not take the woman for granted. The question, the very root of the when, why and how the woman was taken for granted as some lower kind of human being led her to carry on a continuous and relentless fight which she says will never stop till she gets the woman her rightful place, her place with all her rights and dignity intact. And as I think of Shabana at fifty, I think for the first time when I met Shabana who was introduced to me by my guru, Abaas and I distinctly remember his words, loud and clear. He had said:"This is Shabana Azmi, daughter of Kaifi Azmi. She is a gold medalist from the FTII. She is absolutely brilliant. I have signed her as the leading lady in my new film Faasla even though some of my well meaning friends say she is no heroine material. I, on the contrary, say, watch this girl. She will be known as on of greatest names in Indian cinema in the years to come. I may be there or not, but mark my words and I give you the right to call me Abba-Ass (father donkey) if I am proved wrong". And I, a junior assistant of Abbas, working on a royal salary of rupees hundred per month was asked to carry a news item to SCREEN saying that Khwaja Ahmad Abbas had signed a new leading lady called Shabana Azmi in his new film called Faasla. I don’t know why and why I still remember why, I felt very thrilled to take that news item to Mr SS Pillai, the then editor of SCREEN who was a great admirer of Abbas who promised to flash the news about Shabana on the front page of SCREEN.

My guru’s film Faasla was one of those meaningful films which meant nothing to the masses who wanted their nachna, ganaa, maarna, pitnaa as their only source of entertainment. My guru, however, a determined man wrote hit films for Raj Kapoor and made flop films for his own banner, Naya Sansaar
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Then suddenly came a great revolution whose impact reverberated all over, not only in India but all over the world where Hindi films were known. Shyam Benegal, a nephew of the late Guru Dutt made his debut with a film called Ankur (the root) with Shabana as the leading lady. It was one big surprise which turned to a shock. People who never knew that someone would not make a true-to-life film like Ankur and an actress to come up with a tour-de-force performance like the performance of this actress who they had said had no makings of a heroine! They had never seen a film or a performance like Ankur before. The film created a major revolution in the realms in Indian cinema. The Indian audience and the Indian filmmaker woke up to a new dawn. Soon more and more young and talented filmmakers joined the movement started by Shabana and Shyam Benegal and the movement was branded as the New Wave or Parallel Cinema. The other young and good filmmakers who were waiting for a chance to experiment, to break the shackles of the kind of cinema people had got addicted to for years, went out of their way to try out new experiments in Indian cinema and Shabana with Shyam became the pioneers of an entire movement which gave Indian cinema a new direction, a new pride of place, a position I doubt it would earn for itself without the pioneering efforts of Shabana and an entire brigade, who led a movment to work out new ways of waking up a docile doped and dormant audience to the cinema that was as true to life as possible. The commercial cinemawallahs took this movement as a threat that they couldn’t compete with this new wave, this new movement and its leaders. Shabana grew stronger, bolder, much more courageous, willing to accept change, wating for a chance to complete and make all out efforts to be someone like Liv Ulmann or Jane Fonda and some of the greatest actesses in the world. She tried and succeeded in shining out in one brilliant performance after another in films like Nishaant, Arth, Mandi (the way she played the madam of the brothel no other actress has played till now, that is my challenge) Shatranj Ke Khiladi, Khandhar, Paar, Sparsh, Masoom, Do Pal, Mirch Masaala, Muhafiz made in English with the title In Custody, Mrityudand and some other films which brought honour to Indian cinema, mainly because of her stirring up the most powerful human emotions on screen, almost killing Shabana Azmi the actress to bring the role that she was challenged to play alive, become the character created for her. It they were not created the way she wanted, she created them herself, put her life into every possible human expression, every step, every moment, every breath.
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Challenges, facing more and more challenges have been the hallmarks of Shabana’s career. A time came when she decided to try her talent at what is generally called the Masalaa cinema or the commercial Hindi cinema. And once she tried there was no looking back. The actress who could play the suffering victim in Ankur could also do exciting films like Amar Akbar Anthony, Parvarish, Thodisi Bewafayee and several other films in the hundred odd films that she has done during the last twenty-five years. She also did several films for filmmakers from the South who made Hindi films. She was very good in all those typical social melodramas, which she did with the same zeal and excitement with which she did her roles in the movement she was gradually moving away from. She was soon accepted as one of India’s greatest actress and there were no two opinion in all quarters. Shabana realised the difference in acting during the entire movement she gave her life to and the masaala films she had now joined and become a part of. Just imagine for a film like Paar both she and Naseer had to take a pack of pigs from one corner of a dirty lake to another to make a living. And Shabana and Naseer were both Muslims for whom anything to do with pigs was considered a mortal sin and they were paid just a few thousand rupees whereas the roles considered stupid and looked down upon paid them lakhs and made them stars with just some songs and dances and all the high melodrama in commercial cinema. They were tempted, they fell, their falling led to the downfall of the great revolution, the New Movement also know as Parallel Cinema.
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Shabana continued playing all kinds of roles that made as much as sense as possible. It was difficult but she tried and succeeded. But soon a time came when more and more of all the leaders and the movement broke away from it. They said the movement got them awards which they had no place for in their homes, trips to various film festivals around the world and nothing else. The day Naseer sang Oye Oye in Tridev and signed films like Malamaal and Jeene Nahi Doonga was a desperate call for trouble, serious trouble, almost the end for the movement. Soon others followed Naseer and an actress of the calibre of Shabana was offered the mother’s role, roles to play the mother of men as old as her in real life. She was not game, her conscience didn’t allow it. The last film she did was Amba in which she played Anil Kapoor’s mother. She called it full stop in Hindi films very soon.
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Shabana was not the kind of actress who would give up easily. She refused to play Maas and Ammas in Hindi films. She was not willing to accept the stupid truth that the fullfledged career for an actress ended at thirty and then it was just Maa Maa and more Maa.
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Life gradually changed. Shabana married Javed Akhtar, the writer-poet-lyricist. She proved to be a source of inspiration for Javed. He turned out to be the most successful lyricist in Hindi films. He was also a leading literary force in literary circles who was in great demand both in India and abroad. The way he recited his poems both in the country and abroad made many say openly that Shababa had worked some kind of a miracle on him. He soon came up with his book Takshak which was a grand collection of modern poems written by a sensitive soul who knew life inside/outside. Soon a book was written on him and his work by a writer, Mrs. Nasreen Muneer Kabeer. He is also on the verge of writing and directing a film of his own. His son, Farhan, from his first wife, Honey, has nearly completed his first film, Dil Chahata Hai. All this happened to a man who was wiped out by his critics and rivals just before he married Shabana. What do you have to say about it happening in your life, Janab Javed Akhtar?
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Shabana also realised that there was much more to life than films. She rememberd theatre. Her parents were the founders of modern Indian theatre. They used theatre to fight the freedom movement. Shabana knew she couldn’t do what her parents had done but she could try. She had done theatre in college and a play for Indian Peoples Theatre Association. Feroz Khan the well-known, dashing, young theatre director offered Shabana a role in his play Tumhari Amrita, a play in which just two characters, Shabana and Farouque Shaikh sit at a table for two hours and read out letters, about their relationship and the many things that happen around them during their time in history. Tumhari Amrita broke records not only in every major city in the country but also in major cities in America and Europe. Shabana is still open to meaningful, challenging, controversial, courageous plays, useful to contemporary times.
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She hasn’t stopped. The Shabanas of the world who are rarely born rarely stop. She knew she was not geting the kind of roles she wanted in India. She was ambicious, she knew how to manage, how to manipulate according to her critics. And she looked towards Hollywood with guts and within no time she was playing major roles in films like Madam Souzaftska, City Of Joy and Immaculate Conception. She also did the controversial Deepa Mehta’s Fire. She proved that life could begin for an actress of her talent at forty or even fifty. She proved that if men over seventy could run around trees with girls who were as old as their grand daughters, women could do better and more challenging roles than just running round the trees.
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And Shabana is not just satisfied being the fantastic actoress she is. She wants to make the best out of this one life. She is a full time social crusader, a social activist. She is the woman behind Nivara Hakk Samiti, a group which fights for the cause of the slum-dwellers, the poor and down-trodden. She is considered a headache by the politicians, the civic authorities and the police. Her fast untodeath for the rights of the slum-dwellers will go down in the history of social workers. She didn’t do it for publicity as her critics pointed out but out of sheer conviction which came from her parents who were born fighters against all kinds of opression. She is now the UN Ambassadress of population. She has several ideas to prevent the growth of population but she wants people in authority and the common people to listen to her solutions. She still sees no signs of anyone taking interest in a problem which can destroy this world, especially this country, India, which has crossed the population of one billion. She sees hope in her being nominated as a member of the Rajya Sabha and she is one woman who knows how to raise her voice to reach. She has a lot of good work to be done both as an actress and leader of suffering human beings. I would love to see the world be ruled by a group of females from the same Fire Shabana has. I don’t know how far Shabana will go as an actress but I am sure for Shabana fifty is just the right time to start a new movement, a new struggle, a struggle to succeed against all odds and help in building an India the world will be proud of. All mother India needs is more daughters like Shabana Azmi. May fifty turn to many many more, Shabana, because this country which is also fifty, needs many more selfless, self-sacrificing, sincere, sensitive souls like Shabana, a woman of substance, the kind of woman Bharat needs if Bharat has to be the real Maha Bharat it wants to be.

Lal salaam Shabana, lal salaam. Tum jeeyo hazaro saal aur lakho ke jeevan mein lao ek nai roshni, ek naya tej, andhera chaane se pahele, barbadee failnese pahale. Tum kar sakti ho, tum hazaro Shabanao ko nai rah deekha sakti ho, nai dunia bana sakti ho. To chalo, chale, Shabana suraj ki ore, bankar tum ek nai roshni, ek naya toofan aur deeya. Tum bhavishya ko, tum roshan kar sakti ho. Tum buraai ko jala sakti ho. Tum woh shakti ho jiska kal ko intezaar hai.

Ali Peter John.

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