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Kaifi Azmi

The man and the poet

January, 6, Maurya Sheraton, New Delhi. A line of fancy cars park outside the hotel as distinguished guests move towards the venue. The room is packed to the seams and there are people standing all over to catch a glimpse of what’s happening on the podium. It is an important day for the Azmis. Penguin India is releasing the English translation of poet Kaifi Azmi’s selected poems by Pavan K Varma. The function begins on time. David Davidar, CEO of Penguin India addresses a brief speech. Next, daughter Shabana Azmi brilliantly recites the poems in Hindi followed by an equally effective recitation in English by Varma. The audience is enthralled. Finally, Kaifi Azmi takes the mic, speaks from the heart. In frail health but in great spirit, he recites in his resonate voice. There is a thunderous applause. Ex-prime minister IK Gujral officially releases the book and recounts interesting anecdotes related to the family. The evening is not over. Renowned singer Rita Ganguly, protegee of Begum Akhtar is here to pay a tribute to the poet.

Reproduced below is the author’s note and excerpts of the poems.

“Kaifi Azmi was born in 1918 in Azamgarh, UP. His nom-deplume ‘Azmi’ is derived from his place of birth. His real name is Syed Akthar Hussain Rizvi. Kaifi Sahab had his early education in Arabic and Persian in a traditional madrasa in Azamgarh. His first collection of poems entitled Jhankar was published in 1943. A second collection was published in 1947 with the title Akhir-e-shab. Awara Sajde, his third collection, was published in 1973. This last work incorporating some of the poems of the earlier publications, won him the Sahitya Akademi Award. Awara Sajde was translated into Hindi in 1980. Since then several editions have been published. The poems in this translation have been selected primarily from Awara Sajde.

There are two prominent themes in Kaifi Azmi’s poetry. One is love. The second deals with human struggle and, in particular, the plight of the poor and deprived. As a translator, I have never ceased to be amazed at the juxtaposition of both these themes in Kaifi Azmi’s poems. Very early in his life Kaifi became a member of the Progressive Writers’ movement. He is also a member of the Communist Party of India. For him, the cause of the exploited masses is not only a theoretical paradigm, but an emotional identification with the suffering of the dispossessed. It is for this reason that Kaifi is not content to be an armchair theoretician, remotely expounding the dialectical intricacies of social change. Kaifi is a spokesman of several workers’ unions. He has carried his conviction to the battleground often participating in strikes and dharnas.

Kaifi Azmi, the romantic poet, appears almost incongruent when juxtaposed to the proletarian ardour of Comrade Azmi, the spokesman of the downtrodden. But the supposed distance between these two just does not exist for Kaifi. Kaifi refuses to be stereotyped. He is unwilling to yield the space of the romantic to the cause of the revolutionary. According to him, both coexist and revel in the sheer joy of living. The remarkable thing is that, to my mind, he is able to do justice to both these personas. His poetry effortlessly subsumes both these themes. He is passionate as the poet of love, and he is passionate as the poet of revolution. He is in love with life in all its vibrancy and plenitude. And I think, the reason he is able to be both the lover and revolutionary, without compromising either, is because he genuinely believes in the raison d’etre of both.

In any case, for all his involvement with the Communist Party, Kaifi Azmi can best be described as a man of conviction who refuses to be an ideologue. He has sought the unity of the like-minded, but chafed against the straitjacketing of the mind. He is sensitive to injustice, but impatient with any hamhanded attempts at intellectual regimentation. His intensity for certain causes has never succeeded in making him unidimensional. In fact, several of Kaifi’s poems reflect his disillusionment at the failure of the radical left to live up to its own ideals. And, there is little doubt that the split within the Communist Party affected Kaifi in a far more personal way than it would have a traditional party apparatchik.

The seduction of Kaifi Azmi’s poetry lies in its passion and its simplicity. Kaifi is a lover first, a poet later. He is a human being first, a writer later. Thus, there cannot but be a directness and spontaneity in the language and idiom of his poetry. He has never sought to be a poet confined to the literary elite. It is for this reason that he is exceptionally blunt in his resolute opposition to communalism - for it is a monstrosity that affects the common man the most.
Kaifi has successfully written for films too, and who can ever forget his immensely popular lyrics in films such as Kaagaz Ke Phool. Some of his lyrics for Hindi films have also been translated in this selection. In fact, a great deal of Kaifi’s work reflects his long sojourn in Bombay, where he could see at first-hand the searing divide between the rich and poor in India’s commercial capital, witness the glitter of the film world and its often transparent artificiality, experience the occasional alienation generated by the impersonal hugeness of a metropolis, and feel a recurring nostalgia for his roots in his own village in Azamgarh.

I have greatly enjoyed translating these poems. For me, they have been both a revelation and, if I may confess, a relaxation. I enjoy translating poetry, a discovery I made first when I wrote my biography of Mirza Ghalib. Awara Sajde has travelled around the world with me. I have translated its nazms at airports, on flights, in trains, at home, on my farm, in Kasauli and elsewhere, and derived great pleasure in doing so. I have attempted to mostly translate in rhyme and metre, except when the original itself was in blank verse. This has imposed its own rigour and discipline and I have tried not to compromise in any way on the meaning and content of the poem. Only very rarely have the imperatives of rhyme and metre, prodded me into very marginally amending the literal meaning or sequence of a couplet or two. I am aware, of course, that all translations of great poetry cannot but be inadequate. If there are any shortcomings in the work, they are, without question, attributable to the translation.

The purpose of this labour would be served if Kaifi Azmi’s work is introduced to a wider readership. There is a need to break the insular barriers created by language in our country. We must preserve in our attempt to introduce the largest number of people to the great reservoir of wisdom and understanding in the writings of people like Kaifi Saheb, who, at eighty-one, has literally been witness to an entire era, and whose dreams and aspirations for a great India have both fructified and remained unfulfilled.

Ali Peter John