Book review: The mind of the poet I married

Book: Kaifi & I 
Shaukat Kaifi 
Edited and translated from Urdu by Nasreen Rehman
Zubaan
165 pages

There are two moments in Kaifi & I, Shaukat Kaifi’s memoir about life with her husband Kaifi Azmi, that remain with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

The first is when the young Shaukat is getting married to Kaifi. As she writes, “Sikandar Ali Wajid and Sardar Bhai were the witnesses and according to custom, they entered the room where I was sitting and asked me, ‘Do you consent to a nikah with Athar Hussain Rizvi, son of Fateh Hussain Rizvi? It was then that I learnt Kaifi’s real name.’”

Most Urdu Poets back then took the name of the place they came from. So Athar Hussain Rizvi became Kaifi Azmi because he came from the village Mijwan in Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh.

The second moment is years later when Shaukat Kaifi has just finished a day’s shooting for Salaam Bombay in the by lanes of Kamati Pura, Bombay’s famous red light district. In the movie, Shaukat’s role was that of a Madam in a brothel. As Shaukat writes, “After the shoot, Kaifi came to pick me up and I got into the car without bothering to remove my make-up or change my clothes. He looked at me and said very quietly, ‘You could at least have spared a thought for my reputation.’”

The book starts with a young Kaifi Azmi coming to Hyderabad for a mushaira and absolutely flooring Shaukat. Then comes the courting phase which is tense and finally ends when Shaukat’s father takes her to Bombay, so that she could see Kaifi’s way of living, and then decide. Kaifi was a card-carrying member of the undivided Communist Party of India, and lived in a commune. He did not have a regular source of income. But Shaukat was not one to be swayed, and goes ahead with the wedding.

Shaukat talks in some detail about the travails and pleasures of living in a commune as a married couple. For instance, she writes about how she did not want to cook in the living room, and how she found a way around this problem. Her account of working with the legendary Prithviraj Kapoor and Zohra Sehgal make for fascinating reading.

The book also offers us glimpses of the golden days of Urdu poetry in India. It highlights the struggles Kaifi Azmi had to go through once he started writing lyrics for films. He even came to be labeled as an unlucky writer after Guru Dutt’s magnum opus, Kagaz Ke Phool, for which he had written the songs, flopped. The rest of the book deals with their two children, Shabana Azmi and the cinematographer Baba Azmi. It ends with Kaifi going back to live in his village Mijwan.

The translation works, except when one has to read Kaifi Azmi’s wonderful Urdu poetry in English. Why can’t publishers provide the original poem in Roman script along with the English translation? Then those who understand Urdu can enjoy the original instead of the translations, which never have the same impact.

This book goes beyond the lives of Kaifi Azmi and Shaukat Kaifi, transporting you to a time that once was and never shall be.