Shabana Azmi’s Musings on Father, Kaifi Azmi

Actor Shabana Azmi reminisces about her father, Kaifi Azmi, who was a prominent writer, poet and lyricist of the Progressive Writers’ Movement:

When I was a child, it seemed to me that my father did no work. He never went to office, was always dressed in kurta pyjamas, he never did any of the things the other girls’ daddies used to do. So till I was about nine years old, I used to lie to my friends, telling them my father did some kind of business, acting very vague about what exactly he did. How could I tell them that he was a poet, when at that point, ​‘poet’ was, for me, a euphemism for someone who did no work? Then he started writing lyrics for films and his photograph started appearing in the papers. All my friends excitedly came and gushed, ​“Hey, your father’s a film lyricist. His photograph has appeared in the newspaper.” And I retorted, ​“Yes, didn’t you know he’s a poet and a lyricist?” And turned to my advantage what till then, I’d considered a disadvantage.