Date: Wednesday, September 9, 1998 by Yogesh Pawar You mention `socialism’ and his gnarled face lights up. “It can never die,” says the octogenarian poet, Kaifi Azmi, on whom the Maharashtra government has decided to confer the Dnyaneshwar award, this year.…
It is a qawwali that was originally written by Kaifi Sahab’s dear friend Comrade Munish Narayan Saxena on Shaukat and Kaifi’s 25th wedding anniversary. On their 50th anniversary Javed Akhtar kept the Mukhda and wrote a satirical qawwali that was sung by…
Great authors have immense compassion in their hearts, sometimes far more than what they share or reveal through their writings. Even in severe adversity, they never turn bitter, instead exhibit a profound capacity to understand ‘conflicts’ which help lay bare…
The passing away of Kaifi Azmi represents the slow disappearance of a liberal humanism that was able to achieve a straightforward, passionate, unassailable manifestation in poetry. How would I, an English language poet and one separated from Kaifi Azmi by…
I look out of the window from Abba’s room. The first showers of the monsoon have freshly bathed the trees. The sky is blue, the grass green, the gulmohar resplendent in full bloom. I turn back to look inside the…
His parents wanted him to be a maulvi, but Kaifi Azmi chose protest and hope over God Naresh Nadeem on Kaifi Azmi Kaifi Azmi, one of the last pillars of the progressive tradition in Urdu, died on May 10. Kaifi’s…
Kaifi Azmi was born in 1918 in Azamgarh, UP. His nom-de-plum ‘Azmi’ is derived from his place of birth. His real name is Syed Athar Hussain Rizvi. Kaifi Saheb had his early education in Arabic and Persian in trditional madrasa…
