A poet of romance and revolution

Renu Sud Sinha 

Kaifi Azmi was born a century ago. He was also born much ahead of his time. Ironically, time has still not caught up with his ideas and ideals even a hundred years later. That the man born in a feudal family, educated in a madrassa, dreamt of socialism, was a card-holding communist, defies all logic.

But then he was a ‘combination of contraries’. The could-have-been maulvi was a staunch believer in secularism, lived in a communist commune, fought morchas alongside landless labourers and wrote what he lived — the poetry of and for a revolution.  

But the rebel also had the heart of a romantic. After all, rebellion and romance are two sides of the same coin — the intensity of the emotion and the depth of passion are similar.

Kaifiyat: Verses on Love and Women, translated and compiled by Rakhshanda Jalil, brings together a selection of Kaifi’s poems on women and romance. It comprises 26 of his non-film nazms, including some of his iconic poems like Aurat, Behroopini and Garbhwati, and 15 of Kaifi’s hauntingly beautiful songs that have transcended time in their appeal and popularity.

“Love and romance run like warp through woof of politics and protest in Kaifi’s poetry,” writes Jalil in the introduction. So the pain and pangs of love — Pashemani ( Main yeh soch kar uske darr se utha tha) and Andeshe (Ruh bechain hai ..) co-exist with a powerful anthem-like Aurat (Utth meri jaan! Mere saath hi chalna hai tujhe) or the haunting portrayal of a widow in Bewaa ki Khudkushi.

In Pehla Salaam, Shaukat ke Naam, Ek Lamha, one can glimpse the love he had for his companion of 55 years.

Kaifi wrote songs for around 80 films. In an oeuvre consisting some 240 songs, hardly a prolific number, its surreal quality made up for the quantity he never aspired for. A journey that started with the aim to earn a few extra bucks by a struggling communist bard resulted in many beautiful lyrics. Some notable films for which Kaifi penned songs are: Saat Hindustaani, Haqeeqat, Kaagaz ke Phool, Hanste Zakham and Arth.

The section on film lyrics has some memorable, hummable numbers like “Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam”, “Yeh nayan darre darre”, “Aaj socha to aansu bhar aaye”, “Koi yeh kaise bataye ke woh tanha kyun hai”.

Jalil is an experienced and a prolific translator who has done adequate justice to Kaifi’s poetry, as is possible while moving from one language to another. Amply aware of this limitation, she aptly compares a translated work to “looking at the ‘wrong’ side of an exquisitely crafted carpet, where the colour, sheen and the pattern are muted, having none of the brightness of the ‘right’ side.” 

Urdu, as Kaifi’s poetry, is a lilting, lyrical language which has an inherent ability to enhance the effect of any emotion that it conveys. English, on the other hand, with a vast vocabulary, should have enough words to express all kinds of sentiments but, ironically, is not able to. The tepid ‘love’ has not the depth or intensity of a smouldering ‘ishq’.

Kaifiyat is not a book for purists, but then translations always are the bridges that help the uninitiated explore an uncharted terrain.