Kaifi Azmi
| Kaifi Azmi | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Sayyid Akhtar Hussein Rizvi 14 January 1919 Azamgarh district, United Provinces, British India (now in Uttar Pradesh, India) |
| Died | 10 May 2002 (aged 83) |
| Occupation | poet, lyricist, songwriter |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Children |
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| Website | Kaifi Azmi Website |
Sayyid Akhtar Hussein Rizvi, known as Kaifi Azmi (Hindustani: कैफ़ी आज़मी, کیفی اعظمی; 14 January 1919 – 10 May 2002) was an Indian Urdu poet. He will always be remembered who brought Urdu literature to Indian motion pictures. Together with Pirzada Qasim, Jon Elia and others he participated in the most memorable mushairas of the twentieth century.
Azmi was born into a shia Muslim family in the village of Mizwaa(n) in Azamgarh district, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Azmi was married to Shaukhat Azmi. They have a daughter, Shabana Azmi (An Indian Actress of film, television and theatre) and a son, Baba Azmi (Indian Cinematographer).
At age eleven, Azmi wrote his first ghazal Itna To Zindagi Mein Kisi Ki Khalal Pade and somehow managed to get himself invited to a mushaira and over there, he recited a ghazal, rather a couplet of the ghazal which was very much appreciated by the president of the mushaira, Mani Jaisi, but most of the people, including his father, thought he recited his elder brother's ghazal. When his elder brother denied it, his father and his clerk decided to test his poetic talent. They gave him one of the lines of a couplet and asked him to write a ghazal in the same meter and rhyme. Azmi accepted the challenge and completed a ghazal. This particular ghazal was to become a rage in undivided India and it was immortalised as it was sung by legendary ghazal singer, Begum Akhtar. Azmi abandoned his studies of Persian and Urdu during the Quit India agitations in 1942 and shortly thereafter became a full-time Marxist when he accepted membership of the Communist Party of India in 1943. During this period, the leading progressive writers of Lucknow noticed him. They were very impressed by his leadership qualities. They also saw in him a budding poet and extended all possible encouragement towards him. Consequently, Azmi started to win great acclaim as a poet and became a member of Progressive Writers' Movement of India. At the age of twenty-four, he started activities in the textile mill areas of Kanpur. As a full-time worker, he left his life of comfort, though he was the son of a zamindar. He was asked to shift his base to Bombay, work amongst the workers and start party work with a lot of zeal and enthusiasm and at the same time would attend mushairas in different parts of India. In Bombay, he joined Ali Sardar Jafri in writing for the party's paper, Qaumi Jung. In 1947, he visited Hyderabad to participate in a mushaira. There he met, fell in love with and married a woman named Shaukat Azmi. She later became a renowned actress in theatre and films. They had two children together, Shabana Azmi (b. 1950), a renowned actress of Indian cinema and Baba Azmi, a noted cameraman.
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