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Litterateur in touch with the masses
A LITERARY giant whose voice carried a vibrancy that bespoke his multi-hued erudition; a lofty symbol of Indo-Soviet amity in its prime; head of a family, comprising wife Shaukat Azmi, daughter Shabana and son-in-law Javed Akhtar, that represents the finest in India's Nehruvian secular tradition, Kaifi Azmi is no more. This stalwart's contribution to Urdu literature is well chronicled.
The highlight however is the trendy tuning that Kaifi's poetry had with the masses. Even while epitomising in his vivid verse the essence of the leftist movement in India, Kaifi's facile pen commanded a public equation that saw him blend quality with popularity in an idiom that went right home.
The passing of Jawaharlal Nehru in May 1964 had Kaifi reflecting the agony of a whole nation as he teamed up with Madan Mohan to create `Meree awaaz suno pyaar ka raaz suno' (in ``Naunihal" in the sonorous voice of Mohammed Rafi).
It had willy-nilly to be Rafi with Lata Mangeshkar when the Kaifi Azmi-Madan Mohan combine broke new ground — with an entire theme in mime in the shape of Chetan Anand's ``Heer Raanjha" (1970) — ``Yeh duniya yeh mehfil" (Rafi), on the one hand, ``Do dil toote do dil hare" (Lata), on the other.
And did a father ever write about his own daughter (Shabana vis-a-vis Raj Kiran) with the feel that Kaifi brought to ghazal ace Jagjit Singh's ``Arth" soliloquising of ``Tum itna jo muskuraa rahe ho?" Take the all-time classic: Guru Dutt's "Kaagaz Ke Phool" (1959). When Sahir Ludhianvi walked out of the film following differences with master composer S. D. Burman, in stepped Kaifi, in style, to have Rafi memorably thematising: ``Dekhee zamaane kii yaaree bichchde sab hi baaree baaree."
Again, in the same ``Kaagaz Ke Phool," with telling contrast (on Waheeda Rehman) Kaifi captured the range and repertoire of Guru Dutt's singer-wife, Geeta Dutt, via those two numbers on the same N52971 78rpm record: ``Ek do teen chaar aur paanch" and ``Waqt ne kiya kya hansie sitam."
Verily was Kaifi Azmi a poem in celluloid, as exemplified by Lata's ``Kuchch dil ne kaha kuchch bhee naheen'' (on Sharmila Tagore playing Hrishikesh Mukherjee's ``Anupama").
In the same film (scored by Hemant Kumar), Kafi had that composer-singer resonating, on Dharmendra, as ``Ye dil kii suno duniya waalon." Kaifi's creations in association with Hemant Kumar are legion, prominent among them being Lata's `Jhoom jhoom dhaltee raat (``Kohraa"), then (in the same film) Hemant Kumar himself coming over stunningly on Biswajeet as ``Yeh nayan dare dare" and the more simple ``Raah banee khud manzil" and ``O beqaraar dil." True, Hemant Kumar, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Guru Dutt and Chetan Anand were all men with a certain literary awareness. How then did Kaifi relate to hoi-polloi of the film industry? Here are some of Kaifi's contributions in this everyday genre that sing for themselves: Rafi's ``Tum poochchte ho ishq bala hai kii naheen hai" (for Babul in ``Naqli Nawab"); Asha Bhosle-Rafi's ``Tu shaukh kali main mast pawan" (for Lachiram in ``Main Suhagan Hoon"); and Suraiya's ``Mast aankhon mein shararat" (for Ghulam Mohammed in ``Shama"). A man of letters, it was remarkable that Kaifi tuned himself to the taste of the common man. Kaifi reserved his best for subjects done in an intellectually conscious milieu.
Thus did we get, from his satin-smooth pen, Rafi's ``Jaane kya dhoondhtee rehtee hain yeh aankhen mujh mein" (for Khayyam in Ramesh Saigal's ``Shola Aur Shabnam"); again in the company of Khayyam, Lata's ``Bahaaron meraa jeevan bhee sanwaaron" (on Indrani Mukherjee in Chetan Anand's ``Aakhri Khat"); Rafi's ``Main yeh sochch kar uske dar se utha thha" (for Madan Mohan in Chetan Anand's ``Haqeeqat"), one of Geeta Dutt's last songs, ``Aaj kie kaali ghata mast matwaalee ghata" (for Kanu Roy in Basu Bhattacharya's ``Uski Kahani"). In minimum space he presented the essence.
The function of Kaifi's poetry, at all times, was to enrich the calibre of the tune. This he did without in anyway losing his literary stature.
GIRIJA RAJENDRAN
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