Jalil is a Delhi-based author, translator and literary historian
Shaukat Azmi epitomised the finest qualities of progressive writers and artists
Shaukat’s first role was in Ismat Chughtai’s Dhani Bankein, a play on the Hindu-Muslim riots that were tearing the fabric of a newly-independent India. Soon, she got drawn into the country’s most vigorous cultural movement that had the likes of Zohra Sehgal, Uzra Butt, Bhisham Sahni and Prithviraj Kapoor among its stalwarts.
The All-Indian Urdu Progressive Writers Conference, held in Hyderabad in February 1947, was the highpoint of this powerful literary grouping that had, by now, seized the imagination of creative writers all across the Subcontinent. We get a delightful account of this gathering from Shaukat Azmi, a Hyderabad lass, who met her future husband, Kaifi Azmi, during the conference and was swept up in a life very different from the one she had known. Struck by the lack of affectation in the group of young writers from Bombay, she was to write in her engrossing memoir, Yaad ki Rahguzar (translated into English as Kaifi & I: “The young progressive writers were a refreshing change; they wore their fame so lightly that I was overwhelmed.” No progressives’ conference was ever complete without a mushaira; this one had a virtual galaxy of greats. Shaukat heard Kaifi recite his rousing poem, Taj, a powerful attack on monarchy and injustice (which required some fearlessness in the city of nizams) and was moved beyond words. Throwing caution to the winds, she travelled to Bombay with her father, saw Kaifi’s room in the commune in Andheri, met his friends, and decided to plunge headlong in this life of poetry, politics and progressivism.
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