Kaifi Aur Main

Update: Bhupinder has a great post on Kaifi Azmi on his blog. Please read it.


Kaifi Aur Main, an excellent play about the life and works of famous Urdu romantic poet and political activist Kaifi Azmi, is touring North America for quite some time. Here is the official website. (Link via email from Praba Mahajan.) Check the schedule and be there if you are even moderately interested in Ghazals, Urdu poetry or old Hindi movie songs.

I thought of adding my recommendation here because I attended the play when I was in Bangalore a few months back. The idea of the play is quite simple. The text is based on Shaukat Azmi's memoir Yaad ke Rehguzar which is about her life with her late husband. Shabana reads from the notes based on the text of the book while Javed Akhtar in his sonorous voice reads the thoughts of Kaifi Azmi, about his childhood, initiations into poetry and later politics. They both sit on two corners of the stage but the reading itself is very lively and animated with feeling. These readings are interspersed with excellent musical renditions of some of the best known of Kaifi's ghazals and lyrics.

I found the play very touching, even enlightening, specially when in these times when the word "romantic" is more or less used as a term of abuse, it is nice to come across something which restores the values of romanticism to its true, original, ethical roots.

Be there if you can! Link to Official Site.

You can also watch a song penned by Kaifi which I like (and which encapsulates my state of mind thse days too) on Youtube (has English subtitles too!)

The Wiki page is also quite good.

And also, last but not the least, Thank You Bhaya for sponsoring the tickets! :)