Abba was a badmash says Shabana Azmi

On growing up in a communeLiving in a 100 sq.ft room and eight families sharing a toilet was what it was like living in a commune but the people who lived there were tuned to a different time. There were people of integrity and great creative genius. There was a celebration of Indian culture. 

On her parents “My parents never fought in front of children,” said Shabana. My father had a way with words and always ready to answer my banal questions. My parents had a remarkable relationship. “Unka rishta barabar ka tha.” Kaifi Azmi would not have been Kaifi without Shaukat Azmi. “My Abba was a badmash. He had his own way of dealing with things. My mother was to go for a stage show and her slippers were broken. He mended them and while returning when she asked the producer for the payment, did she realize that her husband had already taken the money at the railway station. 
In another instance, my mother travelled with me to Kashmir for a shoot and he took it in his stride. There was a lot of respect for each-other. They had a process of osmosis.”
 
On schooling “My mother was ahead of her time. When I got zero in all subjects, she did not get angry. She said that it was a way of protest from me and I was shifted from an Urdu medium school to Queen Mary. My parents gave ample space for us to groom and blossom.” 

On Abba’s writing As a child, said Shabana, that she thought her father did not have a job. It dawned on her about his greatness when schoolmates showed her his photos in the newspaper. He was not precious about his work and was ever ready to answer questions. “There was a time when I had a black coloured doll which I was not proud of but it was Abba who said that black is beautiful too.”

Earning was less and so Urdu poets started writing scripts and lyrics for films. Kaifi Azmi too was sought after.  For his generation, poetry was a medium of social change. His association with the Progressive Writers’ Movement and Communist Party made him follow socially conscious poetry. 

   -Asna Khundmiri