‘Kaifinama sums up a time when chasing dreams was more important than chasing money’

MUMBAI: The plan of a documentary on poet and lyricist Kaifi Azmi failed to fructify in time to mark his birth centenary year – 2019. Subsequently, the pandemic further stalled the project, which could be revived only a year ago.

‘Kaifinama’, the 90-minute documentary, by adman and documentary filmmaker Sumantra Ghoshal, takes a holistic view of the life of the progressive-writer and philanthropist. His daughter actress Shabana Azmi, who has produced the film, felt the need for such a project, to fill the void of a deep documentation on the life and times of her late father. “We should have recorded much more of our parents’ lives; shame on us,” says Azmi. Kaifi Azmi passed away aged 83, on May 10, 2002.

Ghoshal feels he was a surprise choice for the project. “Shabana in a move of extreme folly chose me to make this film on Kaifi saab. I had learnt Urdu poetry years ago, but I’m not conversant with it nor was I conversant with mainstream Hindi cinema for which Kaifi saab wrote lyrics,” says Ghoshal.

The film allowed him into the world of Urdu Poetry, to understand the world of Kaifi Azmi – a space of progressive writers and the leftist communist movement of India, “which has since dissipated because that kind of idealism no longer exists”.

“It was a commune, where Shabana herself grew up,” he adds.

As he started researching for the film, Ghoshal realised the daunting task ahead as there was little documentation to work with. “Whenever I asked Shabana anything to do with Kaifi saab, she kind of shrugged her shoulders and said, she did not really remember the things I asked. That was a bit of a stumbling block,” he remembers.

However, as luck would have it, Ghoshal had himself done two very long interviews with Kaifi saab and his feisty wife, Shaukat Azmi 20 years ago for another project on progressive writers that had not taken off. That was ready fodder to work with.

“We producers are careful with the way we store our material and these interviews were in pristine condition. I just had to find those and digitise them. Without that material, this film would not have happened. It had Kaifi saab and Shaukat appa talking about their life, their ideologies and acquaintances. Those were wonderful times. The struggle to be equitable seemed so important. Back then, it was not about chasing money, it was about chasing dreams,” he says.

What also emerged from that resource was the relationship of Kaifi and Shaukat, who was “completely supportive of her husband while having a sense of humour about it, and yet being her own person”. The filmmaker says she took the film up a few notches with her ability to speak and be strong in front of the camera.

‘Kaifinama’ then is a capsule of his poetry, political leanings to his family and work in his village, Mijwan, UP. “I would not have made it if I did not have the full picture. But I had decided to concentrate on the poet, so the spine of ‘Kaifinama’ is his poetry.’’

“The wonderful part of the film is that it has no talking heads. Instead, Sumantra got (screenplay writers) Shama Zaidi and Javed Siddiqui, (lyricist) Javed Akhtar and me in the drawing room of Kaifi saab’s home in Janki Kutir and had us in conversation on everything we knew and experienced of his life. He has captured the tenor of the conversation in an extremely comprehensive way,” says Azmi, adding there are aspects of his life that Azmi and Akhtar had covered in their play ‘Kaifi and I.’ “But Sumantra’s film has much more.’’

She remembers a time when everyone was sitting in their drawing rooms and discussing Ayodhya, Kaifi saab, at the time with incapacitated left arm and left leg undertook the symbolic march to Ayodhya with Shaukat.

“Of course, when he got tired, the volunteers put him in a jeep,” she says. “The work he did for Mijwan is still going on. He was so driven. He told me something that became my mantra – he said, transformation is a long process. You must remember that the change you attempt to bring to society may never happen in your lifetime. But you should continue doing the work.’’

“It is impossible to encompass abba’s entire being in a film of any duration. But what Sumantra has done in ‘Kaifinama’ is incredible,” she says.

RAJU SHINDE/ HT In the absence of documentation, filmmaker Sumantra Ghoshal got started on ‘Kaifinama’ dipping into interviews of the late poet and his wife Shaukat Azmi he had done 20 years ago.

FILE PHOTO It’s a shame that we didn’t have enough records on our parents, says Shabana Azmi.