Celebrating Kaifi Azmi

Renu Sud Sinha

FIVE different aesthetic sensibilities, as many different professions — a professor, an engineer, a cinematographer, a veteran poet-film-maker and a contemporary poet-translator — the only binding thread is their shared love for Urdu poetry. As part of Kaifi Azmi’s birth centenary celebrations, diverse personalities have come together to translate 50 of Kaifi’s poems in Kaifi Azmi: Poems | Nazms: New and Selected Translations, edited by Sudeep Sen. 

For poetry lovers not conversant with Urdu, this is a bonanza year to appreciate the poetry of one of the leading poets of the progressive writers’ movement, a movement shaped and influenced by the birth of a nation and its evolution and struggles. This is the third book of translations published this year, the other two being Kaifiyat: Verses on Love and Women, translated by Rakhshanda Jalil and Past on My Shoulders, translated by Husain Ali Mir. Mir is also one of the five co-translators for this volume. Kaifi’s poetry has never been translated into English so vigorously before. There have been just two translated works till now — the first by Pritish Nandy in 1975 and second by Pavan Varma in 2001.

This is a bilingual edition, so Hindi readers would also be able to savour Kaifi’s verses once again after nearly a gap of 10 years.

Editor Sudeep Sen, who is also one of the five translators, has done well with his selection. From Kaifi’s first-ever, Itna toh zindigi mein kisi ki khalal pade, written when he just 11, to many verses written at the fag end of his life, the selection spans his entire poetic journey. 

His website describes Kaifi as a rebel with a cause.  He was much more than that — a poet, a lover, a social activist whose poetry reflected his intense desire to bring about social change. The words flowed from his Mont Blanc with an unbridled passion. But he was not simply content to be a chronicler. The man lived his words; his work for Mijwan (his birthplace) Welfare Society is ample proof of that.  

Each translator connects with Kaifi and his poetry differently, as their short notes on Kaifi reflect. This reflects in their translations as well. 

Husain Ali Mir is a part-time lyricist and script writer (Iqbal, Dor and Dhanak) and a full-time professor of Management at William Paterson University, US. Ali feels it is important to maintain the flow and rhythm, as the translation should also look like a poem without diluting the spirit of the original. His translations in this volume include some of Kaifi’s famous poems such as Aadat, Tajmahal, Doosra Banwas, etc. Ironically, these verses not only reflect Kaifi’s progressive politics, but contemporary state of affairs as well that has not changed much over the years.  

Baidar Bakht is a veteran translator, having translated many well-known Urdu poets such as Kaifi Azmi, Sardar Jafri, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Sharyar and others into English. A bridge engineer by profession, he brings his propensity for technical precision to his translations as well. Awara Sajde, Vasiyat, Garbhvati are among a few of the poems Bakhat has translated.

‘An accidental translator’ is how filmmaker Sumantra Ghosal describes himself. Ghosal’s Kaifinama, a biographical documentary on Kaifi, was screened earlier in April as part of the centenary celebrations. It was his need to understand the man that led him to translate his works, says Ghosal in his note. He is, by far, the luckiest of ‘accidents’. The freshness and lyrical quality of his translated verses is, at times, even better than other seasoned translators. Woman, Gift, You, Duty — many of his translations read as complete poems in themselves. 

Pritish Nandy is the first man who translated Kaifi into English some 40 years back. He was inspired and impressed not just by Kaifi’s poetry but his ‘diction, the simplicity and sensitivity of a language shorn of all traditional trappings of its literary heritage and fashioned to meet a new contemporary consciousness’. This is what drives his translations.

Not just as the editor but as a translator as well, Sen has done well. His fascination for Urdu and Hindi poetry started when he first heard Kaifi’s Aurat as a child. That was the beginning of life-long romance that has peaked in this volume. As he is a poet himself, he has tried to make his translations as complete poems. However, the ‘fine-tuned rhythmic structure of Urdu/Hindi is difficult to match in English, despite its enormous vocabulary’, he admits in his note. 

For fans of Kaifi, this book is a collector’s item with a rare photo album of Kaifi and a near-total bibliography of his books. Most poems are supplemented by footnotes. For the uninitiated, this provides context to various events on which many verses are based. There are minor hiccups like a missing line in Devanagri but present in English (One Moment); meanings of Urdu words in Hindi would have added more value to this otherwise complete package. However, what’s more heartening is the abundant availability of the translated works of one of the most significant poets of our times whose verses have chronicled the social change after Independence.  And perhaps a wide readership may also throw up some new inheritors who may carry forward the dream of revolution that he took to his grave. 

“Koi to sood chukaaye, koi to zimma le,
us inquilaab ka, jo aaj tak udhaar sa hai
(Let someone pay off all the debts,
let someone assume the reins of that imminent revolt
we are still anxiously waiting for)