BENGALURU: The love story of celebrated Urdu poet, Kaifi Azmi and his beloved Shaukat could be a story taken straight out of the movies! His first poem to his lady love was written in blood. And when he took her to see how the other half lived, the slum dwellers of Mumbai, and on their honeymoon, slept on the sidewalk on a bed of newspapers, it was a subliminal message that life with him would not be a bed of roses! Even if it would be filled with nazms and shairis.
The award winning actress and theatre personality, proud daughter of her famed parents, who kicked off the third edition of the two day Poetry Festival in the city on Saturday, told Deccan Chronicle of the first love letter her father wrote to her mother. "It was literally written in blood," Ms Azmi said as she read out the poem, Aurat, which made her mother fell in love with Kaifi, over 75 years ago.
The poem, on gender equality and female empowerment were Kaifi Azmi's credo, long before its time had come. “Uth meri jaan, mere saath hi chalna hai tujhe.." "These were the lines that made my mother say to her own father that Kaifi was the man she would marry. Without my mother, my father would not have been able to do what he did. She was the love of his life, his true companion.”
