Shaukat Kaifi

Shaukat Kaifi (also credited as Shaukat Azmi) is an Indian theater and film actress. Her husband was the Urdu poet and film lyricist, Kaifi Azmi. She and her husband were leading lights of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) and the Progressive Writers Association (IWA), which were the cultural platforms of the Communist Party of India.

Biography

Shaukhat Kaifi was born into a Muslim family of Hyderabad State. She grew up in Hyderabad, India. At a young age, she was married to the Urdu poet Kaifi Azmi. They had two children together, a boy and a girl. Their son, Baba Azmi, is a noted cameraman and cinematographer. He is married to Tanvi Azmi, a Hindu by birth and the daughter of Usha Kiran, a famous actress of yesteryears. Shaukat and Kaifi's daughter, Shabana Azmi (b. 1950), is an actress of Indian cinema. She is the second wife of noted poet and film lyricist Javed Akhtar.

Shaukat and Kaifi, who settled in Mumbai innediately after their wedding, endured many ups and downs in life together. Kaifi was a committed member of the communist party, so much so that, upon his request, his party membership card was buried with him when he died. He worked all his life for the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) and the Progressive Writers Association (PWA), and for many years after their wedding, his income was nothing more than the meagre stipend that the Party gave him. For many years, the couple lived with their two children in accommodation provided by the Communist Party of India, which was nothing more than one bedroom in an apartment shared with three other families. Since all the other families were also communists and involved with theatre or cinema, Shaukat was also bitten by the bug of theatre. Money was another incentive for her to act, and money was indeed a great problem for the couple after their two children began going to school. Finally, in the mid-1950s, Kaifi began looking for work in the Mumbai film industry as a writer and songster. He met with success as a songwriter and the family fortunes took an upward turn. Within a few years, they were able to purchase an apartment in the tony Mumbai neighbourbood of Juhu. Her husband's association with the film industry meant that Shaukat took on bit roles in films also.

Thus, Shaukat's career, such as it was, was only an adjunct to her husband's career. Although she appeared in about a dozen films, she had a significant role in only two films (Garam Hawa and Umrao Jaan). In theatre also, she appeared in no more than a dozen plays. Kaifi died in 2002. Shaukat wrote an autobiography, Kaifi and I which has also been adapted to a play Kaifi aur Main. It premiered in Mumbai in 2006 on the 4th death anniversary of Kaifi Azmi.

Filmography

References

External links

• Shaukat Kaifi on IMDb