Shabana
Subhash K Jha (DNA; September 3, 2015)

Last week Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, on behalf of the government of Uttar Pradesh announced the annual Kaifi Azmi Award for excellence in the arts. The award carries a cash prize of ` 5 lakhs. Ecstatic about the latest honour for her father Shabana says, “Kaifi Saheb has been one of the most awarded poets of his time, with innumerable national and international honours. But to have an Award for the Arts instituted in his name by UP Government is a very big honour that has a completely different emotional connect for the family.”

Shabana recalls her father’s affinity to the soil and people of Uttar Pradesh. “My father was a man of the world but his heart belonged to UP and particularly Mijwan, the tiny village in which he was born. Abba must be smiling.”

Shabana hopes the cash prize will help deserving artistes to pursue their dreams. “I hope its recipients will be inspired to take forward Kaifi’s dreams for a gender-just equitable society where inclusiveness and a celebration of India’s composite culture are a given, where rural India is an active participant in the country’s progress.”

Incidentally, this is the second honour for the poet-thinker-reformist in a week. Earlier, this week a pillar with Kaifi Saab’s poems was constructed on the Mumbai international airport. Says Shabana, “I think that the installation by Baaraan Ijlal conceptualised by Rajeev Sethi with Kaifi’s poetry embroidered in chikankari by Mijwan women along with their own stories, that has been put up at T2 Mumbai International Airport in baggage claim area would give him even greater satisfaction!”