When the Leftist Indian People’s Theatre Association was set up, the poet was one of the earliest members. Azmi’s immediate audience, in this period, was the Urdu-reading public of Bombay, especially the residents of the inner-city areas of Madanpura and Nagpada. Many inhabitants of these enclaves, wedged between the markets and the docklands, were descended from refugees from the United Provinces, who had escaped famine, poverty and the British reprisals after the Uprising of 1857. The only link these people had to the lifeworld of their ancestors was their language. To these readers, Azmi spoke in the voice of immediacy, honing a poetic sensibility that would challenge the demons of injustice, bigotry and exploitation in a series of collections, including Jhankar, Aakhri-e-Shab, Awara Sajde and Sarmaya.

(The title of this post means ‘The Flame and the Dewdrop’, also the name of a movie for which Kaifi wrote the lyrics.)