MAGICIAN OF WORDS

Veteran Script Writer, lyricist and poet Javed Aktar's enchanting poetry suffused the air and left a crowded lawn spellbound during his and Shabana Azmi's conversation with Rakhshanda Jalil at the 16th edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) at the iconic Clarks Amer on Friday. The session began with an introduction to the respective books of Azmi and Akhtar and how the idea of the book came to be and the way it progressed further. They discussed the differences and similarities between both the poets, Jan Nisar Akhtar and Kaifi Azmi and their respective perspectives on love and romance. The star couple also highlighted their sweet and sour but lovely relationship and how they managed to maintain their individual identities, irrespective of their interests and passion for poetries. They also reminisced about how they worked together to bring out the book on the writings of their respective fathers-in-law. Dhanak is a collection of poems by poet and lyricist Jan Nisar Akhtar (Javed Akhtar’s father), which has been selected by Shabana Azmi and translated from Urdu by Sumantra Ghoshal. ‘Daaera’, is a collection of poems by Kaifi Azmi (Shabana Azmi’s father), selected by Javed Akhtar and translated from Urdu by Mir Ali Hussain. They are multi-lingual anthologies that showcase twenty-five nazms of each of the iconic poets. While expressing her views on translating poetries, Shaban said, "Translating poetries from one language to other is like pouring perfume from one bottle to another, spilling some in the process." During the engaging session, Shabana recalled one cute incident and said "I remember that one day we were walking through the street and I said that I like this flower and to my surprise, Javed Sahab bought the entire flower shop for me. After a few days, we had a fight and Javed Sahab wrote a Nazm for me and made me fall in love with him." On a satirical note, her husband quipped "I guess, buying flowers wholesale is much cheaper than buying a single one." Famous lyricist Gulzar, pop singer Usha Uthup and Sudha Murthy were also present along with other poetry lovers.
 

• The session was followed by a press conference of Aktar's biography titled, 'Talking Life' featured him and the author Nasreen Munni Kabir in conversation with Managing Director, Teamwork Arts and Festival Producer Sanjoy K Roy, where the veteran screenwriter said, "It’s not a biography but a conversational biography which offers glimpses and stories which I came across." During the conference, he shared many instances of his life, including his creative process and his journey and his experience with meeting various actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Salim Javed and Rajesh Khanna and said, "It took me 25 years to be an overnight star" which says Success isn't overnight. It's when every day you get a little better than the day before. It all adds up. At another conference, India’s leading pop icon Usha Uthup in conversation with the translator of her biography, Srishti Jha, shared insights about her journey of how she became one of India’s leading pop icons and said, “...actually I was thrown out of class, my music teacher Ms Davidson said that she couldn't fit me in anywhere in the choir but they all knew I had little music in me…so I said okay and I stood on the side but then I realised very early in my life that it was not music that was my business but communication and how better could I communicate with everybody while I am on the stage.”