How do you describe a book that tugs at your heart strings and brings back memories you thought had long since trickled down the memory's sieve? Or relate to a tale of romance of the kind they used to have in times more leisurely: over poetic soirees, of a man who refused to take ‘no' for an answer, and even wrote in blood, and a lady who circumvented tradition? And, pray, how do you relate to Kaifi Azmi as a handsome young man? It is a privilege of those born before Independence, and a luxury to those who came into this world sometime after the Progressive Writers' Movement had begun to peter out. And how do you react to the marriage of a girl from an upwardly mobile family of Hyderabad, one of 12 brothers and sisters, to a man who had just words, powerful and passionate, to recommend himself? Well, Kaifi and I — A Memoir makes it not just possible but also delightfully plausible.
A Social scientist
It is a book that could have been written only by a raconteur with the skills of a social scientist. Shaukat, much loved, and greatly respected, reveals the eye of a social scientist and the heart of a poet, as she talks of her early years in Hyderabad, those years when the rich and the aristocratic ruled.
She paints a vivid picture of the time when the commoners were to disappear from the sight of the royal cavalcade. Many decades after those impressionable years, some of the horrific incidents refuse to fade from her memory. For instance, she recalls, an old man who refused to work was forced to stand through the night with a stone-slab tied to his back.
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