New Delhi: Regarded as one of the most exceptional talents from Indian cinema, actress Shabana Azmi continues to win audiences with her silver screen outings. For the unversed, she comes from a very artistic and culturally rich household. The daughter of noted lyricist and poet Kaifi Azmi, she has watched some of the greatest cinema legends around her. Reminiscing the older golden days, Shabana Azmi chatted with Film Companion’s Anupama Chopra on a special series titled ‘Golden Era of Hindi Cinema’ (1948-1965) presented by Google Arts and Culture.
Sharing an incident, Shabana Azmi opened up about her father Kaifi Azmi pawning her mother’s bangle during difficult financial days and how she and her brother, Sayyid Baba Azmi would know when the house guests were coming over. She said, “It was one golden Kada and the only jewellery that my mother had. She being the trooper that she was and such a huge supporter of her husband that food on the table was a very big thing. Anybody who came anytime, there was always food on the table and really good Muslim food. My brother and I would suspect that some house guests were coming because when that Kada would disappear from my mother’s hand, then we knew it’s been Pawned and we didn’t know when it was going to come back, and then Abba would write and the Kada would come back.”
Further, opening up about her home Janki Kutir, she added, “It was a way of knowing that we are going to have house guests because that was very very important for her that they should get the best food. There was something very interesting because these were all big names and they could very easily stay in 5-star hotels and big industrialists' houses, but there was something here (heart) that was being given to them. I used to find the atmosphere very fascinating. I think there’s something magical about having artists around you, so on the one hand we had the theatre people, on the other we had the people from industry and we had a lot of writers and poets, it was really the custodian of art and culture in those days.”
Shabana Azmi will be next seen in ‘Bun Tikki’. The film also stars legendary Zeenat Aman and Abhay Deol.