After 26 days of fasting in solidarity with the students regarding the NEET paper leak and the lapses in our education-system, 59-year-old Sonam Wangchuk has ended his hunger strike. However, the political unrest and agitations of India’s Cockroach Janta Party and many others is still in a stalemate, till the time of going to the press. That be as it may, the trying phase that went by gave us certain heroes. One of them is Shabana Azmi. Circa 1986; the National-Award winning actress was on a hunger strikeIn 1986, when I was a greenhorn, Shabana was already a feted and felicitated Hindi cinema actor. She had won several national awards for best actress including those for her work in Ankur (1974), Arth (1982), etc. She was the uncrowned queen of alternate cinema; the only real competition, she faced was from the powerhouse, Smita Patil, who came in a few years after.The first-born of the yesteryear communist-poet-literary figures, Kaifi Azmi, who was one of our pre-Independence tallest literary figures, Shabana, like her father, Kaifi saab, was a delight to speak with. She was articulate and fierce. She could hold court on any subject. However, she’s human, she had failings too.
She always thought of herself as a cut above the rest, even the media
With the media (especially impressionable minds like me in the 1980s), she was either patronising or condescending. She was a control freak after she gave an interview. She would speak in such a way; she even ‘dictated’ the punctuation marks in a sentence. While interviewing Shabana, you could almost quietly hear a bubble in your head saying—oh, she wants the comma here, and the full-stop here(smiley!)
Overbearing or otherwise, Shabana always comes forwardHowever, if you overlooked her overbearing nature, Shabana was everything a sensitive public personality should be. She always came forward for causes she believed in.Today at 75, this activist-actress, made her presence felt at New Delhi’s Jantar-Mantar, standing in solidarity with the student community, protesting against the “leaks” in the education system. And, highlighting such other lapses. As concerned citizens of India, her husband Javed Akhtar and she, even wrote to the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s office, asking them to start a dialogue with engineer, environmental-activist, ‘protestor’, Sonam Wangchuk and the striking-students, who were highlighting a cause.
Flashback to 1986I was a reporter for a fortnightly film magazine which had its office in South Mumbai. I vividly remember that my daily routine, for five days was standing in the Sanjay Gandhi slums in Colaba, in the sweltering May heat. Pasina-soaked, I stood for hours, in the basti, where Shabana was on a hunger-strike, demanding the rehabilitation of the slum-dwellers. At the end of five days, I had lost some kilos, but Shabana’s resolve filled my heart with hope. Over the years, Shabana has always made her voice matter. 13th July, 2006-she led a silent-march at Kaifi Azmi ParkSilently she marched with some film personalities like Anil Kapoor, Farhan Akhtar, Dia Mirza and a few theatre artistes like Nadira Babbar, A K Hangal and others at Kaifi Azmi Park, 10th Road, JVPD Scheme, Juhu at 6pm on 13th July when 180-200-odd lives were lost to a bomb-blast on 11/7/2006 on the Mumbai trains. “We have gathered here at the statue of Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence, to express our solidarity with those who lost their lives, for the only crime of being at that place at that time 48 hours ago. It could have been any of us,” said Shabana and her colleagues. “Every time they raise a bogey of fear, we will invoke the mantra of peace. Every time they would like terror to rule, we will vote for Love and Trust. Every time they would spread darkness of hatred, we will light a candle of Hope and Humanity,” she said in her impassioned press note, shared with me and my media colleagues.
So now you know why we need a Shabana more than a dumb brunetteIronically, it was Shabana who was always lavishing praise on her hot, good-looking colleagues. I’m not taking names because some of them are not even around to defend themselves. She joked about being envious of their alluring personalities. But, frankly, while other glamorous and beautiful actresses from Bollywood always spelt ‘heat and glamour’ and hesitated to make their voices matter in a crisis, Shabana never hesitated.Bolti toh hai, even if she has to ‘pitch’ her battles more carefullyWhen she recently spoke in Hindi to a media-channel, and we quote, “Main hamesha nahin bolti hoon. Jab paani hadd se guzar jata hai, jab mujhe koi cheez andar se jhinjhorti hai tab bolti hoon…ab meri 75 saal umar hogayi hai, main bahut kuch dekh chhuki hoon.”
Shabana has her failings tooI can vouch for the fact that Shabana has seen a lot and has made her voice count in innumerable crisis situations. And, like I said, she has her human failings. She only responds to “certain media” because she thinks their “reach is more than others” and that way she has gotten her message “further”. In other words, she has too many biases. But, if you overlook such idiosyncrasies or ego, then let me repeat, Shabana is still a better bet for a nation than many of her glamorous counterparts.Postscript…So, Shabana doesn’t answer media queries the way she once did. She’s digitally savvy and uses her social media extensively like most celebrities these days. That’s her prerogative. But, just because she doesn’t give interviews or patronises only a favourite few, one cannot fault her. After all, she is there raising her voice, when it is most needed. And, for that, I will always admire her.