ISBN: 9789351770237    Publisher: Harper Collins India; new edition Year of publishing: 2015     Language: English

Javed Akhtar's poetry speaks of the urban milieu that envelops him. Helplessness, hunger and homelessness, crowds and solitude, filth and crime, fame and obscurity, rock-strewn footpaths and glass-studded skyscrapers: this cosmopolitan world he inhabits seeps into the tone and tenor of his writing. Akhtar's sharply observed poems stretch across time and space, articulate the extremities of hot and cold seasons, of walking barefoot on live-hot embers and the tenderness of kissing flowers drenched in dew. These are bittersweet verses from a man who has felt firsthand the sharpness of sensation. The themes he speaks of are universal, yet the timbre of Akhtar's poetry is unique; it is not the echo of other voices.
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Apart from being a successful scriptwriter in the Hindi film industry, lyricist and poet, Javed Akhtar belongs to a family without whose mention the history of Urdu literature cannot be considered complete.Javed is the son of the famous progressive poet Jan Nisar Akhtar and the writer Safiya Akhtar of Zer-e-Lab fame, and the nephew of the legendary poet Majaz. One of the most respected names of his time, the poet Muztar Khairabadi was Javed’s grandfather. Muztar’s father, Syed Ahmad Husain Ruswa, was a stellar poet, too. Muztar’s mother, Syeda Hirmaan, was among the handful of women poets of the nineteenth century who figure in the history of Urdu literature. Hirmaan’s father, Allama Fazl-e Haq Khairabadi, was not merely one of the most well-regarded scholars of his age but also a philosopher, a leader and a poet who wrote in Arabic. He was a close friend of Ghalib’s, and the Diwan-e-Ghalib, that the world considers so precious, was edited by him. He was sent to prison in the Andamans for his role in the First War of Independence in 1857, which is where he died and his grave still lies. Javed Akhtar has received literature, culture and learning as a legacy from all these ancestors. And through his own poetry, Akhtar continues to increase the wealth he has inherited.
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