Veteran actress Shaukat Kaifi and daughter Shabana Azmi on love, life, and the challenges of translating Yaad Ki Reheguzar into Kaifi & I

It could well be a movie. It's the 1940s. Rich girl, already betrothed, meets a young communist and falls madly in love. Girl's father sneaks her into Mumbai so she can make up her mind. Finally, she does marry the man of her dreams. Yaad ki Reheguzar by veteran theatre and film actress Shaukat Kaifi, was published in 2006 and the English version, Kaifi & I, translated by Nasreen Rahman, launched this week.

At their sunlit Juhu home, Shaukat Kaifi, daughter Shabana Azmi and Nasreen Rahman talk in turns, sometimes overlapping each other as Kaifi Azmi seems to come alive in the conversation.u00a0u00a0

A translation was in the works even before Yaad ki Reheguzar was published. Nasreen Rahman who heard an extract in the year 2000 was so taken in, she told Shaukat that she'd want to do it.

"I never thought Yaad ki Reheguzar would be such a success, but I've heard people say that they can read it at one go, it's so interesting," says Shaukat with a proud smile. She credits the success to her simple writing.
Shabana feels it worked and will work because of its backgroundu00a0 India before Independence and after, the age of rebellion and in the midst of all that, a love story. "It's a distinct female voice, one that is at once conformist and non-conformist," she says.