The words of Jigar Muradabadi can perhaps best summarise the loss of Kaifi: "Jaan ke min jumlaye khasane maikhana mujhe / Muddaton roya karenge jaam-o-paimana mujhe".
Kaifi Azmi was one of the greatest stars in a galaxy that included the likes of Krishna Chandar, Rajendar Singh Bedi, Mahendra Nath 'Ashk', Sahir, Asmat Chugtai, Majaz, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Sulaiman Areeb, Ali Sardar Jafri, Josh, Faiz and Firaq, all members of the 'progressive writers movement' of 1936. Kaifi was many things and wore many caps: a rebel, a romantic yet a realist, a secularist, socialist and humanist, he was a satirist, a poet and a lyricist among other things. He, Syed Athar Hussain Rizvi, rose from the nondescript village of Mijwan in the Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh to become Kaifi Azmi, one of the best-loved Urdu poets and Bombay songwriters ever.
The rebel in Kaifi, who died in Bombay on 10 May 2002, found early expression. Attending his first mushaira at Bahraich at the age of 11, he recited, "Qismat hamari gaisu-e-jana se kam nahin / jitna sawaarte gaye utne hi bal pade / Itna to zindagi mein kisi ki khalal pade / Hasne se ho sukoon na rone se kal pade". (My fortune is as are the locks of my beloved / the more I seek to untangle them, the more entangled they become / there can be no life so distressed with interference / that neither can I gain peace by laughter, nor hasten tomorrow with tears).
He was admitted to Sultan-ul-Madaris, Lucknow, a centre for theological learning but he left it very soon with the awareness that religious education was not for him. Instead, guided by his temperament and worldview, Kaifi embraced Marxism at the age of 19 and started writing for Quami Jung, the Communist Party paper. The fire of revolution made him drop his studies to join the 'Quit India movement' of 1942, and by the time India got independence, Kaifi had evolved into more of an activist than a journalist.