The Hindu : New Delhi News : Safdar Hashmi remembered

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 02, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Safdar Hashmi remembered

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, JAN. 1. The bleak beginning to the New Year might have caught most people in a lazy mood, but for a bunch of friends and followers of Safdar Hashmi gathered here today, even the freezing weather could not keep away the warmth. Coming together to remember a friend who touched more people in his 30-odd years than most people do in a lifetime, it was a chance to reaffirm old values of secularism and harmony.

An annual event on the Capital's cultural calendar, January 1 has come to be not just a day to mourn the loss of a friend but a celebration of his way of life. An occasion to catch up with old friends, their children, and renew a little of the idealism of their own lost youth.

"I come every year because I knew Safdar when he was a boy. Thereafter his wife and I studied in school together. I really respected him. His idealism was very genuine, he lived as he believed. Being here makes it like being in touch with him,'' said artist Aparna Caur.

The annual get-together of artistes, theatre personalities and writers, Safdar's death anniversary has over the years become symbolic of the values that he stood and died for.

"I remember that Safdar came to my house just the day before he died. He asked if Ritwick Ghatak's child could stay with us. We agreed happily of course. The next day the boy went out with Safdar and didn't come back till late in the night. We got worried and called up to find out that they were in hospital,'' remembered the National Award-winning director, Anwar Jamal.

Used as a platform for SAHMAT to talk about issues that are of concern to the country from communalism to attacks on freedom of speech and expression, the event over the years has become a gathering of like-minded people fighting for a better India. While there might not have been any political overtones to the event this year, it was an opportunity for artists to pay homage to the father of Hindi literature -- Munshi Premchand.

And bringing alive his works in different art forms, many artists from the world of visual arts to performing arts made Premchand's works a little of their own. There was also a special section dedicated to the "Nightingale of India'' -- M.S. Subbulakshmi.

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