Making her father’s dream come true
- August 26, 2012
- By Lipika Varma
Shabana Azmi’s NGO, Mijwan Welfare Society, is set for the third edition of the charity fashion show, Mijwan Sonnets in Fabric, where celebrities from Bollywood and the sports world will walk the ramp for the empowerment of the girl child in rural India.
This year, the models will be wearing Manish Malhotra’s designs. “He has a wider reach,” the actor says. Shabana, who took over the society after the death of her father, noted poet Kaifi Azmi, says, “When I was nine, we lived in a commune at Khetwadi Girgaum, Mumbai, in a 225 square feet flat, where eight families lived with just one toilet. We saw equality all around and my father wrote a poem more than 65 years ago titled Aurat mere saath chalna hai tujhe. At 19, I felt that men and women were treated equally, but slowly I realised that it was not so.
“In the 90s, my father had a paralytic stroke. But instead of giving up in despair, he went back to his village Mijwan which was frozen in time; there were no roads, no schools, nothing. He single-handedly got roads made, a school, a college and a chikankari centre. We initially thought he was completely mad; how could he think of bringing in computers when there was no electricity? When he passed away it was natural that I took it further. For me it was an emotional journey and a commitment taking my father’s work one step further.”
