Father’s dream come true

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Kaifi Azmi

Shabana Azmi’s NGO, Mijwan Welfare Society’s recent charity fashion show, Mijwan Sonnets in Fabric, focusses on the empowerment of the girl child in rural India. Shabana, who took over the society after the death of her father, noted poet Kaifi Azmi, says, “I was brought up in an environment where my dad always wanted to do something for the betterment of women.

This is one reason why from an early age, I too wanted to support women’s causes.”
“We decided to have designer Manish Malhotra as a partner for his show as he has global reach. He goes to Mijwan (Kaifi Azmi’s village) and works with them and encourages them. He told them that stars were going to wear their works and encouraged them.”
Shabana has taken her father’s dream of changing the society so that women, especially the girl child, has a better environment to live in.
“When I was nine, my father was a communist and we lived in a commune at Khetwadi Girgaum, Mumbai, in a 225 square feet flat, where eight families lived with just one bathroom and 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. The difference in treatment for males and females came as a shock to me.”