Javed Akhtar and Shabana Azmi in the Chicago area on June 8

This piece first ran ahead of the June 8, 2013 event. It is republished as an archival report.

On Saturday, June 8, 2013, famed actress Shabana Azmi and her husband, the scriptwriter and lyricist Javed Akhtar, took the stage at the Drury Lane Theater in Oakbrook Terrace for the first public event of the six-week Eye on India Festival 2013 in Chicago. They were introduced and interviewed by festival host Sanjoy Roy, Director of Teamwork Productions, with questions from the floor as well.

The conversation ranged over Hindi cinema and its social role, Muslim identity, the place of Urdu, and the couple's experience as nominated members of the Rajya Sabha.

On Indian cinema's direction, Akhtar said that with all its variety and technical sophistication, Indian cinema had never been so young — but the depth of the 50s and 60s was missing, and real social issues were being avoided. The average protagonist, he noted, used to be from the working class; the hero of the new make-believe world was a rich man in a palatial mansion. (India Post)

Asked what had kept her with independent cinema since Ankur (1974), Azmi said both her parents believed art should be an instrument of social change, and that she had made a conscious decision not to work in films that degrade women or make them subservient to men — a principle that had stuck with her since.

The evening also turned musical. Akhtar recited from his Urdu poetry, including his well-known meditation on the nature of Time (Waqt), drawing repeated "wahs" from the audience. Singer Zeshan Begawadi performed Hindi songs and, the following afternoon, sang poems composed by Azmi's father, Kaifi Azmi — a rendering Shabana Azmi commended, appreciating how her father's work still resonated with diaspora youth. (Asian Media USA)

For Chicago's Indian-American community — concentrated in suburbs like Naperville, Schaumburg, and Downers Grove — the evening was a reminder of what such gatherings are for: not just entertainment, but a reconnection with the artistic traditions of home, in the company of the people who shaped them.