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Shabana was everything a sensitive public personality should be. She always came forward for causes she believed in.

After 26 days of fasting in solidarity with the students regarding the NEET paper leak and the lapses in our education-system, 59-year-old Sonam Wangchuk has ended his hunger strike. However, the political unrest and agitations of India’s Cockroach Janta Party and many others is still in a stalemate, till the time of going to the press. That be as it may, the trying phase that went by gave us certain heroes. One of them is Shabana Azmi.

Circa 1986; the National-Award winning actress was on a hunger strike

In 1986, when I was a greenhorn, Shabana was already a feted and felicitated Hindi cinema actor. She had won several national awards for best actress including those for her work in Ankur (1974), Arth (1982), etc. She was the uncrowned queen of alternate cinema; the only real competition, she faced was from the powerhouse, Smita Patil, who came in a few years after.The first-born of the yesteryear communist-poet-literary figures, Kaifi Azmi, who was one of our pre-Independence tallest literary figures, Shabana, like her father, Kaifi saab, was a delight to speak with. She was articulate and fierce. She could hold court on any subject. However, she’s human, she had failings too.

She always thought of herself as a cut above the rest, even the media