Saraswati Saran ‘Kaif’ (b. 1920, Mainpuri, UP) was a poet, writer and journalist who wrote in Urdu, Hindi and English with equal facility. Gripped with patriotic zeal he participated in the freedom movement, in late 1930’s and early 1940’s, as a student leader at Kanpur where he earned his BA and LLB degrees, and was jailed for his anti-war activities. Later, he was a recipient of “tamrapatra” as a freedom fighter.
In 1942 he started his career in journalism as an assistant editor of an Urdu weekly of Kanpur. Thereafter he worked in many Urdu and Hindi journals and came to English journalism in 1953. He worked in ‘The Leader’ of Allahabad, ‘The Tribune’ of Chandigarh and ‘The Pioneer’ of Varanasi till 1986. He also taught journalism at Kashi Vidyapeeth for some time.
‘Kaif’ began writing Urdu ghazals in his school days and maintained a steady output till the end of his life. He also wrote poetry in Persian. Author of more than 30 books and about 200 articles in English, Hindi and Urdu, his oeuvre include novels, translations, compilations and original scholarly work. The collection of his Urdu poetry, ‘Shaoor-e-Lashaoori’ was published by Haryana Sahitya Academy in 1983. ‘Lazzat-e-Karb’, a collection of his Persian poems, was published in 1988.
His later years were devoted to scholarly study of Urdu prosody and he wrote about his findings in ‘Development of Urdu Poetry’ (Discovery Publications, 1990). Among his other notable books are ‘India’s National Writing’ (Munshiram Manoharlal, 1969), ‘Mirza Ghalib - the Poet of Poets’ (Munshiram Manoharlal, 1976), and ‘Chakbast’ (Sahitya Akademi, 1986). Active and engaged till his last days, conferred with many honours and awards, ‘Kaif’ passed away in 2007 at Bhopal.
