Muzaffar Aazim
Muzaffar Aazim was a Kashmiri-American poet and a writer of the Kashmiri language
Early life and career
Muzaffar Aazim was born in 1934 in picturesque hillside Tangmarg town located along Himalaya mountains in erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir State of India. He graduated from Sri Pratap College and briefly taught at Amar Singh College. He later became the Director of Sericulture in Kashmir, a position that enabled him to travel widely.Kashmiri font and script promotion
He was instrumental in promoting Kashmiri poetry and language in digital media, partly by creating the first Kashmiri Narqalam font and Gulmarg Nastalik font. In collaboration with other language experts, he pushed for improvement in Unicode to better represent Kashmiri language. This enables almost seven million Kashmiri speaking population worldwide to write in their chosen language.Literary works
Aazim started writing poetry at the age of 10 and published his first Kashmiri poetry book Zolana in 1963. His contemporary, noted Kashmir poet Rahman Rahi, writing about this book comments that “The chief quality that distinguishes Aazim from almost all other poets of his age is his dexterity as a craftsman, a quality which can be appreciated in his ghazals”. His second Kashmiri poetry book was Manikaman. His other poetry books include Saze-Salasil in Urdu and Haraf Dai in Kashmiri. He authored Mahmud Gami, published by Sahitya Akademi. He compiled a comprehensive review on "Experiments in Modern Kashmiri Poetry" in Indian Literature, also published by Sahitya Akademi.He published ‘Yak Rang’, a popular collection of unpublished poems by mystic Kashmiri poet Anwar War Anwar. He has appeared multiple times on television to discuss poetry, literature, and life. He has written several plays for All India Radio Srinagar including Havas ta Haasil, and for Doordarshan TV including Nai Mout. He started abstract digital art in 2014. This became his main, and a popular, outlet of creative expression in the later years of his life.