Written by Salim-Javed: The Story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters

by Diptakirti Chaudhuri

  As member of a well-to-do family, Salim’s life was quite comfortable until he lost his mother at the age of nine.

  She was suffering from tuberculosis, a dreaded disease during that time, and Salim was not allowed to go near her for the last four years of her life. She was in isolation at home and had to go away for long periods to Bhowali, a sanatorium for TB patients. He recalls one particularly traumatic episode, ‘One day, she saw me playing and asked the maid who I was because she couldn’t recognize me after staying away for so long. When the maid told her that I was her youngest son, Gullu, she called me but did not let me come near her. She made me stand at a distance from her and watched me for quite some time. When I think about this now, I always think how traumatic it must have been for her to not be able to touch her own son. And even now, tears well up in my eyes.’

  After his mother’s death, Salim grew closer to his father, but he too passed away five years later. ‘I was only fourteen,’ recalls Salim. ‘He passed away in January and I took my matriculation examination in March. As a child, I had a very good life. I had a car, a tonga to ferry me around, and all material comfort but I never got the love of parents.’

  He had the idyllic upbringing typical of a small town, growing up with a large group of friends and an extended family. His favourite pastimes were sports and reading. And movies.

  He discovered the magic of movies fairly early in his life, even though movie watching wasn’t as common or easy as it is now. There were just three cinema halls in Indore that used to show English films (and another one in the nearby town of Mau), all of which he patronized. A regular at the Saturday matinee shows, his staple fare was, not surprisingly, the action—more specifically, sword-fighting—films made famous by Nadia. He remembers Hunterwali, and the several clones it spawned, as fondly as he does Bhagwan Dada, the charismatic comic star. This habit of watching movies carried on well into his teens and even after he left Indore. One of the movies he remembers watching as a teenager was Garden of Evil—a Western where two protagonists draw cards to decide who will stay to hold back the advancing Indians.

  Blessed with a good memory, he still remembers many details from his childhood, even the name of the barber who used to come home to give his father, him, and all his cousins haircuts at a bulk rate—Hariram Naii.

  Salim’s father—having been a police officer all over Madhya Pradesh—had extensive experience in handling dacoits of the region and had compelling stories to tell. Many of the more interesting ones stuck. There was a particularly cruel story about a legendary dacoit who cut off the ears and noses of all the policemen he caught. His name was Gabbar Singh.

  Salim studied at Indore’s St Raphael’s School and then at Holkar College. He was quite the ‘jock’ in college with a 1928 model Jaguar and a Triumph motorcycle that he rode around town. He also played cricket. As the star batsman of the college team, he was extremely popular and his skills were good enough for the college to request him to enrol for an MA in economics in order to keep playing. He practised hard but when he realized he was not able to progress beyond a certain level he got bored of the stagnation.

  He tried several other things too. His penchant for war movies led to a fascination for flying and he started training to become a pilot. He even logged the hours required to get a commercial flying license but got bored of that too. Commercial flying is bound by strict rules and regulations, with no scope for showmanship. His dreams of swooping down and zooming back up over a girl’s house weren’t going to materialize ever, he realized.

  But a culture of reading and learning at home ensured that adrenalin-charged activities weren’t the only things that interested him. His father insisted that he read books and newspapers regularly, and subscribed to the Statesman newspaper from Calcutta (which took three days to arrive).

  Salim Khan always had an air of flamboyance about him and a flair for words. In college, he became the ‘official’ letter writer for all the lover boys in his class, letters that were handed over surreptitiously on the way to college or in a cinema queue. He’s quite proud of his letters and says that when he left for Bombay, the quality of his friends’ letters dropped so much that their girlfriends went ahead and married other people. ‘Sab ke sab Devdas ho gaye,’ he laughs. Incidentally, two of his close friends were called Jai Singh Rao Kalevar and Virender Singh Bias (names which he would soon immortalize).

  He also had a doomed love affair when he was in college. ‘Boys and girls used to fall in love in college, but the girl’s family would marry them off to older boys, who were already working and somewhat settled in life. The same thing happened to me,’ he says with detachment.

  His good looks and the gift of the gab often led to friendly banter about him being ‘hero material’. That banter turned out to be prophetic for he got an offer from Ramesh Saigal—maker of hits like Samadhi and Shaheed—to act in films, but he turned it down.

  The Barjatyas—who would eventually provide a brilliant launch vehicle for Salman Khan—were the ones responsible for Salim Khan’s foray into cinema. It was at the wedding of Tarachand Barjatya’s son that film director K. Amarnath spotted him and offered him an acting job in Bombay. He offered him Rs 1000 to move to Bombay and a salary while working in his films. The film industry was not a respectable profession then but Salim Khan was a big movie buff and fast getting bored with his life in Indore. He was in the second year of his MA course and had had enough of imitating stars to entertain his friends. When this opportunity presented himself, he jumped at it. ‘Dilip Kumar ki dukan band karwa denge . . .’ he told everyone with his customary confidence.

  When he was about to leave, his elder brother painted a doomsday picture by saying that Salim would either return very soon or would keep asking for money. Salim Khan vowed that he would do neither.

  One of his first films was K. Amarnath’s Baraat (1960), for which he was hired at a salary of Rs 400 per month. Soon, he got into the Bombay grind of acting in not-so-significant roles in different kinds of films and soliciting work for more of the same.

  Probably his most well-noticed role (in hindsight) was the one he played in Vijay Anand’s Teesri Manzil (a tightly woven murder mystery written and produced by Nasir Husain). He had a role slightly bigger than the hero’s friend in the film where he is co-opted by Shammi Kapoor to impersonate him as Rocky the drummer. His entry scene in the film got a very good build-up and his dashing looks and impressive physique meant he could pass off as a hero. Almost.

  He played a bit part in yet another Shammi Kapoor starrer, Professor, but his bread-and-butter roles seemed to be the swashbuckling, sword-fighting, costume dramas that he had loved during his childhood. Except, audience tastes had changed since and these films were now categorized as B-grade fare. Kabli Khan (starring Ajit in the title role), Darasingh (starring, well, Dara Singh in the title role), Raaka (also starring Dara Singh), Chhaila Babu (starring Bhagwan Dada) were some of the quickly shot, quickly forgotten films he acted in. He remembers acting in about twenty-five films though many of them were never released.

  He spent about eight years in Bombay struggling to become a hero. By the end of it, conventional employment options were closed for him because he was too old to be eligible for competitive exams for the police, administrative or banking services. However, he did not want to go back to Indore because—thanks to his grand pronouncements before leaving—he was sure he would become the laughing stock of the small town.

  A little after he came to Bombay, he met Sushila Charak, a Dogra Rajput girl, who, along with her family, happened to stay in Mahim, the same neighbourhood as Salim. Quite well known in the locality for his good looks and wit, he was often seen holding court at street corners. He caught Sushila’s eye then but the first time he spoke to her was when they bumped into each other near Churchgate station and she directed him to an address he was looking for. Their courtship started soon after this meeting and continued for nearly five years during which she refused several marriag
e alliances brought by her family. Eventually, they got married in 1964, and she changed her name to Salma. Her father, Baldev Singh Charak, was livid with her for marrying a Muslim and that too a film actor, a profession considered quite taboo among the middle classes at the time. About a year after their marriage, Salma and Salim had their first child in December 1965—a son, whom they named Abdul Rashid Salim Salman Khan. Her family cut off all relations with her and maintained no contact till after their third son, Sohail, was born and Salim Khan had built a reputation in the industry.

  But before fame found him, Salim Khan’s prospects were bleak. His struggles as an actor were becoming increasingly difficult and he was compelled to evaluate other options in the film industry. He zeroed in on writing, having seen Nasir Husain write scripts for his own films—and talk about their importance—when he was acting in Teesri Manzil. Salim had participated in the writing process and understood the value of the script in the making of a film. This realization played a major part in his becoming a screenwriter. He says that he figured out that while he knew only a little about writing, most other people knew even less, which gave him a fair shot at success. He started writing a few outlines—some of them based on stories he had heard from his police officer father—and tried peddling them to stars and producers.

  One of the big advantages he had compared to others in the film industry of the 1960s was that he was extremely well read and was an avid reader, even when he was busy acting. His favourite haunt was the Victoria Circulating Library in Mahim. In fact, he laughs when he remembers what the owner started saying after a few years, ‘I don’t have any new books for you. You have read everything here!’ Even when Salim bought something that was wrapped in a newspaper, he remembers reading that piece of paper before throwing it away.

  His reading habit, along with his academic background, gave him a gravitas that was respected by industry bigwigs like Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar and it proved helpful in building an equation with them. Another star he was quite familiar with was Ashok Kumar. He even wrote a script and directly offered it to the actor. In his characteristic fashion, he says, ‘I told Dadamoni to listen for just fifteen minutes. “After that you’ll tell me to continue.”’ Ashok Kumar heard the whole script and liked it. Salim was with Dadamoni when producer Brij Sadanah came to sign him for a project and he seized the opportunity to peddle the script to Sadanah as well. Ashok Kumar also endorsed it. At the time, it was common for Hindi film producers to sign on stars without any story or script to base their offer on. The prevalent belief was that they would write something to suit the star.

  The script was eventually made into a film called Do Bhai, starring Ashok Kumar, Jeetendra and Mala Sinha, which was released in 1969. The story had elements of the popular Salim–Javed formula—an estranged child, an anti-hero, moral dilemmas, and several twists and turns. The film, unfortunately, did not do too well. Salim had decided to cut down on his acting assignments in order to concentrate on writing and though money was hard to come by, he had not lost his flamboyance. In Do Bhai, he was credited as Prince Salim.

  During this period, he joined Abrar Alvi as a writing assistant. The recommendation was made by actor Ajit, who had worked with Salim in several films and also knew Abrar Alvi quite well. All three of them were working on the Shammi Kapoor-starrer, Professor, when this connection happened. As an assistant, Salim spent three-four hours after lunch with the veteran writer. His salary was Rs 500 per month and for that, he would suggest plot ideas, how certain scenes or events would unfold and also be the sounding board for dialogues. He says that he used to suggest ideas he had read in popular novels or seen in Hollywood films.

  Once during this stint, he had a very interesting conversation with Abrar Alvi when they were discussing the importance of the writer in films.

  Salim said, ‘Abrar sahib, there will come a time when writers will be paid the same as stars . . .’

  Abrar took a while to comprehend this and asked somewhat incredulously, ‘If Dilip Kumar charges twelve lakh for a film today, you think a writer can ever ask for that kind of money?’

  Salim replied, ‘If the writer can prove that the film ran because of his script, then why not?’

  Abrar dismissed this confidence as lunacy and said, ‘Miyan, don’t repeat this to anyone else. People will think you have gone mad.’

  Salim Khan still remembers this conversation as if it happened yesterday.

  In the mid-1960s, around the time Salim decided to turn to screenwriting, he was also acting in a film called Sarhadi Lootera directed by S.M. Sagar. He was not the hero but had a romantic role in the action film. Those were the days when scenes were written on the sets by anonymous daily-wage writers, who never seemed to be in short supply. Salim, by this time, had started thinking of scripts and scenes as a writer and used to complain bitterly to the director about the poor quality of dialogues. He even offered to write the scenes himself.

  The director kept scouting for writers until one day, in desperation, he asked one of his assistants—the clapper boy—to write the day’s scenes because the writer hadn’t turned up. He liked the boy’s work so much that he made him the dialogue writer. The boy was about twenty-one years old.

  His name was Javed Akhtar.

  Enter Javed Akhtar

  When Javed Akhtar was born, his father—poet Jan Nisar Akhtar—a member of the Communist Party, went to the hospital along with some friends directly from the office. Since he was carrying a copy of The Communist Manifesto, he decided to change the tradition of reading the Azaan in the newborn child’s ears and read from the manifesto instead. This reading was not merely symbolic. Javed’s childhood and the atmosphere around him were such that he came to believe deeply in communism and hated the inequalities entrenched in Indian society. And this belief was evident in many of the films he would eventually write.

  Born on 17 January 1945 in Gwalior, he got his name from a line his father wrote the day he got married to Safia: ‘Lamha lamha kisi jadoo ka fasana hoga . . .’ Jan Nisar Akhtar borrowed a word from it to name his son Jadoo. For a long time, he remained Jadoo and it was only when he was about to be admitted to school that his name was changed to a more formal but similar-sounding Javed.

  Jan Nisar Akhtar came from a family of scholars and writers. He was an accomplished poet and he went on to become an acclaimed lyricist for Hindi films as well. His wife, Safia Akhtar, was also very well educated, and taught in a college. She had a keen appreciation of literature and poetry. Since she and her husband spent most of their married life away from each other (due to his status as a ‘Wanted’ member of the Communist Party), she regularly wrote letters to him. These letters were subsequently published as a collection called Zer-e-Lab (Under the Lip), which became very popular; that alone was enough for Safia to make a place for herself in the world of Urdu literature.

  Javed was extremely close to his mother and she, in turn, had assessed her firstborn’s talents very accurately. In a letter to her husband, she described the six-and-a-half-year-old Javed: ‘This boy has tremendous control and command over Urdu and is rather hesitant in English. He is extremely talkative but not very practical.’ Javed now adds that, ‘She described me as someone who makes big plans but doesn’t do anything about them. I’m much the same even today.’

  When asked about his childhood memories, Javed quotes Woody Allen. The American actor–director, when asked, ‘Did you have a happy childhood?’ had replied ‘No, a normal one.’ Javed says the same thing because he managed to get through his childhood with a wealth of memories and influences despite some traumatic experiences.

  Javed lost his mother exactly one day after his eighth birthday. He remembers vividly the moment when his aunt took him and his younger brother Salman close to their mother’s body for a last glimpse and asked them both to promise Safia that they ‘would do something in life, become something in life’. When Javed went through a terrible phase of struggle during his early days in Bombay, this promise
was always at the back of his mind.

  Jan Nisar Akhtar had already moved to the city at this time as he had to go underground became of his links to the Communist Party. Javed Akhtar says, ‘It can be shocking for a child of that age to lose both parents—one to life and another to death.’ For a long time in his childhood, Javed dreamed of a white shroud—similar to the one his mother’s body was wrapped in after her death—which traumatized him.

  As is evident, these elements of his childhood—an idealized vision of the mother, an estranged father and a recurring nightmare—reappeared in his films. Even when his father tried to reach out to him, he repelled these attempts. ‘I can remember times when he spoke about poetry or literature or writing, and that definitely did leave an impression on me. I suppose I wanted to pretend that I didn’t care; perhaps I used that as a kind of defence mechanism because if I had accepted that I cared, it might have hurt more,’ he says.

  Born to parents who were both poets, in a family where four generations before him had been acclaimed poets, Javed’s literary credentials were coded into his genes from birth. He was an avid reader, indiscriminately poring over books and magazines from an early age. Be it the poetry of Faiz, the short stories of Saadat Hassan Manto or Krishan Chander, the novels of Ismat Chughtai, he read it all. Javed Akhtar says he was most influenced by Krishan Chander and admired him a lot. His reading habit was so varied that in his early teens, he was reading both Maxim Gorky’s Mother and the detective thrillers (Jasoosi Duniya) of Ibn-e-Safi. The detective thrillers—be it Indian or American pulp fiction—were a big favourite for their fast action, tight plots and economies of expression. He remembers the novels of Ibn-e-Safi for their fascinating characters with memorable names. ‘Ibn-e-Safi was a master at naming his characters. All of us who read him remember those names . . . There was a Chinese villain, his name was Sing Hi. There was a Portuguese villain called Garson . . . an Englishman who had come to India and was into yoga . . . was called Gerald Shastri.’ This technique of giving catchy names to characters would stay with him. The wide range of reading not only gave him the sensitivity with which progressive writers approached their subjects but also a very good sense of plot and speaking styles. Here, it would be apt to quote a paragraph from Ibn-e-Safi’s detective novel, House of Fear—featuring his eccentric detective, Imran. The conversation takes place just outside a nightclub: