Veteran screenwriter Salim Khan turns 80 today. A new book Written by Salim-Javed -The Story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters by Diptakirti Chaudhuri recounts the story of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, India’s most successful screenwriters. Together they wrote some of the most iconic Hindi movies of the 1970s and in the process shattered many rules and changed industry’s attitude towards writers. The following excerpts from the book narrate Salim Khan’s journey from a small boy in Indore to the star writer of Bollywood
One of Salim Khan’s abiding memories is from when he was four or five years old and had stolen a key-wound motorcycle from a toy cart. When he came home with it and his mother found out, she was livid and made him go back to the cart-owner to return the toy and apologize. When he did so, all his friends laughed. Many decades later, Salim Khan says he still hasn’t forgotten the cackle of their laughter. Nor has he forgotten the lessons an upright mother can impart on a child. This theme of honesty above all else would return to many of the films he wrote.
Born on 24 November 1935 in Indore, Salim Khan was the son of a police officer—fifth in a line of Pathans who had migrated from Afghanistan in search of a good education and a better life for their children. His great-great-grandfather Anwar Khan joined the British cavalry and was posted in the Central Provinces (present-day Madhya Pradesh). The family put a premium on education and culture, which led to most of its members joining government service. Salim Khan’s father— Abdul Rashid Khan—joined the police force and rose to become the DIG of Indore, the highest position allowed to Indians in British India.
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.’
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
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’shouse weren’t going to materialize ever, he realized. But a culture of reading and learning at home ensuredthat 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 turnedout to be prophetic for he got an offer from Ramesh Saigal—maker of hits like Samadhi and Shaheed—to act in films, buthe 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.
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.
(Excerpted with permission from Written by Salim-Javed -The Story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters, Diptakirti Chaudhuri, Penguin Books India.)
Thursday, January 7, 2016
Book Excerpt: When Salim Khan said, “Writers will be paid the same as stars” and finally proved it!
Veteran screenwriter Salim Khan turns 80 today. A new book Written by Salim-Javed -The Story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters by Diptakirti Chaudhuri recounts the story of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, India’s most successful screenwriters. Together they wrote some of the most iconic Hindi movies of the 1970s and in the process shattered many rules and changed industry’s attitude towards writers. The following excerpts from the book narrate Salim Khan’s journey from a small boy in Indore to the star writer of Bollywood
One of Salim Khan’s abiding memories is from when he was four or five years old and had stolen a key-wound motorcycle from a toy cart. When he came home with it and his mother found out, she was livid and made him go back to the cart-owner to return the toy and apologize. When he did so, all his friends laughed. Many decades later, Salim Khan says he still hasn’t forgotten the cackle of their laughter. Nor has he forgotten the lessons an upright mother can impart on a child. This theme of honesty above all else would return to many of the films he wrote.
Born on 24 November 1935 in Indore, Salim Khan was the son of a police officer—fifth in a line of Pathans who had migrated from Afghanistan in search of a good education and a better life for their children. His great-great-grandfather Anwar Khan joined the British cavalry and was posted in the Central Provinces (present-day Madhya Pradesh). The family put a premium on education and culture, which led to most of its members joining government service. Salim Khan’s father— Abdul Rashid Khan—joined the police force and rose to become the DIG of Indore, the highest position allowed to Indians in British India.
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.’
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
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’shouse weren’t going to materialize ever, he realized. But a culture of reading and learning at home ensuredthat 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 turnedout to be prophetic for he got an offer from Ramesh Saigal—maker of hits like Samadhi and Shaheed—to act in films, buthe 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.
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.
(Excerpted with permission from Written by Salim-Javed -The Story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters, Diptakirti Chaudhuri, Penguin Books India.)
0 comments:
Post a Comment