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

by Diptakirti Chaudhuri

  However, the poor reviews don’t take away the box-office impact of the film—it was the top grosser of 1981, bigger even than some of Amitabh Bachchan’s greatest hits at a time when the actor was at the peak of his popularity. Kranti’s collections surpassed those of Manmohan Desai’s Naseeb, Prakash Mehra’s Lawaaris and Tinnu Anand’s Kaalia—three of Amitabh’s biggest successes. It also beat two debutants’ films—Kumar Gaurav’s Love Story and Sanjay Dutt’s Rocky—not to mention south Indian star Kamal Haasan’s first Hindi film Ek Duuje Ke Liye.

  One of the positive things that critics had to say about Kranti was in praise of Dilip Kumar’s performance, complimenting him for ‘bringing a measure of plausibility to [the] role . . . having lost none of his old charm or his screen presence’. Salim and Javed were huge fans of the veteran actor but several previous attempts to work with the thespian hadn’t borne fruit. Kranti came towards the fag end of their partnership, but this role was nothing compared to what the writer duo would write for him next. Considered one of the classics of Hindi cinema and probably the greatest casting coup of the 1980s, this film was Shakti.

  Shakti

  If there is an actor Salim–Javed admire more than Amitabh Bachchan, it is Dilip Kumar. And he is the same actor who pretty much inspired Amitabh Bachchan to join films. In many ways, then, Shakti was a dream come true for both the writers and the younger star. In fact, Salim–Javed had tried to get Dilip Kumar to do Zanjeer, but it wasn’t until much later that they finally managed to get the actor in films of theirs—coincidentally, one of them for the role of a police officer.

  Salim–Javed, being the cocky upstarts that they were, had said in a 1974 interview, ‘Dilip saab is a very involved person when he is doing a film. The trouble is he thinks only in terms of his scenes and not the complete film. Nobody has so far had the courage to tell him so. Everyone says “wah wah” and he naturally likes it. Maybe we will succeed in convincing him about our point of view.’

  With Shakti, they actually delivered on what they had claimed, successfully balancing their hero worship with a role that fit the story completely.

  After the disappointment of Shaan, Ramesh Sippy mounted the biggest casting coup in the industry by pitting Hindi cinema’s two biggest actors against each other; the standard publicity line ‘Clash of the Titans’—for once—seemed like an understatement.

  Amitabh Bachchan says, ‘It was a dream come true to be teamed with Dilip Kumar whom I’d admired from my childhood. I’d often bunked college to see Ganga Jumna, I’ve seen it twenty-five times at least. To find him in the same film, the same frame, was unbelievable. The mahurat was done dramatically on Juhu beach outside Holiday Inn. Dilip Kumar drove up in a jeep, I flew in on a helicopter. We said our lines of dialogue to each other. The mahurat became the talk of the town.’

  The starting point of Shakti was a Tamil film starring Sivaji Ganesan—Thanga Pathakkam (Gold Medal), which was a huge hit in 1974. The title referred to the gold medal a dutiful police officer receives for shooting down his errant son in the line of duty. When Salim–Javed were asked to render this basic plot in Hindi, they ended up changing it significantly. The result was a completely new story; the only similarity being that both films end with the father shooting the son.

  The Tamil film was essentially a vehicle for Sivaji Ganesan. Similarly, the original plan for Shakti was for Dilip Kumar to shine opposite a less prominent actor—Raj Babbar—in the son’s role. In fact, Javed Akhtar had said, ‘When we were writing Shakti, we didn’t know that Amitabh Bachchan would be in the film—we had no idea . . . Shakti was basically a vehicle for Dilip Kumar; it was planned for him, not for Amitabh.’

  This imbalance in the roles of the father and son led to a fair bit of soul-searching for the writers, as they believed it was poor casting. Their commitment to the script was so strong that they considered having the industry’s biggest star in the lead role of this film a mistake.

  When asked if casting had spoiled any of their films, Javed Akhtar brought up Shakti and said, ‘I really wonder what Shakti’s fate would have been if the son’s role had been played by some other actor who didn’t have Amitabh Bachchan’s status. Perhaps that would have been better because the role was not big enough for Amitabh. I believe that Shakti was one of his good performances but it’s sad that many people didn’t appreciate his work in the film . . . In spite of being a mega-star, he did not let his stardom come in the way of playing the role of the son. And he played the son and looked submissive, or passive, or frightened or intimidated—as a son should look in front of a powerful father. Some people confused this with some kind of weakness. He showed he’s an actor first, then a star. But the fact remains that he was a superstar, and people expected more from him than the script or the role offered. But I wonder if an actor of lesser stature had played that role, perhaps Shakti could have been a more satisfying film.’

  The writers told both actors exactly how the script was supposed to unfold. Amitabh Bachchan recalls, ‘When you’re working with Dilip Kumar, you can’t expect an equal role. In fact, Salim–Javed had told me that there would be an unnees-bees ka farq between the roles of the father and son . . . and that my role would be unnees.’

  Of course, with Amitabh Bachchan in the lead, Shakti became a huge commercial venture and that led to certain other compromises, like having songs in the film. Javed Akhtar says that he tried to (unsuccessfully) persuade Ramesh Sippy to cut out the songs. He felt that the film would run better without them. Although commercial considerations dictated otherwise, Javed maintains, ‘I don’t think Shakti’s songs drew the audience to the theatre for a single show.’

  Like Deewaar, Shakti was conceived as a songless film to give it a stark, brooding touch. Film critic Sukanya Verma writes, ‘At a time when most Big B’s introduction scenes involved applause-designed daredevilry or punch lines, his subdued entry in Shakti reveals the screenplay’s intention to keep it dark, hard-lined.’

  But when Shakti was released, Amitabh was a massive star, doing everything—comedy, tragedy, action, romance—in the other films that were hitting theatres around the same time. It was imperative for the success of a film that he be given a wide range of crowd-pleasing things to do on-screen that utilized his full potential. This obviously did not happen with Shakti and the audience felt short-changed.

  Writer–director Sriram Raghavan says, ‘Shakti released a few months after Namak Halaal, where Amitabh was doing so many things—action, dance, comedy—and masses would have compared the two.’

  Police officer Ashwini Kumar (Dilip Kumar) is very fond of his wife Sheetal (Rakhee) and son Vijay but also completely bound to his duty. When a gang of smugglers led by J.K. (Amrish Puri) kidnaps Vijay to get Ashwini to do their bidding, he refuses and says he would rather lose his son than compromise on his ideals. The young Vijay overhears this and develops a deep-seated resentment towards his father. Vijay manages to escape with the help of one of the kidnappers, Narang (Kulbhushan Kharbanda). But by the time he becomes an adult, Vijay’s (Amitabh Bachchan) bitterness towards his father has grown, in part due to Ashwini’s dedication to his duty and in part because of his own preconceived notions. When Vijay gets a job in Narang’s hotel, Ashwini asks him not to accept it since Narang is a known smuggler. Vijay refuses and walks out of the house. In a bid to take revenge against J.K. and defy his father, Vijay too becomes a smuggler. Ashwini eventually catches up with him and arrests him. While Vijay is in jail, J.K. kills Sheetal. On hearing this, Vijay escapes to avenge her death. In a climax at the airport, Vijay kills J.K. and Ashwini shoots Vijay, finally managing to articulate his fatherly love when it is too late.

  Shakti’s critical acclaim was unanimous. Screen called it ‘an outstanding cinematic event’ and said that ‘Both actors use their voices to supreme effect and inject varying depths of meaning to the lines Salim–Javed have written for them, making it hard to decide who does better, each equally adept at scene-stealing from the other.’

&
nbsp; K.M. Amladi wrote in the Hindustan Times, ‘the real strength of Shakti comes not from the overall magnificence of the production values . . . but from Salim–Javed’s delving into psychological insights without losing the popular dramatic structure of their tale . . . Salim–Javed . . . deserve credit for weaving a not too implausible narrative with some psychological weight.’

  Javed Akhtar had once said, ‘In different corners of the world I have met people who believed that Shakti was the best film written by our team.’

  The film also won the Filmfare Award for best screenplay—a prize which had eluded them since Deewaar—and Dilip Kumar won the award for best actor, beating his co-star to it.

  Javed Akhtar says about the performances, ‘In acting you don’t work against your co-actor but work with him. And their coordination was superb.’ Each one of their confrontations was wonderfully written and perfectly fit in with the narrative. Both actors showed a remarkable grasp over their craft by delving much deeper into their characters and rising even above the great screenplay. In fact, nothing explains this fact better than the performance they delivered in the scene where Sheetal lies dead in their home. Without speaking a word, the two actors just looked at each other and wept. Their tears, their body language and their timing were so good that they conveyed their grief perfectly without the support of well-written lines. This was a suggestion from Amitabh Bachchan himself. He says, ‘On Rakhee’s death, I had to deliver a four-page dialogue. I suggested that the scene be done in pin-drop silence instead. Rameshji and Salim–Javed agreed to that right away. The scene came across as poignant and unique.’

  The three characters—Ashwini, Vijay and Sheetal—had their own quirks and dynamics, which never wavered through the film. For example, Ashwini is shown to be slightly immature and socially inept in his personal life right from the first scene when he reaches the hospital where Vijay is born. That he is incapable of expressing himself is established very well, and is critical in his relationship with Vijay. It is the writers’ master stroke that Ashwini’s love for Vijay is apparent only when Vijay is absent. Right from the time when Vijay is a schoolboy till he grows up, that awkwardness remains uniform and well etched. When Roma (Smita Patil) comes to meet Vijay’s parents at their home, Ashwini is brusque initially. But the moment he finds out she is Vijay’s wife, he is immediately affectionate and welcoming.

  Vijay’s resentment, which is shown to stem from his perception of his father’s indifference towards him, starts simmering from his childhood, reaching a crescendo when he delivers a drunken monologue—‘Mere baap ne do shaadiyan ki . . . Apni maa ka beta main hoon. Meri sauteli maa yani mere baap ki doosri biwi ka beta hai, kanoon.’xlii —that perfectly sums up his feelings.

  Rakhee did an excellent role as the mother torn between her husband and son. This role would have been a tricky decision for her since she was acting as Amitabh’s heroines in a couple of films (Barsaat Ki Ek Raat and Bemisaal) in the same year. But her chemistry with Vijay in the film was pitch-perfect. In a seemingly insignificant but extremely well-written scene, she goes to meet Vijay who is staying at a lady friend’s house. The lines convey exactly what a mother would say to a mildly truant son, as well as the son’s embarrassment at having to explain living with a woman.

  Shakti is a brilliant film, an iconic one in fact. It falls short only when you compare it with the other film it pays subconscious tribute to—Deewaar. After two brothers on either side of the law, we now had a father and son locked in a tragic battle. Several scenes and dialogues are extremely close to each other, making it impossible for audiences to not recall the earlier classic.

  The character of the mother is similar, weighing in on the side of righteousness. While Nirupa Roy refuses to be a ‘thief’s mother’ and walks out with her honest son, Rakhee does the same by delivering a brilliant line: ‘Main abhi itni kamzor nahi hoon ke apne pati ke imaandari ka bojh na utha sakoon.’xliii

  So were the characters of the girlfriends. Both Parveen Babi in Deewaar and Smita Patil in Shakti were modern, working women, subtly acting as the voice of conscience. Sunita inspires Vijay to return to a respectable life in Deewaar. And while Roma doesn’t directly do that in Shakti, she is clearly a stabilizing influence on him.

  In fact, the scene in Shakti where Ashwini meets Vijay to inform him of Sheetal’s illness is an almost exact replica of the bridge scene from Deewaar—though, needless to say, the Deewaar scene was much better. Film critic Sukanya Verma says, ‘The Salim–Javed script resonates better with Yash Chopra’s Deewaar about the discord between two brothers on different sides of the law. A couple of dialogues—“Jao pehle unse kaho sabse pehle mere khilaaf saboot laayein, gawah dhoondein,”xliv or “In usool adarshon ka bojh uthane ka shauq jisse hai usse uthane do”xlv—pay subconscious tribute to the 1975 classic.’

  These similarities only serve to draw attention to the fair bit of tiredness that had crept into Salim–Javed’s writing by now—especially in scenes audiences were already familiar with. Smugglers landing at the same location as they did eight years earlier, heists that did not have the earlier ingenuity and most importantly, the anger that now had a touch of arrogance. Both the writers and their most famous protégé were struggling within the very successful mould they had created.

  For all practical purposes, Shakti was the last film Salim–Javed wrote as a team. By the time the film was released, they had been officially split for more than a year and Javed’s solo credits had started appearing in trade magazines.

  It is an apt tribute to their talent and understanding that the final film they wrote was such a nuanced yet dramatic script. When they first entered the film industry, they had to fight to put their names on posters and when they exited, their names appeared right after the director’s. More than their critical and commercial successes, this tectonic shift in the industry’s attitude towards writers is what they can be credited with.

  But they weren’t done yet.

  Part III:

  SPLIT WIDE OPEN

  Personal Lives

  W hen Javed was working on Seeta Aur Geeta, he jokingly recommended Honey Irani to the makers, saying that she was just the girl required to play the role of (Seeta’s bratty of cousin). They got to know each other better on the sets of the film, liked each other’s sense of humour and soon fell in love.

  Javed proposed to her during a game of cards they were playing on the sets. He was losing, and when she offered to pull a card for him, he said, ‘If it’s a good one, I’ll marry you.’ The card was good and he proposed, ‘Chalo, chalo let’s get married.’ The shooting for Seeta Aur Geeta began in October 1971 and the two got married on 21 March 1972.

  There is also the famous story about Javed requesting Salim to take his proposal to Honey’s mother, Perin Irani. Since Javed did not have a cordial relationship with his own father, Salim was the ‘elder’ in his family. Salim’s conversation with Perin Irani was not unlike the immortal scene the duo would later write for Sholay:

  – ‘Ladka kaisa hai? ’

  – ‘We are partners and I wouldn’t work with anyone unless I approve of him. Lekin daaru bahut peeta hai.’

  – ‘Kya? Daaru bahut peeta hai!’

  – ‘Aaj kal bahut nahi peeta, bas ek do peg. Aur is mein aisi koi kharabi nahin hai. Lekin daaru peene ke baad red light area bhi jaata hai.’

  Honey was only seventeen then and her mother was not very happy about her marriage to a struggling writer. In fact, Perin Irani is believed to have said, ‘Let her get married, she’ll learn a lesson and come back.’ The first few months of married life were terrible as they had to stay with Honey’s elder sister Maneka, who was married to film-maker Kamran Khan (Farah and Sajid Khan’s father). They stayed in a room meant for film props for a year till Zanjeer was released and subsequent successes allowed them to move into a place of their own. Honey remembers, ‘Javed made me promise I wouldn’t accompany him to parties, apply make-up or hire a maid. So I’d get up at 4 a.m. to fill wate
r. Of course, when I got pregnant, we had a maid.’

  After Javed’s success, they bought a flat in Bandra Bandstand and never looked back. They became a popular filmi couple, partying every night till the wee hours of the morning. Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan, Yash and Pamela Chopra, and Yash and Hiroo Johar were part of their group.

  Zoya and Farhan were born soon after (in October 1972 and January 1974, respectively) and the family was complete. They became friends with other star children—Shweta and Abhishek Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Aditya and Uday Chopra—all of whom are pretty close even today.

  As Salim–Javed became more and more successful, Javed and Honey’s marriage hit a rough patch. Honey Irani said in an interview, ‘The initial years were wonderful. I don’t really blame Javed for what happened later. He was young when he got such huge success. It’s not easy to handle that. He used to drink a lot too. That was one of the major problems.’ And Javed agrees, ‘I always used to drink but began drinking more. This is one phase of my life I am ashamed of and if people tolerated me during this time it was their benevolence.’ (He eventually gave up alcohol completely and remains a teetotaller to this day.)

  They separated in 1978, which was then rumoured to be due to Javed’s relationship with Shabana Azmi. Though Javed knew Kaifi and Shaukat Azmi, and often went to their home, since Shabana was very busy with her work the two never really connected for the longest time. According to Shabana, they only got close after 1980, when her film Sparsh was released. Javed really liked it, and talked to her about it at length at a party. Since he was still officially married, she did not want to pursue a relationship and contemplated taking a step back—especially as his children were very young then. However, that didn’t happen and they married in December 1984, around the time his divorce formally came through.