The jadoo around janaab Javed!

The bit about the screenwriting pair Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar hiring a drunk painter one night handing over colour brush and stencil so the fellow could place their names mdash Written by SalimJaved mdash on every poster of Zanjeer 1973 that he could find in the 25kilometre stretch from Juhu to Opera House in Mumbai I suspect is rather well known This is how Indias best known screenwriters first got credited in a film posterHow did they become Indias most commercially successful screenwriters ever By setting their rate at 2 lakh per screenplay And finding no takers for nine months straight This despite hits Andaz 1971 Haathi Mere Saathi 1971 Seeta Aur Geeta 1972 Yaadon Ki Baraat 1973 and of coursetheir breakout film Zanjeer 1973To give you a sense of what 2 lakh meant in 73 and for the film industry in general starwriters SalimJaved used to then draw a monthly salary of 750 9000 per annum being on the payroll of Sippy Films Story Department At a party Akhtar met a prominent producer who was keen to hear a script At his office later Akhtar made the price known just so he doesnt come across as an extortionist once the producer had already liked the narrationThe producer heard 2 lakh They sat facing each other No words exchanged The producer waited for his partner Soon as the partner was there he asked Akhtar to repeat his price Phir se bolna zara And they laughed Of course that meeting didnt go anywhereAlmost exactly after 55 years this week since he moved to Mumbai as a 19yearold with 27 in his pocket Akhtar 74 in conversation with me at a cinema convention brought the house full of younglings down mdash sounding no older but sharper than someone in his late 20s By when he recalls hed already scripted Sholay 1975 mdash arguably the greatest Bollywood story ever toldLimiting as it may seem to describe a top scriptwriter heavyweight dialoguewriter incredibly prolific lyricist a peoples poet parttime humourist occasional poppsychologist an atheistrationalist mdash it may not be unfair to bundle all of Akhtars writerly talents into that of him being Indias finest conversationalistEven more so in the context of popular Hindi cinema There is still nothing first person on the subject that compares to his superslim volume Talking Films 1999 with Nasreen Munni Kabir where he so lucidly illustrates the difference between script story and screenplay an Indian phenomenon describes the idea of stardom and of course Amitabh Bachchan or delves into measuring the weight of words ending in consonants or vowels mdash whether that be for an adjective mulayam in the song Yeh Kahaan Aa Gaye Hum or proper noun the villain Davar in DeewaarAs screenwriter he strongly credits his partner Salim Khan for introducing him to the larger canvas of 70 mm scaledup cinema mdash especially the sophisticated material from Hollywood The specificities of characters and oneliners it appears to me were more of Akhtars departmentThe topic I was particularly chatting with Akhtar on was Cardinal sins of cinema And hes very clear on what makes a bad film mdash when youre looking up that is trying to make something mahaan great Or looking down mdash trying to make something not coming from you but meant for the masses Either way youre more likely to fail Because manipulative craft seems to be trumping intimate eyelevel artIn my early 20s Id spent considerable time discussing politics with the progressivehumanist Akhtar at his seafacing home in Juhu where hed talk for hours that I would then turn into pieces authoredapproved by him mdash whether on Triple Talaq or the Ayodhya dispute Watching him passionately declaim with the evening shadow from his window forming a silhouette on his face there was no doubt in my head that Bachchans onscreen angry young man was quite strongly modeled on AkhtarAkhtar being his fathers penname like Bachchan for Amitabh is the seventh generation writer from a family with such strong Left leanings that the first words ever whispered into his ears soon as he was born named Jadoo were from the Communist Manifesto And he grew up believing that the portrait of Stalin in his home was his grandfathersAnd yet you scour through his works you hardly ever find direct agitationpropaganda agitprop partyline or politicalagenda mdash that as art inevitably fails the test of time There is simple humanism universal and basic emotions and a touch of refinement and class within the popularfrontrow mainstream that his contemporaries simply couldnt match up toThey probably didnt have it in them Quite unsurprisingly a producer Premji eventually did show up with 2 lakh to pay SalimJaved for a script The film was Majboor 1974 The dreamrun continued for around a decadeMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here 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