Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar: Brand Of Brothers

Kitne aadmi the (How many were there?) Just two.

Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar. One dreamt the story, the other wrote the dialogues. Together they created the angry young man, Vijay, who embodied the turbulent and tempestuous seven­ties. Together they made history, giving writers a much-needed primacy in a film industry that tended to overlook them. Together they developed a template for a new kind of movie, displacing the mostly cheery family dramas of the sixties.

Now a new documentary on Prime Video, Angry Young Men, spotlights Salim-Javed, by far the most famous writers in Mumbai cinema, with insights from colleagues, wives, children, critics and fans. Directed by well-known editor Namrata Rao, the three part docu-series shows how two men, outsiders to Mumbai, made their way to the city, and made it big. Salim Khan, now 88, was persuaded by a family friend to try his luck as an actor in Mumbai, choosing to live away from the comfort of his father’s home, never seeking assistance even when he was at his lowest. Javed Akhtar, 79, son of a well-known poet, ran away from the home of his aunt, to sleep on benches, at railway stations, on studio floors, in parks, as he struggled to find work.

Angry Young Men shows how the two of them collaborated on 24 films, of which 20 were enormous hits. Their movies such as Zanjeer (1973), Deewar (1975), Sholay (1975), Trishul (1978), Don (1978), and Kaala Patthar (1979), whose stories and scenes, have become part of our collective consciousness. As Javed’s filmmaker daughter Zoya Akhtar says in the series, it is a strike rate unlikely to be repeated. Colleagues such as Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra talk about their ability to create riveting cinema while contemporaries such as Shyam Benegal admit to being envious of their success. There is much that is known about them, but the series unveils the men they are, and what made them that way, with comments from wives past and present.

So how did it happen? Zoya was the prime motivator. “I think everybody would just keep talking about how we need to archive them and have them tell their story and how important it is for this generation to know who created the defining character of the angry young man,” says Zoya. She also wanted for writers today “to just get a little bit of that fire ignited in their bellies I think these were the thoughts that just kept going through our minds and then finally we got down to doing it. I have to say this would not have been possible without Alvira Khan Agnihotri. She really made it happen.”

Alvira is Salim Khan’s daughter, one of his five children, and the one everyone in the family turns to when it comes to getting things done. She says the documentary was Zoya’s idea. “She spoke to me about it and I thought it was a great idea. Salim-Javed need­ed to be out there for the world to know what it takes to make greatness. We both truly believed that their story needed to be documented to go down for generations. I then took this idea to my dad and the rest is now history,” she says.

History is what had to be sourced, hunted down, and document­ed. “It was a nightmare,” says Zoya. Magazine articles had to be located, clips of film had to be bought, posters had to be got, and photographs had to be dug out. Rao says India does not have a structured archive. “We had to turn into detectives, find people on LinkedIn, post public notices, employ a sourcing agency,” she says. “It was a great learning experience because almost nothing is catalogued, and the laws are very strict. We had to get No Objection Certificates from everyone. The art works come into the public domain only 60 years after publishing and when it comes to music we can use a track without permission only 60 years after the death of the last person involved in the work,” she adds.

Despite their efforts there were still some elements that eluded them. Do Bhai (1969) was the first film written by Salim, and he was credited as Prince Salim. They could not get their hands on the poster. Sarhadi Lutera, a 1966 film with Salim, was of very poor quality and could not be used. There was a documentary directed by Vinay Shukla in 2014, on Javed, which never released, which they found on a CD in Javed’s house, which had to be transferred digitally.

Rao shot the series for 69 days over three years. Every time she felt they had hit a dead-end the path cleared up. “I tried for a year to get Salim saab’s family to­gether for lunch, which is really when you see the family dynamic, in the flat he bought in 1973 from the earnings of writing Zanjeer,” says Rao. Indeed, the lunch really brings out the family’s bond, their inclusiveness, and their love. As Alvira says, “My father is a king and has lived life king size.”

In many ways, he is also the revelation of the series. Javed is a beloved public intellec­tual, an active poet, and thinker. Salim, older of the two, is retired, and now known mostly as Salman Khan’s father. The reality is that both were extensions of each other when they were working together, almost like brothers, says the research producer Dipti Nagpaul.

Rao says she was initially intimidat­ed by Salim, but as she spent time with him, a trust developed between them and he got into the groove. “He is a happy man, spirited, simple, complete­ly at peace. If he likes you, he really gives you everything.”

As for Javed, she knew him from before having worked with Zoya on Lust Stories and Made in Heaven. Rao got them to talk about their follies and failures, share their ups and downs, and tell their stories, not only in black and white, but also the greys. “They had so much in common, integrity, dignity, being true to their word, not being disrespectful to women,” she says.

There are many layers to the series. The absence of a mother in their lives, perhaps, is something that united them subconsciously. Javed’s mother died when he was eight, leaving him in the care of his aunt.

“The last time I saw my mother she was in a shroud. For months after that, I would see the shroud in my dreams and even in broad daylight,” says Javed in the series. Salim’s mother suffered from TB and had to be separated from her son between the ages of five and nine to such an extent that she did not even recognise him after a point. When Salim recalls that moment in the evening sometimes, he says tears pour down his face of their own volition. “It is not for me, but for my mother. What must she have gone through,” he says. The ever-present mother in their movies is perhaps some compensation for that, their way of coping with the unimaginable loss, and leading to one of Mumbai cinema’s most iconic lines; “Mere paas ma hai.”

Their influence went beyond the crea­tion of the Angry Young Man. As filmmaker Karan Johar says Gabbar Singh was the temp0late for an amor­al villain like Joker, Basanti was reimagined as Geet in Imtiaz Ali’s 2007 film, Jab We Met, and Jai is every action hero since Sholay. As actor Yash says, the reason their dialogues are remem­bered even today is because they are a consolidated philosophy of life, not mere words.

But where did the anger come from? Javed says perhaps there was some residual rage within them. Salim says anger is a potent emotion if used well. “Agle hafte ek aur coolie in mawaliyon ko hafta nahin dega (An­other coolie will refuse to pay a bribe to these rascals),” says Salim, reciting Vijay’s famous dialogue in Deewar.

Both men have loved and lost. One of the most moving scenes in the series is when Javed almost breaks down talking about the guilt he feels at letting down his first wife, writer Honey Irani, the mother of his children Farhan and Zoya. There is another moment when he becomes emotional, while recalling his early days in Mumbai, without food and sleep. “Sometimes when I am sleep­ing in a five-star suite on a double bed I remember how I came to this city in a third-class compartment. It was a two-day journey and there was no place to sit. And today when I get my breakfast in a trolley with bread, butter, jam, eggs and coffee, I still feel it is not mine, that I don’t deserve it,” he says.

There is yet another moment when he is reciting a piece of prose by the late Krishan Chander: “Aapne zindagi main tumne kya kiya? Sachche dil se pyaar kiya? Kisi dost ko nek salah di? Kisi dushman ke bete ko mohabbat ki nazar se dekha? Jahan andhera tha wahan roshni ki kiran leke gaye? Jitni der tak jeeye, is jeena ka matlab kya tha? (What did you do with your life? Did you love someone with a pure heart? Did you give a friend sound advice? Did you shower love on an enemy’s son? Did you shine a light in the darkness? What was the meaning of your life?)”

That is the moment I knew I would end the series with, says Rao.

“They had a very deep connection, Salim was like an elder brother to Javed. We all grow up, grow apart, they did move away and became different people but it does not efface the connection they had at a personal level, and the chemistry that made them the writers they were, that stayed with me,” says Nagpaul.

And it stays with the viewers as well. Two men, who would tell each other stories, sometimes on the parapet near the sea in Bandra, sometimes in their sitting room, who entertained the world with their observations on and interpretations of life.

So powerful was their creativity that their work is remembered almost four decades after they stopped working together.

BollywoodcinemaDeewarJaved AkhtarSalim KhanscriptwritersSholayTrishulZanjeer