Flashback Friday: How Salim-Javed went on to become a force in the Bollywood of '70s

Neither age nor new-age fads have withered their storytelling aplomb. You simply have to encounter Salim Khan or Javed Akhtar, separately, at their homes, at assorted soirees or during intermissions of film preview screenings in Mumbai - and Bollywood's most famous scriptwriters of all time will keep you spellbound.
Till they went different routes, the partnership between Salim-Javed lasted from 1971 to 1984: 22 Hindi language films, and two in Kannada. Double-handedly, they elevated the status of story-screenplay-dialogue writers to a pinnacle, which was never evidenced before. and perhaps never will be again.
They insisted on prominent billing on the posters, hoardings and credit titles. As their scripts yielded rapid-fire mega-hits, it is believed, they would demand and receive 25 per cent of a film's profits without argument from top production banners of the time.
The writers were responsible for creating the image of 'The Angry Young Man' of the bottled-up decade of the '70s. Indeed, Amitabh Bachchan has constantly emphasised their invaluable contribution to his superstar status. The writers altered the movie hero from the marshmallow-hearted romantic, best epitomised then by Rajesh Khanna, to the brooding man of the street who was mad as hell and wouldn't take injustice any more.
On a Sunday morning, when I catch up with Salim Khan at his Bandra seafront apartment, he gives me an update for starters: he has just completed a 20-minute audio tribute - with a commentary and song excerpts - to the showmanship of Raj Kapoor. "It's a tiny gesture from me to the genius of Raj saab. When I was an actor - not a very successful one, I may add - I'd interacted with him on the sets of Diwana," he narrates. "As a filmmaker, he has remained unequalled in the history of Bombay's cinema. But how many youngsters of today's generation remember him? In fact, how many of the millennials have bothered to see the films of Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand? Not too many, I'm sure."
But what does he expect? After all, every age has its cinema in sync with the prevailing conditions and the tastes of an ever-growing audience. "True!" the 81-year-old Khan responds, with the reservation, "The trouble is that there are no sensibly reasoned and structured scripts any more. Anything goes as long as there are top stars in a project. And I'm saying this even though my son (Salman Khan) is considered a superstar. If you ask me, in recent years, I've only liked the scripts of his Bajrangi Bhaijaan and Aamir Khan's Dangal. They had valid points to make about the need for human values today while keeping in mind the entertainment quotient."
In a chatty mood, he laughs, "Even film titles have become complicated or are merely borrowed from the past. By contrast, Javed and I would keep the titles simple and direct - like Zanjeer, Deewaar, Yaadon Ki Baaraat, Trishul, Don, Sholay and Shakti, to mention a few. These were easy to remember, weren't they?"
The Salim-Javed split, soon after the release of their script for the Manoj Kumar-produced and directed Kranti, has been attributed to a variety of reasons. Lore has it that Javed wished to go solo, besides trying out his hand at lyric writing, a talent inherited from his father Jan Nisar Akhtar. Some believe that Salim was the more "practical and business savvy" of the duo while his partner was the more "creative" one, with a penchant for writing collections of poems. Moreover, Javed was so responsive to political and social inequities that, eventually, he accepted the offer of a seat in the Rajya Sabha.
Initially, attempts were made at a patch-up between Salim-Javed. in vain. There was an unspoken hostility between them, which was never made public through interviews or even off-the-record statements. They wrote scripts, independently of each other - some were successful, others weren't - but, clearly, their peak period was over. Among Salim's solo outings, the Mahesh Bhatt-directed Naam and Kabzaa packed in a strong wallop. Javed was especially in form with the Rahul Rawail-directed Betaab and Arjun, and Ramesh Sippy's Saagar.
Their children - Salman, Arbaaz and Sohail in the case of Salim Khan and Farhan and Zoya Akhtar in the case of Javed Akhtar - have taken their family metier forward. Javed, now 72, continues to call his former collaborator "Salim saab". They have been photographed together on occasion, and do converse now and then. Yet, when I'd asked the duo to accept the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement together on stage, their answers were a polite, "No, thank you."
Still, they are bonded by quite a few factors. Here are two raconteurs with elephantine memories. They both possess a sense of self-deprecating humour, and are inveterate foodies who revel in keeping an open house for friends and even rank strangers.
"When I was going through a rough patch (after the split), I didn't know where the next meal was coming from," Salim Khan recalls. "Yet, there would always be chicken biryani, raita, kebabs and sharbat for everyone who dropped in at my place. By the way, there were half-a-dozen scripts that I had stored away. They're still with me. Believe me, it would have been pointless to hawk them. I had to start afresh. So did Javed. There's no point in living in the past, is there?"
I nod in agreement. But I can't help wondering, "Sir, but why hasn't there been another pair of writers with the clout of Salim-Javed ever since?"
And he ends, "At the risk of sounding immodest, let me say maybe because they don't make them like us anymore."
wknd@khaleejtimes.com