Sagar Sarhadi. Pics/Instagram

My friendship with Sagar Sarhadi dates back to the early 1960s. Being screenwriters, dialogue writers and playwrights, we were both trying to make a mark then. We had a shared love for Urdu literature. He was one of the finest Urdu playwrights in the country. There was another [thread] that tied us together — we were both [part of] the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA). 

In 2008, he was awarded the prestigious Ghalib Award for drama. His numerous plays, including Tanhai and Bhagat Singh Di Wapsi are considered IPTA classics. [In our heydays], we used to meet often at Janki Kutir in Juhu, where several struggling writers would hang out. Kaifi saab and Shaukat [Azmi] aapa were our mentors. [Sarhadi’s] nephew Ramesh Talwar, Bharat Kapoor, Mac Mohan, Shama Zaidi, and I would spend hours, talking literature and poetry. 

I last met him before the lockdown. I could sense he was feeling lonely, and slipping into depression. He was a bachelor and lived alone in Sion. He loved to write, but his weak eyesight, due to advancing age, proved to be a deterrent. I will always remember him as someone who was full of life and ready with one-liners. 

Like Gulzar saab, he wrote in Urdu, not Hindi. He wrote screenplay and dialogues for films like Kabhi Kabhie [1976], Noorie [1979] and Silsila [1981], but he is best remembered for his directorial venture, Bazaar [1982]. The film highlighted the bride-buying practice in Hyderabad. Every track of the film was a gem, including Karoge yaad toh har baat yaad aayegi. Now, it’s only his memories that remain with us.

Sagar Sarhadi, who wrote Yash Chopra’s sumptuous ode to romance, ‘Kabhi Kabhie’, and also directed ‘Bazaar’, a heart-breaking document on the ugly linkage between poverty, marriage and market, passed away at his residence in Mumbai on Sunday night. He was 87. “He wasn’t keeping well for some time and had even stopped eating,” his nephew, filmmaker Ramesh Talwar (‘Doosara Aadmi’, ‘Baseraa’), told PTI.

The writer formed an enduring association with Chopra, authoring the screenplay of the much talked-about flop (‘Silsila’) and penning blockbusters such as ‘Noorie’ and ‘Chandni’ (dialogue). The relationship was formed after Chopra saw ‘Mirza Sahiban’, a Sarhadi play on the Indo-Pak war. He was invited to watch it by Talwar, then an assistant to Chopra. ‘Kabhi Kabhie’ followed. ‘Tanhaii’, ‘Bhagat Singh Di Wapsi’ and ‘Bhookha Bhajan Na Hoye Gopala’ are some of his acclaimed works as a playwright.

Originally named Ganga Sagar Talwar, Sarhadi was born in Baffa, in undivided India. He took on the surname Sarhadi, from director Zia Sarhadi who had impressed him with his progressive social films (‘Footpath’, ‘Hum Log’), and because he himself came from the frontiers. Uprooted by Partition, his family came to Delhi via Srinagar. As refugees, they lived in tents before finding a home in the capital’s Mori Gate area. “There is anger in me. I want to know about those in power who make you leave your own village and make refugees out of people,” he said in the same interview. Later he moved to Bombay, graduated in English from St Xavier’s and worked as an Urdu translator in a British firm. He quit to become a professional writer.

Sarhadi had strong Left leanings, loved reading Karl Marx and was associated with the Progressive Writers Association. ‘Bazaar’ (1982), which he wrote and directed, was markedly different from the romances that had earned him fame and fortune. “I was becoming repetitive and mechanical. What else can you do in a fantasy factory?...I made a film I believed in,” he told TOI back in 1986. The film was a critical and commercial success. Pirated video cassettes even found their way to Pakistan. Sarhadi also directed ‘Tere Shaher Mein’ which linked justice to privilege, ‘Agla Mausam,’ which showed how feudalism lurks, and, more recently, ‘Chausar’ (2018). These movies were either not released or sparsely viewed.

Among those who paid tribute to him on social media were writer Javed Akhtar, lyricist Manoj Muntashir, director Anubhav Sinha and actor Hrithik Roshan. Sarhadi wrote the dialogues of ‘Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai’, Roshan’s debut film, and of ‘Deewana’, Shah Rukh Khan’s first box-office smash.

Actor Shabana Azmi tweeted, “He will be remembered by his work both in theatre n films notable amongst them #Tanhaii n #Bazaar. He drew his inspiration from life, travelled by bus n train bcoz he was a writer of d masses. We at IPTA have lost a family member.”

Nikkhil Advani is honest to a fault and admits that he should have been honest with his last film, Katti Batti. He should have revealed that Kangana Ranaut's character, Payal, went away because she had cancer. “My friend Rahul Nanda showed me a poster he'd designed of a bald Kangana saying it should have been the first poster. I shouldn't have let people believe it was a rom-com. We underestimated Kangana's power. Tanu Weds Manu had made her a Rs 160-crore star, people were expecting her to be dhasu in every film. A bald Payal after Datto would have brought them in with different expectations,“ he reasons, recalling how Dia Mirza told him after watching the preview show that the last 20 minutes had made her cry but what about the first one hour 40 minutes. He admits he might have sunk into a quagmire after Katti Batti failed, had it not been for Airlift, his first production which does not have him as director.

Slated for the Republic Day weekend, the Akshay Kumar-starrer has just come out with a two-minute-eight-second showcase to enlighten viewers that it is not on the Kandahar hijacking nor an espionage thriller like Baby but a true story of 1,70,000 Indians evacuated from Kuwait in 1990. “The response is so overwhelming that even Raja (director Raja Menon), who has been filming in stealth the last year, is taken aback. Some wonder if this really happened, others endorse it did with them, their dads and uncles and we're wondering how to sustain the expectations. But one thing's for sure, I'm never going to spin a story again,“ asserts Nikhil. “I was honest with D-Day and the animation film, Delhi Safari, was probably my most honest film. There was nothing to manipulate, it was about four animals teaching humans humanity.“

Quiz him on where he fell short with the Hero remake and he reveals that he had wanted to make it like a dark Satya with the boy in a chawl. But then he realised they were launching two debutants, Sooraj Pancholi and Athiya Shetty, and needed to make a commercial film. “So I tried not to change anything as whenever I did, it was going all over the place,“ he says.

How badly have these two films affected his market, you wonder, and Nikhil, who was without work for three years after Kal Ho Naa Ho, quips, “My phone calls are still being answered so I think I'm still relevant. Earlier, I didn't have the confidence to make calls and would only invent work for myself and Dia's filmmaker husband, Sahil Sangha, who was my assistant then.“

This time his partners, wife Suparna, friends and the 300 people who worked with him on both films pulled him out, saying, “Galti hoti hai, chalo aur ek picture banate hain.“ His next, Bazaar, revolves around two men with the stock market in the background. It is about ambition, money, power and the underbelly of the city. “And by underbelly I don't mean Dharavi and the mafia. The real debauchery happens on the 50th floor of high-rises where Rs 100 crore business deals are struck,“ he explains. “I'm learning about all this as also stocks and dividends.“

The other is a thriller on the Indian Mujahideen, a script D-Day writer Ritesh Shah gave him when he was busy with Hero and Katti Batti. “I read it after they released in my introspective phase and immediately called Ritesh to ask if he'd given it away. He was waiting for me,“ Nikhil smiles.

Next year, he'll give two of his assistants a break. Gaurav Chawla is directing a slice-of-life film about two friends who discover the value of dosti during a wedding. “It sounds cliched but it's fun,“ he promises, adding that Ranjeet Tiwari's film is inspired by a true story of convicts sentenced to life imprisonment in the Lucknow Central Jail. “They start a band and discover pride, self confidence, a reason to wake up every morning.“