Javed Akhtar reached a significant milestone in his life yesterday — the screenwriter-lyricist turned 80. Reflecting on the occasion, he shares, “You keep moving ahead, milestones come and go. Ultimately, it’s just the planet rotating on its axis around the sun. It’s a seamless process, usse humne birthdays bana diye hain lakeerein kheench ke. We should not take it seriously.”

When asked about his plans for the big day, Akhtar reveals, “I was at my farmhouse, and I called some close friends and family over. There was a grand celebration when I turned 75, but now I think it’s enough, we’ve done everything.”

Looking back at the eight decades gone by, he says that life has been kind: “The grand total is in my favour. There have been ups and downs, but I am in profit, so no complaints.”

About the best gift he has received in his lifetime, Akhtar shares, “I think the best gift is my children. They have done well in their lives. It becomes an emotionally and socially aesthetic situation, if both your children go on to achieve so much.”

“When people ask me to cut a cake, I feel awkward, as I hadn’t as a kid,” says writer-lyricist Javed Akhtar, who turns 76 today. “Birthday ek rasm hai. Mohabbat hai, toh dost aa jaate hain. If you are born in a well-to-do family where parents enjoy celebrating birthdays, you feel different, but humne toh dekha nahi tha. Poor kids don’t celebrate birthdays, I started doing so only after growing up,” he adds.

With his wife, actor Shabana Azmi, shooting in England, Akhtar says there won’t be any party. “I won’t be doing anything. I doubt anyone will turn up, especially due to Coronavirus,” he says.

In his trademark humour, he calls 2020 ‘the year that never was’. He admits that in their 36 years of marriage, the couple never spent so much time together as they did last year. “Both of us are compulsive travellers and usually away from home, so it was pleasant to stay in a house together for over three months. Shabana and I enjoyed our Khandala home, which we would visit for weekends, only on occasions. We saw many movies, read a lot and introspected, too. We got time to be with ourselves,” he says.

Last year, there were rumours of his son, Farhan Akhtar, planning to get married to Shibani Dandekar. Has he spoken to Farhan about marriage or the rumours? “I believe once kids become adults, they have a right to their privacy and asking them personal questions is a no-no. If they offer personal information, you should listen, but never probe, enquire or question them. It is not a decent thing. If my kids want to share their personal lives with me, I would be most happy to listen. But, I never probe or ask personal questions to my kids,” he signs off. 

Javed Akhtar turns 70 today. He is not just one of the brightest minds India has, but is deeply emotional and sensitive. He considers himself a mixture of good and bad. And while he may be clever to hide some of his bads, there is a strong sense of fairness that does not allow him to do some things. He is competitve but never jealous, he is ambitious but never insecure. Over a cup of South Indian filter coffee at his house that opens up my mind, he opens up his heart to us. Excerpts:

Javed sahab, how do you feel at 70?
Honestly speaking, I feel quite surprised that I am 70. My thinking, my ambition, my greed for life is totally what it was perhaps when I was in my thirties. I am yet to develop a philosophical or disinterested attitude towards life. I am very much involved and full of dreams and hopes. For a very long time, I have not written a script that everybody has said a wow to. I want to write a good script.

Who do you love the most in the world?
Both my children and my wife are very important people to me.

Let's talk about Shabanaji?
Shabana is basically my friend. We happen to be married. Our friendship is so strong that even marriage could not break it. We got married as people thought that you have to be married. What is important is there are so many things that we share, like our basic values and our aesthetics. And there are many matters on which we differ from each other. But if we are totally similar, then you should not live with a person who is exactly like you as you are enough alone. And if you are totally different, then too, you can't function together. So I think there is a right kind of balance between similarity and dissimilarity between us. She is a very strong woman with a strong sense of fairness and desire for justice all around. We have come from the same training school. Her parents were poets, leftists, involved in progress of writers' movements. We both, in our own way, have learnt to be progressive, liberal, areligious and as a matter of fact almost anti-religious values. But she is dangerously frank. That makes me uncomfortable. I generally don't do that. Much like all cultural civilisations, I am diplomatic.

Talk about your children Farhan and Zoya Akhtar?
As far as Zoya and Farhan are concerned, a million times I may toss a coin and it will always stand straight between the two. The relationship with Farhan is that, between two men. He has his own life, his own family, so I can't treat him like just a son. He is a young man, who is close to me and happens to be my son, but a man in his own right. With Zoya, perhaps there is more of betakallufi (informality). She will take liberties with me that Farhan will never do. Perhaps she is a girl, though she may not accept that and there is a kind of father-daughter relationship. If she will disapprove my point of view or any idea of mine, she will say it on top of her voice and will fight with me, which Farhan will not. Farhan may express his dissent and will then drop the topic. Most of the time he keeps his opinions to himself. I won't say that about Zoya. She is very straight in these matters. Farhan does not fight at all, she does and may be, I may have a little softer corner for her. Like all normal kids, when I ask them to do something, they generally get very irritated, but it's uncanny how both of them come to know when something is really important for me. For instance, if there is someone from the past who they have never even met, but they come to know it really matters to me, they will leave everything and come.

What makes one love some people?
If you are very thirsty, you may have any drink, but it will not give you the satisfaction that water will give you. Water is one thing that has no taste and you not only accept that, but it gives you tremendous satisfaction. While drinking water, I have tried to understand why it is giving me so much pleasure, but I have not been able to.This is how love is. I have tried to analyse how much I love my daughter, but I can't. I don't love her because of the genes running in her veins. She is my daughter and the fact is that I love the both of them. When you can't make a circle or a boundary around the emotion, that makes me think of the universe. Perhaps every emotion is like a universe. How do you draw a map of it or how do you describe its form?

What is Zoya like?
She has a very analytical mind with very clear thinking. Whatever her thinking is, it's not off the shelf. Fashions of thoughts or certain trends don't impress her. Whether I will agree with it or not she is extremely logical. And for that, she will have to give little credit to her genes.

And Farhan?
Sometimes I look at my children and in a way, feel that I am a split between them. Farhan, so many say, has a lot of resemblance with me like his sense of humour. Now, I meet kids who tell me,'Sir you resemble Farhan Akhtar a lot.' I told one of them, 'You are saying it now, but people have been telling me this since my school days.' But there are certain qualities he has that have come from his mother Honey, like his being extremely organised and disciplined. Zoya again has straight attitude. She never lies and she says what she means and means what she says and that comes from Honey. I can't take credit for that.

You have too much talent and brightness between the three of you. Who is the brightest?
Whatever I may say, it will sound immodest, but we all have different strengths. Look at Farhan, the kind of discipline, focus, concentration and the kind of learning he went through for his role in Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is highly appreciative. I wonder if I could do that. When I read Zoya's script be it for Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara or now for Dil Dhadakne Do which she is making, I really wonder if I could write this kind of script. So how can I think that I am brighter than my children, as they are doing things that create some kind of awe and respect in my heart for them. But then there are things like poetry or language or wit that I have. But I also know that I have had the advantage of my elders that I had and they, the disadvantage that they had me. I got better exposure and training than they got.

Talk about the role of Salim Khan sahab in your life?
Salim sahab has played a very very important role that is unparalled in my life. We were together as partners for 11-12 years, but those years are the most important part of my life in a way. And I don't think anybody can replace him in the importance of my life. We met when we were both young people. With time we change, you develop different friends, different circles. Ultimately, your priorities, your aesthetics, your point of focus and so on and then your morality and then your basic values keep on changing. Sometimes we meet and we feel great warmth and discuss the old stories and are constantly joking about those people we suffered together. We have a big treasure of anecdotes that we share. I love the courage in him. As a matter of fact, that impacted the kind of writer he was and that took Salim Javed where we reached. He could take chances. To a great extent, I would say, I have learnt this from him. Perhaps had I not met him, I would not have this kind of attitude that I developed. Perhaps had I not met him, I may not have been able to stand up against these music companies and fight a war of copyrights. I could see his courage. And in our partnership where we reached, in our pride, in our name, his contribution is unbelievable. He is not inhibited by the Hindi cinema tradition. The idea of the angry young man in Zanjeer or Gabbar chopping Thakur's hands in Sholay in an era where heroes would be only singing songs in a film, were Salim sahab's ideas that we both developed into screenplays together. Salim Javed took a price higher than the male stars of that time, but that could only happen due to the courage and dynamism in those scripts.

You lost your mother at the age of eight. Do you miss her?
I did not realise the loss immediately then, although when I look back, I was traumatised by her death. By the time I became a teenager, I started missing her very badly. I would look at the mother of my friends and think and fantastise that this woman would have been a mother or no, that would have been a better mother. Also I missed physical touch. But I never allowed myself to get into it and when I became 17, I closed that department in my mind. I lived with my mother in Lucknow. My mother had written several letters to my father, which were published into a book and are today, a piece of literature. For a very long time, I just read one letter from here and one from there, but I did not allow myself to feel that I was missing her or that I was hurt, because I knew that it is not good for me. At this age, I now have the guts to talk about it and for the first time in my life, I have dedicated my upcoming new book to her. I remember her very clearly. What she said, what she taught me. She would tell me about the novels she was reading. I was in first standard. When I would come back from school, I remember she told me of some underground workers, who were resisting narcissists' control over a Russian town. I recently read all her letters. In one of her letters, she has written, 'I have heard of this new thing called plastic that has come. And if there is a sample of it, send it to me.' Then it was sent to us by my father, who was at that time living in Mumbai. He was a communist, was teaching in a government school and there was a warrant for him, so he had to be underground. When I was five, I was convinced that Stalin is my grandfather. I remember very clearly that when it dawned upon me that it is not true, as someone explained it to me, I was very disappointed, almost traumatic and I felt, 'Oh, we are not related?' So with the plastic sheet he had sent her, she made a bag and a handle with clothes. That bag was full of small cardboard cards and every card had one Urdu word. So when I would come back from school, she would play a game, where she would show me the card and I would read it. I learnt my Urdu from her. She was the one who told me that being a poet and a writer is a big thing. Aaj bhi that sense of loss is there with me and I feel theek nahi hua mere saath. But life is a very tightly-knit screenplay. If my mother had not died, my life would have been entirely different. If you are satisfied with your present and don't have a major complaint with your life, then whether you like it or you don't, you have to accept your past unconditionally ... choice nahi hai. The moment, you will remove scene no. 32 from your life, scene no. 78, 97 will all go.