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Kader Khan: "I've had no affairs"

Kader Khan reviews his life and gives himself a clean chit. Filmfare talks to the veteran who has taken to teaching Islam

Much before I meet Kader Khan, a whiff of attar welcomes me. A host of books on Islamic literature grace the shelves in his office. A voluminous Bhagwad Gita holds the pride of place amidst the Arabic texts. Bearded Islamic scholars are working single-mindedly on the keyboard. The 70 plus veteran gets up from his chair to acknowledge me, albeit with a little difficulty. He's recently had a knee surgery. "I'm better but I need the support of a walking stick," he says. "I ran away from the industry in the past seven to eight years. I've been studying the Holy Quran. Six months back, I was in Dubai and took classes in Arabic and Islamic studies."

Poor child!
The graveyard was his playground. A young Kader Khan sort refuge amidst the silent tombs of the Israeli cemetery from his one-room tenement in swarming Kamathipura (a notorious red-light area in Mumbai) and the decree of offering namaz by his mother. And there he acted out all that he had seen during the day, the good, the bad and the dramatic! It was here that actor Ashraf Khan (seen in Mehboob Khan's Roti) spotted the 10-year-old one night. "I was acting out something when a torch flashed on me. It was Ashraf Khan. He asked me, 'Will you perform with the same junoon (passion) in my play?' That's how I played the role of a young prince in his drama Wamaq Azra (a fabled love story)," narrates Khan adding, "My performance received a standing ovation. I was carried around like Ganpati."

Cut to Prakash Mehra's Muqaddar Ka Sikander (1978), a film for which he wrote the dialogue and even played a fakir in. The cemetery scene has him telling child actor Mayur (played the young Amitabh Bachchan) weeping at his mother's grave, "Sukh to bewafaa hai… magar dukh to hameshaa ka saathi hai. Dukh ko gale lagaa…aur tu muqaddar kaa badshah hogaa (happiness is an infidel…but sorrow is a friend. Embrace sorrow and you will be the emperor of your destiny)." It seemed a watershed moment for the writer-actor who sort of exorcised his troubled childhood.

Teacher's tales
After much strife he completed his education and took to teaching (was a lecturer at the M H Saboo Siddik Polytechnic and Technical High School) and even won the Best Teacher Award. "I used to simplify dry subjects like Hydraulics, Thermodynamics and Applied Mechanics and make them fun. I'd make the weak students sit in the front row, encourage them to ask questions and even take the class," says Khan, a civil engineer, who sought creative nourishment in theatre and its heroes Stanislavsky, Chekhov and Dostoevsky. "In the evenings my father, Maulvi Abdul Rehman, would attend my class. He was an Arabic and Urdu scholar. He thought that if I could make such dry subjects so interesting, it would be wonderful if I taught Islam and made it intelligible."

Yen for the pen
It was easier for him to opt out of the glam world because he was never attached to it. "I didn't come in the industry, I was brought here. Yes, theatre was my passion. Narendra Singh Bedi, Rajendra Singh Bedi and Kamini Kaushal saw my plays and asked me to join the industry," he says. He then wrote the dialogue of Jawani Diwani (directed by Narendra Bedi) for which he was paid Rs 1500. The boom came with writing the dialogue of Manmohan Desai's blockbuster Roti. "Manji declared, 'My writer will be paid Rs 1, 21, 000'." He went on to pen more hits for Desai including Parvarish, Amar Akbar Anthony and Coolie. He also wrote for another titan of that era, director Prakash Mehra —Laawaris, Muqaddar Ka Sikander, and Sharabi were all blockbusters. And Amitabh Bachchan was the common superstar in the Desai and Mehra potboilers.

The romance for life
For someone who wrote the tragically romantic Muqaddar Ka Sikander, there must have been a tender side to his personality too. "Perhaps yes! A girl had come close to me but Maa ne belan se maar maar kar mujhe suja diya (mother beat me with a rolling pin and my face got swollen)," he laughs. "That romanticism then expressed itself through my pen. Bahut gurbat dekhi hai (I've seen stark poverty) and so I was not taken up by glamour. I've a clean record. I've had no affairs. Anyone else in my position would have had at least a dozen. But there's been none," asserts Kader. Right now, it's all about aging well with wife Azra and spending quality time with sons Quddus, Sarfaraz and Shahnawaz!

http://www.filmfare.com/articles/kader-khan-ive-had-no-affairs-2319.html

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