The cutting words of a gentle man

I first met the poet, lyricist and screen-writer Javed Akhtar in about 1975 at Mehboob Studios in Bombay. He was with his writing partner, Salim Khan (Salim-sahib), and the two of them were at the peak of their extraordinary career, with Zanjeer and Deewar already hits, and Sholay about to become a Bollywood classic. For someone just starting out as an actor, meeting Salim-Javed was a big moment for me.

They must have heard about me - a "white man" who spoke Hindi and Urdu - because Javed immediately greeted me in chaste Urdu, inquiring about my general health and more directly about how busy I was and how work was going. There was a sparkle in his eye, and that naughty smile playing on his lips. For even as he asked about my welfare, he was testing me, gauging me; I was an interesting new specimen for him, and he wanted to know what I was really up to. (My Urdu must have passed the test, because Javed still speaks to me in that same chaste fashion whenever we meet.) This is the magic of Javed Akhtar: the insatiable curiosity about human beings, which feeds the artist and writer in him. And it emerges eloquently in this series of interviews that Nasreen Munni Kabir has put together.

Two themes dominate the conversations: the need for an artist to be constantly alive to change, within and without; and the power and grace of both the spoken and written word.

It is not by chance that Javed's life mirrors that of independent India. He was born two years before independence, and today, like the country he cares so strongly about, Javed is facing changes in life and art that are occurring at an incredible pace. These conversations with Javed are, in fact, conversations with independent India, with Javed as the most eloquent of spokesmen.

He brings to them generations of literary excellence, literary challenge. Javed's father, a communist poet, recited the Communist Manifesto to the baby instead of the holy Koran and inspired him both to rebel and to write.His mother died when he was only eight. Relatives and friends brought him up, in that amazing network of love and concern that was the north Indian family post-independence.

Books, first in Urdu and then in English, filled the thoughts of young Javed. Films, an expensive alternative, were a once-a-month highlight. This dosage made him a writer, whereas today's overdose of films and television would have produced a totally different Javed - and he knows it.

And that is why he can write today for today's world, not now as a screen-writer, but as a lyricist and a poet. That tremendous childhood grounding in the written word gave Javed the freedom and the strength to reach out to anyone with his pen, or indeed with the spoken word, as he does in this book.

Listen to him speak about the dilemma facing today's Indian, in comparison with the Indian of Salim-Javed's hits of the 1970s, which dealt with the relatively simple challenges of social injustice and inequality. "At the moment, people are experiencing socio-political chaos. There is no well-defined establishment before them. Strange things are happening, they are bewildered. Today's people are looking for a balm. The feel-good factor. They're tired of anger, they're cynical and even tired of being cynical. They want to see things that are nice and gentle. Pleasant things that will settle upon their nerves like a feather. That's a feeling I share too."

Kabir's probing, often emotional, questions bring out the best in Javed. The only regret is that we do not hear his Urdu, which is the language of his thoughts and dreams: the language that provides the slivers of emotion Javed is constantly searching for. Either condemned or loved for purely political reasons, Urdu is also part of the story of independent India, and it survives as a language thanks to Javed in no small measure. Its slivers of emotion - the silk and steel of language - are part of India's heritage.

One finishes this book with a feeling of being cut by those slivers, of being tested, though not without love. "There is nothing more interesting than people. But I have a weakness for people who are bright and have a good sense of humour. I have a respect for nice people, but I'd rather spend an evening with an interesting person."

Javed's final question of himself is: "Where do you intend to go from here?" His reply is: "It's a continuing process, one develops and changes, and whatever we've discussed is already in the past. If I live, what will I do? I don't know whether I'll continue song-writing or start working on something else. Who knows? Energy is the thing I bother about. And if I have the energy, I'll be able to do things." We Indians await his latest gift.

Tom Alter is an actor and writer based in Bombay.