Sleeping Under Trees, Then Writing Bollywood Legends

Javed Akhtar was born in 1945 in Gwalior and grew up in several cities, including Lucknow. He arrived in Bombay, now Mumbai, on 4 October 1964, aged 19, at Bombay Central station with 27 naya paise in his pocket. He went first to his father's home, but his father had remarried and had another family, and his stepmother made clear that he was not welcome.

In a post on X, quoted by the Free Press Journal in 2025, as he reflected on his 61 years in the city, Akhtar wrote that he had gone through homelessness, starvation and unemployment. In a 2006 interview with Hindustan Times, he said that he slept wherever he could, sometimes on a verandah, sometimes in a corridor and sometimes under a tree, alongside other homeless, jobless people.

At one point he slept at the studio of the film director Kamal Amrohi, Mahal Pictures, on a plank laid across two wooden crates at the entrance of the first studio floor. He had no bedding, but he placed the plank so that light from the floor fell on him, and he could read at night. His first job was as an apprentice at Mahal Pictures, paying Rs 50. The Hindustan Times article describes two years of intense struggle in Bombay.

His first break in films came in November 1969. He later teamed up with Salim Khan, and the partnership made 24 films together, 20 of them successes, among them Sholay, Deewar, Trishul and Don. Akhtar wrote much of the dialogue, including famous lines from Deewar and Don. He later became one of India's best-known lyricists and poets. He married Honey Irani in 1972 and Shabana Azmi in 1984.