Javed Akhtar opens up about complicated relationship with his father, coping with mother’s death: ‘Life is a tightly written script, you can’t edit it’

Javed Akhtar, renowned lyricist and screenwriter, says that despite his traumatic childhood, he wouldn’t want to change anything that has happened to him in his life.

By: Entertainment Desk

New Delhi | Updated: March 17, 2024 10:45 PM IST

3 min read

Javed Akhtar opened up about his tragic childhood. (Photos: Express Archives & X/@HeritageTimesIN)

Bollywood’s noted lyricist and screenwriter, Javed Akhtar, who is the son of renowned poet and film songwriter Jan Nisar Akhtar and writer Safiya Siraj-ul Haq, has always been vocal about his strained relationship with his father. The Sholay co-writer, who lost his mother at an early age, has often talked about his tumultuous relationship with his stepmother, which ultimately led him to live apart from his father. Despite a disturbed and traumatic childhood, wherein he grew up without the love of his parents, the wordsmith says he has no regrets and wouldn’t want to change anything about his life.

In a recent interview with Mojo Story, Javed opened up about not wanting to alter the series of unfortunate events in his early life, including his mother’s tragic demise. He observed that changing any particular incident would, in turn, change the trajectory of his life. “Life is a package, you can’t pick and choose,” the 79-year-old Padma Vibhushan-awardee writer said. “It (life) is a very tightly written script. If I fantasised that my mother didn’t die when I was just eight years old — because it was traumatic — and I removed the scenes and re-edited them, my life would have been different and so many scenes would change and many highlights would go away.”

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Javed, who lamented the death of his mother and growing up without her, added, “My life would be something else. If I am thankful to my life today, then I must accept my past gracefully. That past has brought me here. I can’t edit it.”

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In an earlier interview with the BBC, Javed had opened up about his father’s shortcomings despite his greatness as a poet. “Sometimes, children have complaints about their fathers. But a man cannot be everything. He was a poet and generally a person of his stature gets irresponsible in other aspects of life. So, he probably was like that. He was a good poet but he failed in the other roles.” Javed was raised by his grandparents.

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