Javed Akhtar blames alcoholism for failed first marriage with Honey Irani: ‘I would become a very nasty man’

Sharing how alcoholism took a toll on his first marriage, he said, “I started drinking at the age of 20-21 and left when I was 42 years old. I could afford a bottle and used to drink almost a bottle every night. It’s very common for Urdu poetics to become big drunkards because they believe that if they are poets and artistes, they should be carefree and you should drink. I think I had those wrong values.”

He added, “On the other side, all the tehzeeb that I learned in Lucknow didn’t allow me to use foul language, so all the bitterness was compressed inside me. But when I used to drink all those barriers will break and I would become a very nasty man and would use foul language. I used to become another person. It was unhealthy, irrational and causing problem to many people. It impacted my marriage with Honey. If I was a sober and responsible person, the story would have been different.”

Javed AKhtar also revealed that his second wife and veteran actor Shabana Azmi ‘somehow managed’ his alcoholism for the first ’10 years of their marriage’. However, at the age of 42, Akhtar himself realised that he might ‘die soon’ if he keeps on drinking the same way.