‘Sanjeev Kumar would show up on set 5 hours late, Shatrughan Sinha would arrive at 5 pm for 2 pm shift’: Shabana Azmi recalls complaining to her mother

She said, “There was a time when I was working with Sanjeev Kumar in a film by Gulzar saab called Namkeen, and then in the evening I was working on a film called Jwalamukhi, with Prakash Mehra and Shatrughan Sinha. Yeh toh likha hua tha ki 7 baje ki shift hai, par Sanjeev Kumar Film City 12:30 se pehle nahi pahunchenge. Late Lateef number one (It was a given that Sanjeev Kumar wouldn’t show up at Film City before 12:30 in the afternoon). Aur phir 2 baje ki shift mein Shatrughan 5 baje se pehle nahi pahunchenge (And Shatrughan wouldn’t show up before 5 pm for a 2 pm shift).”

She continued, “We used to have continuous shootings, so I’d get very, very tired. So, I had a choice, when I moved from Film City to Filmistaan, should I eat or should I sleep? It was so, so completely hectic. My mother said something to me… I said, ‘Mummy, Sanjeev Kumar is never going to come on time, please let me sleep’. And she said, ‘No bete, your commitment isn’t to Sanjeev Kumar, it is to your producer, and your producer has kept the 7-2 shift. You can go and sleep there, but you must be on time’. These are the kind of disciplines I’ve internalised.

Shabana also said that on the other hand, she admired Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor’s punctuality. She recalled that Waheeda Rehman once told her that in the film business, the biggest virtue is patience because there’s often endless waiting involved, and by losing your patience, you end up harming only yourself.