When Shabana Azmi came to receive a hungover Javed Akhtar at the airport, didn’t know he’d ‘quit drinking’ the night before

When asked if his drinking affected his relationship with Shabana, Javed said, “Obviously, she was not in love with me because I was drinking. She was in love with in spite of my drinking.” He added that Shabana was “very happy” when he stopped drinking. “I released yeh bevakoofi hai jo main kar raha hun. Isme koi glamour nahi hai, koi dignity nahi hai, koi charm nahi hai. (I realised what I was doing was stupid. There is no glamour, dignity or charm in this).”

Javed also recalled that a couple of years after he quit drinking, he also stopped smoking. He recalled an anecdote from the early 1990s when he was asked to visit a cardiologist. While he was waiting for his appointment, he told Shabana that the doctor will surely ask him to stop smoking, and his “conscience will not accept that I stop smoking because someone has asked me to.” So before walking in, he threw the packet of cigarettes in the dustbin there and then. “Voh din hai aur aaj ka din maine cigarette nai pi (I haven’t smoked since that day),” he said.

Javed first opened up about his issues with alcohol on Aamir Khan’s chat show Satyamev Jayate.