The study in his top floor apartment is secluded and quite the writer’s sanctuary. Below, two plainclothes men screen visitors to this suburban Mumbai building. Both realities are surreal for Javed Akhtar — the once struggling writer who slept on the streets of a city he migrated to and is now a freshly nominated Rajya Sabha member.

The police are however not there because of his newest calling card but because he ruffled some feathers by condemning the statement of a Muslim organisation that declared it was un-Islamic for women to work. Threatening messages followed.

But for Akhtar this duelling with religious orthodoxy is not new. In the past, critics have questioned his legitimacy to speak on behalf of Muslims given his self-description as an atheist. Akhtar sees no divergence between the two.

“I have no confusion about my identity as an Indian, a north Indian, or from UP, or Urdu speaking, or that I am from the Muslim community. I may not share certain beliefs with my community but this community is not a monolith,” Akhtar explains earnestly.

Decades ago, Akhtar had invited orthodoxy’s wrath when he supported the Shah Bano court verdict on a Muslim woman’s right to maintenance. But he became more vocal after the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. Till then, Akhtar says his views on issues were mostly a drawing room affair. But 1992 was a watershed year.

“If you are a thinking person, then you had better think a bit loud,” Akhtar remarks from across a busy but neat desk, dressed in crisp kurta and crisper mane, his words alternating between candour and care.

Over the decades though, progress has been made. “It was rather tough when we took a stance in the Shah Bano case but today people like me can say many things and say it to huge crowds of the community and they listen. That was unimaginable say 20 years ago,” he says.

His piercing gaze belies the occasional tremor in his right hand as he doodles on a note pad. Books and a montage of family pictures bracket his work station while the other end of the room holds a more informal seating area. And there is a stack of trophies for his work, including five National Awards as best lyricist.

That’s not surprising, for Akhtar is a sixth or seventh generation poet in the family. His parents Jan Nisar, the Urdu poet, and Safiya, writer and teacher, were part of the pre-Partition Progressive Writers Movement and their home overflowed with books and poetry. Ever since he was a child — moving from Bhopal and Aligarh to Lucknow and Mumbai — he spent hours in the company of Urdu poets of the time such as Firaq Gorakhpuri, Josh Malihabadi, Jigar Moradabadi, Sahir Ludhianvi, Ali Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Faiz Ahmed Faiz. At 12, Javed could recite thousands of Urdu couplets. Thanks to his Communist parents, his literary calories derived from Russian and Bengali literature translated into Urdu.

But those weren’t easy years. When he was eight, his mother died, and his father remarried shortly thereafter. Ties between father and son would never again be the same. Akhtar, who shuttled between relatives and was separated from a younger sibling who remained with the grandparents in Lucknow, could well have become a social misfit.

“People learn to live in any circumstance. Not that at the age of nine I was asking ‘where is my home’? I was not aware of what I was being deprived of. I was never a morose child. I was always extremely exuberant and rather mischievous.” Akhtar was popular in school where he excelled in everything from athletics to elocution, poetry to cricket, drama and even the school choir. “Everything, except academics. Life was quite exciting.”

On his website, Akhtar writes about growing up, orphaned in a sense and penniless for years. But true friends were never far. Such as Mushtaq Singh, his Sikh friend in Bhopal’s Safiya College who ensured Akhtar had food, clothes and even cigarettes. And “Master” Ejaaz who earned money by giving tuitions but always left his roommate a few rupees even after their frequent fights. Today, Mushtaq’s kada sits coiled around Akhtar’s wrist, and Master and he are still in touch.

Why was he so broke? “Because I was not earning. I think that is a decent answer, haan?” He bursts into mirth, and adds, “Obviously because I was living away from my father. I had a stepmother. I didn’t get along with them. For 3-4 years they would not have been able to tell you where I was living. I was 16-17-18 then.”

The pattern continued even when he arrived in then Bombay to make a career in films: he walked out of his father’s house after two days, and continued to be “in a bad shape, but it was busy and never bleak”. Jam sessions, parties and kind friends were as much part of his lifestyle as was being homeless and sleeping in Kamaal studio, or under a tree. “But my life was never of a regular poor boy. I was a poor boy who was constantly gate-crashing into a rich society,” recalls Akhtar.

Success, material and professional, eventually found him but there was a time when a bowl of dal was his fantasy. “Not a day goes by, and I mean not a day, that I don’t feel extremely thankful that life in grand total has been very kind,” he remarks.

A sepia portrait of his father on a wall is eye catching. Did they ever mend ties before he passed away? Yes and no. Jan Nisar respected his son’s poetic sensibility, and would narrate his works to his son whenever they met. Akhtar was 17 or 18 when his father told him about an 11-year-old relationship with a woman before he married Safiya. “I had heard about it of course, vaguely. Often, he talked at length about different chapters and relationships of his life.”

Akhtar of course found far greater success in films than his father who was also a film lyricist. He had a triumphant scripting pairing (the iconic Sholay and Deewar, to name just two) with Salim Khan till it went phut! Then he had a solo successful career as a scriptwriter and lyricist.

But success exacted its price. His 11-year-old marriage to Honey Irani, actress and scriptwriter, fell apart. His involvement with actress Shabana Azmi while still married to Honey created a huge stir at the time. Akhtar speaks of both marriages candidly.

“Gradually, after the divorce, Honey and I became very fine friends. As a person I liked her and I loved her. And I still love her for that. Not for a second will I say the marriage was a mistake. Things went wrong because of my immaturity. I did not nurture that relationship. Maybe I was young, maybe it was the first flush of success. I was not exactly penny sharp in my thinking as I should have been. I was irresponsible. I was on some kind of a high, whatever. In those 11 years there are certain moments, for which till my dying day I will feel guilty. Someone may say the bigger thing is you walked out on that marriage, but there are certain ‘smaller’ things I can never forgive myself for.”

Azmi signified the kind of priorities he now wanted. Their relationship was “more mature, less passionate, more sensible. The kind of life I have today or chose to have could only be with somebody like Shabana. It is not a story of great passionate love-crazy people but of the love of two grown-up educated people with many similarities,” he says of a marriage of 26 years that’s still going strong.

Those priorities continue to steer him. There was a time when he had forgotten everything except for films, scripts and box office. “I was within that realm that was not the complete me. Once I realised that, my priorities, my personality and friends’ circle changed.”

Was he his father’s son as a parent? Perhaps — but with a happier outcome. Akhtar wrote the dialogues for daughter Zoya’s directorial debut Luck by Chance (in which he and Azmi make an appearance) and co-scripted son Farhan’s Lakshya. “It (bonding) did not happen overnight. It took a little time for me to compensate as much as I could but you cannot compensate totally if you cause this much damage. It took a little time for Zoya and Farhan also to overcome that sense of loss they must have had,” Akhtar says bluntly, giving Irani the credit for maintaining civility as their parents.

In a life that has been as eventful as his, there are several regrets but Akhtar has no wish to rewrite history. “Life is a very tightly written scenario. I like the script on the whole. I may be very unhappy about certain scenes where my role is rather villain-ish but if I remove those scenes certain other scenes which are the highlight of the scenario will also go away,” he chuckles.

The new Elder is now trying to get his second book of poetry to the publisher (“it was ready five months ago”) and writing a film on Rabindranath Tagore. Will he follow in his children’s footsteps and ever direct a film? “Who knows? After all, I came to Bombay to become a director.” The script, clearly, can still be tweaked.