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Is Javed Akhtar worth the hype around him? With the spotlight on Nita Ambani and a string of achievers from the same gender, Javed was the sole male on the dais in what was an essentially all-women seminar (organised by the ladies’ wing of the Indian Merchants’ Chamber).
With all the silks and pearls swishing around at a five-star Sobo hotel, Javed Akhtar fetched up in his usual cotton kurta and silver head of hair. But once he went before the mike, with no audio-visual aids (Ms Ambani had it all professionally laid out when it was her turn) and no achievement stories of his own to spout, Javed had a hall full of women hanging on to every word he uttered.
The topic: women, of course. Javed Akhtar simply took on popular beliefs (like the mother being the figure of ultimate respect) and frequent events (in-laws hauled up for dowry deaths) and gave them all a refreshing new perspective.
Putting the mother figure on a pedestal, Javed thundered, was an insidious male way of putting all other women down. “If my mother gave birth to me on January 17, was she a less respectful figure on the 16th?” he asked. When he hears of dowry victims his blood boils, he said, against the girl’s parents for not empowering her. Interestingly, it was not the common tirade against in-laws — he hauled up the parents because they are the people who should be allowing the girl child to blossom from the very beginning.
Javed Akhtar warned his gender that women were slowly coming into their own and that it wouldn’t be long before they took control of the world. Said he, a frog who’s put in boiling water will jump out and save himself. But if the water is slowly heated, the frog won’t even realise when it turned too hot for him to survive. By likening men to frogs, he warned that the water around them was slowly getting heated and they were not even aware of it.
The 67-year-old writer who hails from a family of seven generations of poets spoke with humour and insight for nearly an hour, never once allowing his speech to turn dull or dark. One of the reasons it went down so well with the audience was because it wasn’t just pretty rhetoric. His filmmaker-daughter Zoya Akhtar (of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara fame), an accomplished young woman who was out there at the front table listening to her dad, was proof that the man on the dais had acted on the words he spouted. Independent thinking Zoya, who steadfastly avoids marriage but is in a relationship, and her brother Farhan have had equal opportunities in the Akhtar family and their individual success stories are there for all to see. Incidentally, Zoya was there not as daddy’s little girl; she had been invited to be a panelist on one of the discussions that followed later in the day.
You see pretty much the same kind of atmosphere prevailing in the Bhatt office. Mahesh Bhatt, brother Mukesh and their sundry protégés (nephews Mohit Suri, Emraan Hashmi and unrelated directors like Vikram Bhatt) put together projects, sharing mind space and enthusiasm with daughter Pooja who has begun Jism 2 . By the way, apart from their interest in filmmaking, Pooja has one more thing in common with her dad: she too has lost a lot of weight and is almost back to looking like she did when she had a successful career as an actor. A little more load-shedding and maybe Pooja herself will star in Jism 3? She took that like a sport and batted back, “Maybe Jism 6 because 6 is my lucky number.”
Last Sunday, in an eerie coincidence, this column talked of Joy Mukherjee (the story was on his son’s marriage). The paper wasn’t even out in the market when Joy was wheeled into Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital in the wee hours of Sunday morning with a serious lung collapse. Saw him on the ventilator in the ICU, in a coma. (Joy Mukherjee died last Friday).
A cheery thought: Calcutta and its culture come into sharp focus, almost like an important character in the film Kahaani. With little money to shoot, the scenes of surging crowds during Durga Puja were all filmed guerrilla style while the actual festivities were on. “I couldn’t possibly afford to put up sets and stage crowded Puja scenes,” explained director Sujoy Ghosh. “Vidya (or Bidya, as the cop in the film calls her) gave her life for this film. I hope I’ve lived up to the faith she reposed in me.” With Kahaani turning out to be a film worthy of National Award winner Ms Balan’s presence, the city has turned out to be one of joy for Sujoy.
