Famous Bollywood Veteran Writer/Actor and Inida’s Kader Khan passes away, age 81

Kader Khan passes away, age 81 

In his prime, Khan was both Bollywood’s premier and most-prolific dialogue writer, penning many of Amitabh Bachchan hits. Versatility was his USP, his mastery over the craft deceptively informal. The Kabul-born writer’s dialogues could produce claps and wolf-whistles from frontbenchers, evoke laughter or make handkerchiefs wet. He wrote lines that both taporis and raffish college students with upturned collars would repeat outside the theatres: Is thappad ki goonj suni tumne, ab is goonj ki goonj tumhe sunai degi (Karma, 1986), or, Aisa to aadmi life mein do heech time bhaagta hai... Olympic ka race ho ya phir police ka case ho (Amar Akbar Anthony, 1977) and many more. 

Khan had the gift of making the asinine sound funny: Sarkar agar is gaon ke sar hain to main uska seeng hoon. Aur jo hamari baat nahi manta main use seeng marke Singapore bana deta hoon (Himmatwala, 1983). In Ghar Sansar (1986), when the daughter reacts to her father’s lecture, saying, “This is too much,” he replies, “Not too much, three much, balki magarmachh, lekin bilkul sach.” Go figure!. He could be ribald as well; some double-meaning dialogues make one wonder at the innocence of the Censors.

In popular memory, Khan endures more as a comedian, especially in the bawdy and brassy Jeetendra movies of the 1980s South or in the 1990s Govinda-David Dhawan combos. He sketched characters either with a recognizable quirk (a nasal drawl in Himmatwala, for instance) or with a tendency to repeat a catchphrase (Itihas mat poocho, main jo kehta hoon woh suno, in Mawaali, 1983) - something that the audience would take home, relive and relish.

He brought an oddball flourish to his characters. Khan could be mean (Naseeb, 1981), mean but funny (Dulhe Raja, 1998), downright funny (Mujhse Shaadi Karogi, 2004), even the family’s suffering patriarch (Jaisi Karni Waisi Bharni, 1989). In his prime, he could also be the central performer (Baap Numbri, Beta Dus Numbri, 1990) in the movie.

Perhaps his hardy early life invested him with a mélange of emotions, gave him a hands-on feel of the popular pulse. Khan overcame a poverty-stricken Bombay childhood to become a college theatre star, a civil engineer and a teacher of science and mathematics. His career as a Hindi film writer began at the cajoling of director Narinder Bedi who had seen him perform at a theatre competition.

He co-wrote Bedi’s superhit Jawani Diwani (1972) with the well-established writer Inder Raj Anand. “I got Rs 1,500 for the job,” Khan recalled in an interview to The Bollywood Dynasty, available on YouTube.

Director Manmohan Desai asked him to write the dialogue for Roti’s climax (1974) though he was skeptical about Khan’s ability to deliver. Khan recalled that Desai was “deewanawar” (ecstatic) after hearing his lines. The director heard it four times, went inside his house, grabbed a Toshiba black and white TV and gifted it to him. “He also gave me a gold bracelet. Then he asked me, ‘What’s your price?’ When I said, I had received Rs 21,000 for writing Rafoochakkar, he said, ‘Manmohan Desai’s writer should get more.’ He gave me Rs 1.21 lakh. Suddenly, I was a lakhpati. He also called up other writers to say this is how dialogues are written, learn from him,” Khan said in the same interview.

In 1970s and ’80s, he wrote regularly for both Desai and Prakash Mehra, Bombay cinema’s biggest directors of the time. “I was once asked whose camp do you belong to. I said both are in my camp,” he said on Ek Mulaqat Star Ke Saath. The quip showed both his confidence and clout.

In a career spanning over 100 films as a dialogue writer and more than 400 films as an actor, Khan was involved in a pasticcio of movies: good, bad, indifferent. But as a producer of his only film, Shama (1981), he strove to bring good literature to celluloid. The movie was based on noted Bengali writer Jarasandha’s (real name Charu Chandra Chakraborty) story. The Girish Karnad-Shabana Azmi starrer, set in pre- and post-independence India, mapped the travails of a Muslim aristocratic family. Unfortunately, that labour of love was lost.

"He slipped into coma in the afternoon and passed away at 6 pm Canadian time due to prolonged illness. He was in the hospital for 16-17 weeks. The last rites will be performed in Canada,” Khan's son Sarfaraz told PTI.

News source: Times of India, TNNAvijit GhoshUpdated: Jan 2, 2019, 14:27 IST https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/writer-actor-kader-khan-passes-away/articleshow/67339985.cms