Veteran screenwriter Javed Akhtar has chronicled his battle with the bottle, which he says stunted his growth in his peak years. Akhtar, who remains as one of the greatest screenwriters of the country, opened up about his alcoholism and said if he could go back in time, he would ask his younger self to never touch the bottle as he “wasted” at least a “decade” dealing with it.
In an interview with Be A Man, Yaar, Javed Akhtar was asked if he took to alcohol because he had suppressed emotions. The writer noted it could have been the case, as he would become a “devil” after getting drunk.
“May be there were bottled up emotions, the anger, the bitterness. That is why after drinking I would become quite offensive, which I a otherwise not, nor ever was. This would never happen in my sober moments. But peekey koi ek dusra devil nikal aata tha (when I was drunk, a devil would emerge from within me).
“The few good things I have done in life included quitting alcohol. July 31, 1991 was the last time I drank. I never took a sip of champagne after that. Not even during a celebratory cheers,” he said in the interview. When host Nikhil Taneja asked the 79-year-old what would he tell his younger self, Akhtar replied, “I would tell him that the 20-25 years he drank alcohol, he shouldn’t do that.” The writer said he could have utilised his time better if he was away from the bottles.
“Bohot time waste hua usmey. I think I wasted at least a decade of my life where I could do much more, but because of all this, I wasted it. I could have done so much, learn a musical instrument, could learn another language like French or Persian. I had the time and the facility, but I wasted my time, which is not good. I had to learn a lot more,” he added.
In a previous interview, his wife, actor Shabana Azmi had opened up about the time when Javed Akhtar was drinking excessively and described this phase as “difficult.” In a chat with Arbaaz Khan for The Invincibles, Shabana recalled how Javed gave up drinking.
“He knew that if I go on like this, I won’t live for long and I won’t be able to do my work creatively,” she recalled. Speaking about the day when Javed announced that he would give up drinking, Shabana said, “We were in a flat in London. He was stinking of alcohol and I said ‘oh my god, this is going to be one of those trips. Very quietly he told me ‘Make me some breakfast’. He had breakfast and after that he told me, ‘I am not going to drink anymore.'”
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