Kader Khan, a hero of Indian cinema

By A.A.K. | MUMBAI

WHEN KADER KHAN was a child, he would bunk off evening prayers at the mosque and head to a nearby graveyard. There, to a captive audience, he would mimic the people he had found interesting or unusual or annoying that day, imagining their conversations and recreating their gestures. Word got around that a strange young boy was performing for the dead at night, and a local theatre group approached him to play the part of a prince. Mr Khan delivered his 40 pages of dialogue with passion and sensitivity, and won a standing ovation. “They lifted me the way they hold a Ganpati [icon of Ganesh],” he said.

His early years were tough. Born in Kabul, his three older brothers died before the age of eight. His parents migrated to Mumbai and raised Mr Khan in the slums of Kamathipura, the red-light capital of the “Maximum City”, amid drug addicts and prostitutes. They separated when he was four, and an unemployed, drunk and abusive step-father meant that he would often go hungry.

Mr Khan distracted himself with books. He pored over textbooks of mathematics, physics, applied mechanics and hydraulics, but was passionate about literature, too. He studied the works of Saadat Hassan Manto and Ghalib, acclaimed Urdu writers, and Russian authors such as Maxim Gorky and Anton Chekhov. He contemplated the stagecraft of Konstantin Stanislavsky, and gobbled up texts by Sidney Sheldon and Jeffrey Archer. As an adult he combined these interests, working as an actor and writer during the day and rushing on his clunky Lambretta scooter to teach engineering students at night.

His first big break came in 1974, when his script for “Roti” (“Bread”) made Manmohan Desai, a hotshot director, “jump with joy” (Mr Khan received a television set and a gold bracelet for his labour; his salary increased fourfold overnight). Dialogue came easy to him—one film script was dashed off in four hours—and while studios usually dictated the story, Mr Khan would make the emotional climaxes his own. His monologues avoided long words and lofty concepts. “Write colloquially for the poor folks who sit in the stalls and not [for the elite] in the balcony,” he said. Moviegoers of all kinds would cheer and whistle.

Actors, too, loved his work—it made them look good. After writing a scene Mr Khan would record himself delivering the lines, and he would urge the stars to perform it as he envisioned. Amitabh Bachchan, India’s biggest movie star, was not convinced with a 16-page soliloquy that his character was given in one blockbuster movie. He changed his mind after hearing Mr Khan’s oration.

In an industry run by camps and cliques, Mr Khan made it clear that he was a writer for hire. He refused to be tied to any single studio, and it served him well. He was at his most powerful during the 1970s and 80s when he collaborated with the most successful directors of the time on films such as “Amar Akbar Anthony” (1977), “Coolie” (1983) and “Lawaaris” (1981). Among actors, his most popular partnership was with Mr Bachchan, who played the figure of the “angry young man” taking on corrupt authorities and the world.

Yet for all his skill as a writer, Mr Khan was best loved for his turns in front of the camera. In a staggering 450 films, he played a range of comic and tragic characters, from businessmen, police constables and crooks to the grim reaper. Fans loved to him see trade barbs with Govinda, a comedy star of the 1990s, either as a trusted sidekick or a worthy opponent.

But Mr Khan grew disenchanted with Indian cinema and a new crop of directors who valued style over substance and special effects over dialogue. His film career came to an abrupt end. At 56, he took up studies in Islamic and Arab literature, earning a Master’s degree from the prestigious Osmania University in Hyderabad. As a Koranic scholar, fluent in Hindi, Urdu and Arabic, he dedicated the last decade of his life to teaching students to interpret the written word. They were treated, no doubt, to quite a show.