Nasreen Munni Kabir: Can we go back to the time you first came in Bombay to settle down here? I remember you once told me you arrived on  October 4, 1964. You were 19 years old and that’s when you began looking for work in films. What drew you to films?
Javed Akthar: There was no shame for a writer to work in films because almost all the important poets and prose writers were working in the film industry at that time; they were either writing dialogue, screenplays or songs. 

Don’t forget, my father was already working in films as a songwriter. He had not reached the position of Sahir, Shailendra or Majrooh Sultanpuri, although he was doing well. I must admit I did not try to get into films because of those great writers—frankly, I came to Bombay because Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor and directors like Guru Dutt, Mehboob Khan, Bimal Roy and K Asif were working in films. I thought the film industry was glamorous and I was seduced by the world of Hindi cinema and I wanted to be a director. At 19, one does not always have a clear plan. The only thing I was certain about was wanting the dialogue writer Akhtar-ul Iman to write the dialogue for my first film. He was a well-known Urdu poet and wrote excellent dialogue for many films, including BR Chopra’s courtroom drama Kanoon. It was a film without songs, which is still a rarity in Indian cinema. His lines for Nana Palsikar’s character in Kanoon were sharp and incisive.