Multifaceted genius

Moviegoers may remember Kader Khan most for his slapstick humour and his villain roles, but his was a many-splendoured talent enriched by his scholarship and his mastery over the written word.

Published : Jan 30, 2019 12:30 IST

Kader Khan.

Kader Khan.

THERE was much more to Kader Khan than just films. A civil engineer by qualification who once taught at M.H. Saboo Siddik College of Engineering in Mumbai, he was a scholar of Arabic, too, and a devoted student of the Quran. He loved his classics and was the happiest in solitude with a copy of Anton Chekhov’s works. He did his master’s degree in Arabic from Osmania University when he was at the peak of his career in cinema. He did not put a full stop to his association with the world of language and literature there. He redesigned the syllabus of Arabic and the Quran for madrasa students, enabling them to not just pick up Arabic with ease but imbibe the message of the Quran. At a time when satellite channels in India were happy to play reruns of his comedies with Govinda, international television viewers were often surprised to see him speak in depth about the Quran and its timeless message.

A great believer in the power of tears, he once said in a TV interview: “God can bear anything but the sight of tears in the eyes of his creation. Shed tears in front of the almighty, and he will give you what you crave. A tear reaches not the ground before the prayer is answered.”

Kader Khan established learning centres of Arabic, Urdu and later Hindi too. He began with Mumbai and Hyderabad and soon expanded to Dubai and Toronto, and planned to open similar centres in the United States and Pakistan. For audiences in the new millennium, Kader Khan was a comedian of the 1980s and the 1990s who acted in a series of loud comedies directed by David Dhawan and kept the hero Govinda able company. The laughs, the guffaws, the slapstick, were all remembered. Some talked of Baap Numbri, Beta Dus Numbri with Jackie Shroff, for which Khan got the Filmfare Award for Best Comedian, some of Umar Pachpan Ki, Dil Bachpan Ka , in which he played a double role for the first time. Mostly, though, moviegoers remembered his work with Govinda in films like Aankhen , the biggest hit of 1993, Raja Babu , Khuddar , Coolie No. 1 , Sajan Chale Sasural and Hero No. 1 .

But there was more to Kader Khan than merely slapstick. He began his career as a serious student of cinema and was discovered by no less a person than Dilip Kumar. It so happened that as an engineering student, he was fond of classics and would often attempt to adapt them to the stage. One such performance caught the eye of Dilip Kumar, who promised to introduce him to Hindi film directors for acting assignments. Kader Khan was already teaching engineering students and thus was far from desperate.

Early life

He was born in Kabul. His parents had lost their first three sons early; Kader survived. The family shifted from Kabul to Kamathipura in Mumbai, the notorious red-light zone with its mosaic of flesh trade, liquor, drugs and crime. His parents split when he was four, and his mother married again. Unfortunately, Kader Khan was left with a drunkard and abusive father. He sought solace in religion and literature. Interestingly, it was this combination of faith and reading that brought him to Dilip Kumar’s notice. Growing up as a lonely child, Kader Khan would often retire to a local cemetery and act out his emotions in front of graves. There was no danger of abuse or violence from the dead. One day, though, he was noticed by some members of a theatre troupe, and he offered to join them. It was an offer that changed Kader Khan’s life forever. Soon, he signed up for a small role in Dilip Kumar’s film Sagina. A little before the film was released, Kader Khan had acted with Rajesh Khanna, then the superstar of cinema, in Daag in 1973.

These small roles kept the kitchen fire burning. He got a chance to write the script for Ramesh Behl’s Jawani-Deewani , a Randhir Kapoor-Jaya Bhaduri romance saga, too. He claimed to have done it in four days and was without work for the rest of the month. He got Rs.1,500, though, for the effort. He was far from satisfied. A writer at heart, he wanted his pen to express the anguish of his heart. Before his tears reached the ground, he was gifted with Roti , directed by Manmohan Desai. The story goes that the king of commercial cinema was so impressed with Kader Khan’s work that he gave him Rs.1 lakh, besides a TV set and a gold bracelet. Kader Khan had arrived in Hindi cinema.

His bond with Manmohan Desai was to soon give moviegoers Amar Akbar Anthony , Parvarish , Suhaag , Naseeb , Desh Premi , Coolie and Ganga Jamuna Saraswati . The association was vital for two aspects: the arrival of Amitabh Bachchan as a top hero and the use of colloquial language in Hindi cinema. Until then, Hindi film heroes, and indeed villains, were shown mouthing chaste Urdu or Hindi dialogues. It was not unusual, but definitely unsettling, to find all characters, irrespective of their geographical location, speaking the same kind of language. Even men from the subaltern sections of society were shown reciting Mir and Ghalib! Kader Khan changed all that. His characters spoke the language of their strata of society. Bumbaiya Hindi came to the fore. Hinglish, too. With Anthony’s character, Kader Khan penned: “Aisa toh aadmi doich baar hi bhagta hai. Olympic ka race ho ya police ka case ho.” The brave new effort was not just accepted but applauded. The roles changed for good. And Kader Khan went on to be the unsung hero of the Desai-Bachchan-Khan troika.

Memorable lines

Around roughly the same time, he also teamed up with the director Prakash Mehra for films such as Muqaddar ka Sikandar , Lawaaris , Namak Halal and Sharaabi , all starring Amitabh Bachchan. All were mega hits, and Kader Khan consolidated his position as the man who gave Bachchan some of the most memorable lines of his career. Not counting Deewar , ironically the best line of Bachchan’s career, “Hum jahan pe khade ho jate hain line wahin se shuru hoti hai” , was not penned for a Prakash Mehra or Manmohan Desai film but Tinnu Anand’s Kaalia . Yet again, Bachchan got the applause and whistles in Kaalia , while Kader Khan remained the unsung genius. He received the Filmfare Award for best dialogue twice, for Meri Awaaz Suno and Angaar ; neither featured Bachchan or involved Mehra or Desai. Kader Khan could hold his own without the shadow of big stars.

Just as he did when he worked in south Indian remakes in Hindi cinema with Jeetendra as the hero. Meri Awaaz Suno , Himmatwala , Tohfa , Maqsad , Mawaaali , Hoshiyar , Singhasan and Haisiyat followed. Once again, he opted to use coarse Hindi on most occasions. In many of these films, he also doubled up as a villain, keeping Shakti Kapoor able company. The films worked well at the box office, enabling Kader Khan to stay in viewers’ minds as the bad guy who would be put in his place in the last reel of the film.

He soon tapped another facet of his personality as an artist. This time, he tickled many a funny bone, often as the father-in-law or a goofy inspector or a blundering uncle in a series of Govinda flicks directed by David Dhawan. Films like Raja Babu and Khuddar challenged the morality of the age, but they ticked all the boxes at the box office. He had added a new feather to his well-decorated cap, now as an actor of no mean merit. He could be a villain, he could be a comic.

Kader Khan was the wicketkeeper of cinema. An engineer, mathematician, dialogue writer, actor, scriptwriter all rolled into one. Slowly, in the new millennium the taste of moviegoers, the tone and tenor of cinema changed, and Kader Khan moved back. The loss was entirely that of the world of cinema, for the multifaceted man discovered solace in religion and literature. Kader Khan now concentrated on preparing the next generation of scholars of Arabic, students of the Quran. He found peace. He quietly moved to Canada to spend time with his wife and son, who were settled there.

One regret remained, though. It went back all the way to the late 1980s. Kader Khan was working on Manmohan Desai’s Ganga Jamuna Saraswati . Once on the set a south Indian producer came looking for “Sir”. He asked Kader Khan, who could not understand who “Sir” was. The producer explained he had come to meet Amitabh Bachchan. “Oh! We call him Amit, not Sir,” said Kader Khan. The anecdote is said to have reached the superstar, who took it as a dig at him. That was the last of their professional association, with Kader Khan leaving the film midway. He regretted this parting of ways for the rest of his life in cinema. He need not have. True, Bachchan was a big hero on the big screen. As was Govinda, and to a lesser degree the likes of Shatrughan Sinha, Jeetendra and Jackie Shroff, who all gained because of Kader Khan’s expertise over the written word. Actually, it was Kader Khan who was the hero. With faith and literature, he reinvented himself in the last years of his life.

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