Author: Patricia Dsouza Lobo

In 1973, two young writers finished the script for a film that would go on to make Amitabh Bachchan a superstar. When the posters went up around Bombay, every name was on them – the producer, the director, the star – except theirs. So they hired a painter and stencilled their own names onto the posters. Those writers were Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar. Decades later, recalling it in the 2024 docuseries Angry Young Men, Salim Khan put it simply: “Our names were nowhere to be seen.” Sit with that for a moment. The men who wrote Zanjeer, Deewaar and…