Khalid Mohamed’s unpublished conversation with the late Saawan Kumar Tak, who despite his mega-hit movies and memorable lyrics never received his just recognition in Bollywood’s Hall of Fame.

Renowned Bollywood filmmaker, lyricist, and producer Saawan Kumar Tak (1936–2022) was a pivotal force in Indian cinema from the 1970s through the 1990s. Best known for directing box-office hits like Souten (1983), Saajan Bina Suhagan (1978), and Sanam Bewaffa (1991), Tak carved a niche with his emotionally resonant storytelling and memorable music, often composed by his ex-wife Usha Khanna. He also shared a profound, often-speculated bond with legendary actress Meena Kumari, and gave early breaks to icons like Sanjeev Kumar. Despite career setbacks and financial struggles, his legacy endures as one of Bollywood’s self-made, spiritually driven visionaries. This intimate profile captures Tak’s reflections on fame, failure, and his enduring dream of cinematic reinvention.

A Delayed Meeting with Saawan Kumar Tak

Around 3 p.m., in one of those faceless office complexes in Versova-Andheri, the producer-director-writer-lyricist of a sizeable number of hits from the 1970s well into the early ‘90s – Saawan Kumar Tak (1936-2022) – was late for our appointment. A couple of his young attendants, in jeans and tight tee-shirts, explained that he was delayed at a doctor’s clinic.

There, thud went my heart. I had a trick agenda, to goad him into his widely rumoured liaison with the legendary tragedy queen -- Meena Kumari, who had died in 1972 at the age of 38 -- since I was researching a story on her.

It wouldn’t be fair to subject an ailing man to the trade grapevine that, at the outset of his career, he had toadied up to the grievously ill Meena Kumari and become her confidant. Steeling myself to see how the ebb and flow of our conversation would go anyway, I waited, taking in the commodious but unkempt office rooms, complete with a terrace dotted with wilting potted plants.

A Simple Meal and a Spirited Introduction

As the clock ticked 4 p.m., Saawan Kumar Tak, in a parrot green shirt and beige trousers, arrived, apologising profusely that he had to pick up his lunch en route, unpacking a raddi newspaper, oil-stained sheet of roadside puri aloo bhaaji. “Want to share some?” he asked hospitably and went to complete the junk food in a trice, laughing, “I’m told it’s bad for me, but what isn’t?”, lighting up a cigarette defiantly. After a cup of black tea, he gargled some salt water, and stated firmly, “Ask whatever you want. If I have one virtue, it’s never to lie. Jhooth se kisika bhala nahin hua.”

Alright, so was it true that he had quit his hometown Jaipur around 1965 to become a Bombay film actor? “Yes, why not? I liked what I saw in the mirror, I was quite tall and gora-chitta,” he had answered. “But after loitering around at more studios than I could count, I understood that no contacts, no opportunities. There are still thousands like me around. One or two of them do make it, like Irrfan Khan from Jaipur, who had to struggle for years till he was acknowledged as one of our finest actors. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a natural-born actor like he was. Who knows? I would have flopped miserably as an actor.”

The Making of Naunihal

Lore has it that he had become friendly with a chauffeur of a big-time businessman and stayed with him in a cramped room for years. Studiously avoiding that factoid, he continued that he had borrowed Rs 25,000 from his reluctant sister to produce a film about an orphan boy whose school principal tells him that he was ‘related’ to Pandit Nehru. Working on that utterly implausible notion, his brother-in-law encouraged him to go ahead. Titled Naunihal (1967), directed by Raj Marbros, the black-and-white, sparsely budgeted storyline was about a boy enacted by child actor Babloo, who treks from Bombay to Delhi (sounds Forrest Gump-ish, curiously). The outcome tanked on being released at Bombay’s Imperial cinema. Next: a reversal of fortunes, the film snagged an honourable mention at the National Awards.
He emphasised that he had been so highly impressed by an unknown actor’s theatre performance that he had given him a break in Naunihal, changing his name from Haribhai Jariwala to Sanjeev Kumar. Moreover, Balraj Sahni had portrayed a significant role in the film since he would never reject a project with a social purpose.

The Meena Kumari Enigma

Remarking that I wasn’t jotting down any notes in my pad, Saawan Kumar Tak had said with a straight face that clearly I was more interested in his ‘affair’ with Meena Kumari. Guilty as charged.

He called for more black tea and admitted that he was in awe of her: “Interpret that any way you like, but I will not say what you want to hear. Ours was a ‘spiritual’ relationship. She’s no more, it would be downright crude if I spoke about our ‘closeness’. It’s no secret that there were other men, Dharmendra and Gulzar, in her life before me, but if she ever felt slighted, she wouldn’t see them anymore. Who knows what the whole truth is? I think Dharmendra wasn’t willing to separate from his wife then. If she truly loved anyone deeply, it was Kamal Amrohi despite their personal differences, talaaq and remarriage. Or else why would she have completed Pakeezah (1972), that too on the token payment of one gold mohur?”

On Her Alcoholism and Final Film

In Vinod Mehta’s book on the tragedienne, Saawan Kumar Tak is quoted as saying, “It is difficult to fix the exact date when she took to drink. Always a creature of the night, she was a veritable owl - the difference being that she did not sleep in the day either…Dr Saeed Timurza, her physician, prescribed a peg of brandy as a sleeping pill, and this was officially how she came into contact with the habit that was to kill her. If she took to drink initially, it was because she was exhausted.”

The quote adds, “According to Kamal Amrohi, the one peg of brandy increased to many more. One day he apprehended Meena Kumari’s domestic help pouring out the doctor's medicine and he noticed the glass was nearly half full. On reprimanding the help, he discovered that this measure had become her standard, and further, the bottles of Dettol in the Amrohi bathroom did not contain antiseptic but brandy. From that day onwards Kamal says he checked the Dettol bottles and ensured that Meena did not have any drink handy.”

The Legacy of Gomti ke Kinare

Lighting up another cigarette, the filmmaker volunteered the information that he had approached Meena Kumari to act in as well as direct his next film Gomti ke Kinare (1972), about a woman who has to hide the fact that she is a courtesan from Lucknow from her daughter and her groom-to-be. Shades of Frank Capra’s Pocketful of Miracles (1961) here.

Meena Kumari, although in the last lap of her life, agreed to portray the courtesan and exhorted Saawan Kumar Tak to direct it himself. “She always arrived on the sets punctually. Believe it or not, I wanted to cast Amitabh Bachchan too. It was Mumtaz who ruined the film by insisting that I should cast Feroz and Sanjay Khan’s brother, Sameer, opposite her, and he couldn’t act to save his life.” Gomti ke Kinare was released at the Swastik cinema after Meena Kumari’s death and sank at the cash counters.

Behind the Melancholy Mask

He elaborated that Indian cinema’s ‘tragedy queen’ was ‘psychologically scarred’ ever since her childhood. Vinod Mehta, in his quickie biography, had suggested that her down-at-heel father, Master Ali Bux, had abandoned her as a baby at a doorstep, only to rush back to retrieve her. Eventually, he had pushed her into being a child actor who reached adulthood, right off to win the Best Actress Filmfare Award for Baiju Bawra (1952).

The rest of Meena Kumari’s rise and descent into chronic alcoholism is common knowledge, he said tetchily, asking if I didn’t want to know anything else about him at all.

A Filmography with Highs and Lows

Saawan Kumar Tak (the ‘Tak’ was his own addition for a ‘touch of difference’, it seems), after all, had scored several remembered-to-this-day box-office smashes, notably, Saajan Bina Suhagan (1978), Souten (1983), Sanam Bewaffa (1991), and Khal-naaikaa (1993). He reminded me that many of his films could boast of chart-busting music composed by his ex-wife Usha Khanna.
He admitted that their marriage couldn’t last long because he had his own rigid ways. Neither did he want her to suffer since she had confessed that she hadn’t been keen at all on the marriage. The reason, he alleged, was because “She was in love with another person. I was just a time-pass standby.”

When they separated, the professional partnership continued. Narrating an incident about the famous Souten song, Shaayad Meri Shaadi Ka Khayal…, he stated that the lyrics were written on the spot in the recording studio, alluding to what she had said when he had popped the marriage proposal to her.

Hits, Misses, and Missteps

Lingering on his career-defining films, he pointed out that the distributors were discouraging about casting Nutan and Rajendra Kumar, then middle-aged, in the lead roles of Saajan Bina Suhagan, with Vinod Mehra and Padmini Kolhapure in the supporting ensemble. Yet it proved to be a whopping hit.

He was exceedingly proud of Souten with Rajesh Khanna, who was on the skids then, opposite Tina Munim. Incidentally, it was his first film to celebrate a platinum jubilee, and was shot extensively in Mauritius, where other filmmakers flocked instantaneously.

As for the crowd-pleasing Sanam Bewaffa, one of the last attempts in the genre of Muslim socials with an evocative music soundtrack by Mahesh Kishor, it headlined the upcoming Salman Khan with newcomer Chandni. And there was Khal-naaikaa, with Anu Aggarwal in the eponymous part, which brought in a cushy amount of cash flow. Incidentally, the title had sparked a controversy since it clashed with Subhash Ghai’s Khal Nayak (1993).

Fading Lights and a Final Dream

I didn’t bring up his clinkers like Hawas (1974), a severely misogynistic hotchpotch with Bindu as a cougar-like woman lusting after Anil Dhawan paired with Neetu Singh.

Of the latter section of his filmography, as many as six of his films had been rejected by the audience. This included Mother (1999), a retread, with Rekha, in her most over-the-top performance yet, of the Gina Lollobrigida comedy Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell (1968).

“I wasn’t shaken by failure at all,” he stressed. “I felt I was done with Bollywood. So I sent feelers to Hollywood for a grand project, got myself an agent whom I paid generously and lived in a fabulous home in the elite Beverly Hills for two to three years which made me go bankrupt.”

Still optimistic about reviving his aborted career back in Bollywood, he asserted that as soon as he found a financier for one of his scripts, he would be back with a big bang. “I can’t be written off,” he said confidently. “Just you watch, I’ll be back.”

A Gentle Goodbye

Perceiving that my notepad was now packed with notes, he laughed, “Yeh hui na baat. Why don’t you come back one evening or stick on for a few hours? We’ll have drinks and talk aaram se.”

Craftily, I still tried to coax him to tell me more about Meena Kumari to which he shook his head sadly, “I don’t see you as a yellow journalist. Whatever I could tell you of the great lady, I have. And no, I haven’t seen the diaries of the poems she is believed to have written. Please do me a favour, let her soul rest in peace.” Fair enough. The evening shadows were lengthening. My research on Meena Kumari from other sources was sketchy and half-truths as well. I gave up on that project. 

Legacy and Loss

Quite surprisingly, Saawan Kumar Tak would call every week or so to inquire when his interview with me would be published. Perhaps he wanted to be in the news again. My journalist colleague, Vajir Singh, lately assured me, “I knew Saawan saab well. He was a good man, he was more sinned against than sinning. Maybe he couldn’t cultivate the goodwill required with the film business and the media which is why he couldn’t get the recognition he deserved.”

“But Vajir, he could be quite strange,” I retorted. “Once, at the Santa Cruz airport, he was trying to bargain for a business class ticket at the price of the economy class.”

“Aah, that was quite like him,” countered Vajir. “There must have been a pretty girl at the counter, and he must have thought his charm would work.”

Final Curtain

Right. Saawan Kumar Tak passed away on August 25, 2022, at a hospital of lung ailment compounded by heart seizure at the age of 86. Naturally, obituaries appeared in the newspapers.

Belatedly, then, here are my recollections of that afternoon conversation with a man sitting at his desk with a newspaper sheet of streetside food, who once dreamt of caviar and champagne in Hollywood. A sad end, but perhaps an inevitable one, for a self-made filmmaker who never went goodwill hunting.