Did anyone tell Kader Khan how loved he was?

He spoke almost moist-eyed of late, even when you thought he would reply with “achha” in the various ways only he could use that word. In essence, he was a cultured mind somehow worn down by enacting and writing melodrama for over 700 Hindi films. For an Afghanistan-born civil engineering professor who rose from a filthy slum of Mumbai to decode the narrative formula of commercial Hindi films in the last three decades of the last century, melodrama followed Kader Khan till his death.

Khan’s recall from obscurity in the last few years were only occasioned by rumours of his death. He finally passed away, as if to complete a script. There is something one wants to ask today as one did when one saw a feeble Kader Khan in a wheelchair—did he know how loved he was?

He survived as the fourth child in conditions of abject poverty after his parents lost his three brothers at very young ages. The interplay of a steely sense of duty and emotion, and his mother’s struggle to get him an education, can be seen in many of the 250 films he wrote for the silver screen. From a slum notorious in Mumbai as a den of crime and prostitution, his mother ensured that Kader navigated his way to a post-graduation degree in engineering. He later secured a teaching position in a college.

Yet the city decided to let him earn from his talents that ran parallel to his knowledge of mathematics and engineering. As a few film industry notables, including Dilip Kumar, spotted his impressive work as an accomplished theatre writer and stage actor, word spread. Work and money followed in good measure and they were lucrative enough to wean him away from teaching engineering students.

Starting with Jawani Diwani (1972) in the early Seventies, the decade saw him breaking into the big league of screenwriters—no mean achievement for a time when the Salim-Javed duo was a force to reckon with. If Kader Khan was writing Manmohan Desai’s Roti (1974) for reigning superstar Rajesh Khanna in the first half of the decade, in the later half he was writing Desai’s Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) and Prakash Mehra’s Muqaddar ka Sikandar (1978) as the new superstar Amitabh Bachchan stole the show in the multi-starrers. The Seventies firmly established him as a much sought-after screenwriter as well as a consummate actor who could do a variety of character roles in mainstream cinema.

Khan continued to write most of Bachchan’s films in the 1980s, including the hugely popular Coolie (1983) and Sharaabi (1984). However, in what was a reflection of the most formulaic decade of Hindi commercial cinema, he wrote many of the garish and brash Hindi remakes of south Indian films which had Jeetendra in the lead. One could see this as a point when he had almost decided to prize being prolific over any other qualitative aspect—considerations that he was quite capable of. It was amply evident in the fact that in 1983 alone, he wrote two hugely successful remakes: Himmatwala and Justice Chaudhary.

His onscreen pairing with Shakti Kapoor in over 100 films was an awaited moment in movie theatres. It was remarkable for how it often overshadowed the star cast when they were in the frame. Ranging from quirky repartees to Kader’s one-liners, delivered with poker-faced calm and sometimes in a way that was just “Kader-faced”, the characters were sometimes put in buffoonish situations. And yet the front-benchers’ claps and whistles were drawn from what they said in those moments. A long exposure to a tough life of deprivation had probably given Khan a street-smart sense to read the popular pulse.

He began the 1990s by writing dialogues for Bachchan’s critically acclaimed Agneepath (1990). On the acting front, he announced the decade with his comic presence in Baap Numbari, Beta Dus Numbari in the same year. It was a period which saw him playing various shades of character roles—from a caring patriarch and disciplinarian father to a slacker and idler but, most significantly, in a range of comic roles with Govinda in David Dhawan’s films. He could hold his own in Vimal Kumar’s Karz Chukana Hai (1991) while often outwitting the lead actors in his comic roles in Hum (1991), Aankhein (1993), Raja Babu (1994), Coolie No. 1 (1995), Hero No. 1 (1997), Dulhe Raja (1998) and Haseena Maan Jaayegi (1999), to name a few.

What, however, couldn’t be missed in the midst of lighter moments was the sentimental side of his screen presence. He had the knack of turning an audience emotional with the same ease. His mastery over the emotional syntax and narrative grammar of mass emotions in commercial films was evident. It wasn’t duly acknowledged, and the appeal of his screen persona also remained underrated.

Perhaps in the 1990s and early this century (in films like David Dhawan’s Mujhse Shaadi Karogi, 2004), Khan’s reception as an actor in certain circles could be seen as aligned to what happened to Govinda. His popularity also witnessed a mass-class divide in the theatres of metropolitan India of the 1990s and 2000s. The perception gained ground that Govinda was the star of the “downmarket”, whistling frontbenchers in non-air-conditioned theatres.

Despite the divide, one couldn’t lose sight of what Khan brought to millions of cinegoers once they saw him on screen. Bereft of state honours, even a Padma award, he knew his craft and how to bring it to the masses in a way only few did. In the last few years of his life, he lamented the decline in the diction and language of dialogues and the art of delivery. He was cultured enough to admit his failure in educating the industry in the handling of the language. Within the constraints of popular culture, he was alive to the grace and beauty of the spoken word. He did speak them with brooding pause, simple and unalloyed feeling, and sometimes disarming street-smartness—all for the masses. Did anyone tell him how loved he was?