In a recent interview, Javed Akhtar talked openly about his marriage to his first wife, Honey Irani, and his battle with alcoholism. They were married for 11 years before separating in 1985. Akhtar shared how his alcohol addiction affected their relationship. On Mojo Story, he also expressed his support for a Uniform Civil Code in India, mentioning how he follows similar principles in his own life.
He said, “I am living in uniform civil code. I was married to a lady, after 11 years of marriage we got divorced. According to Muslim personal law, I was only responsible to give her alimony for four months but I didn’t think that. She was my responsibility. It is also her choice whether she wants my support or not, but whenever she wanted and whenever she will, or she may not as she is very self respecting person, but I’m available for help. I walked out of the house with some books and some clothes. That’s all. And now we are best of friends because of this relationship and this understanding.”
He shared how alcohol affected his first marriage, saying, he started drinking at 20-21 and stopped at 42. He recalled, “I started drinking at the age of 20-21 and left when I was 42 years old. I could afford a bottle and used to drink almost a bottle every night. It’s very common for Urdu poetics to become big drunkards because they believe that if they are poets and artistes, they should be carefree and you should drink. I think I had those wrong values.”
He explained that growing up in Lucknow, he learned good manners which discouraged foul language. But when he drank, he became someone else. “On the other side, all the tehzeeb that I learned in Lucknow didn’t allow me to use foul language, so all the bitterness was compressed inside me. But when I used to drink all those barriers will break and I would become a very nasty man and would use foul language. I used to become another person. It was unhealthy, irrational and causing problem to many people. It impacted my marriage with Honey. If I was a sober and responsible person, the story would have been different,” he said.
Javed Akhtar also shared that during the first ten years of his marriage to veteran actor Shabana Azmi, she “somehow managed” his alcoholism.
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