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Farah Khan and Sajid Khan’s mother, Maneka Irani, died in Mumbai on Friday. While she wasn’t directly a part of the Hindi film industry, her life was made, broken, and resurrected by movies. She didn’t have an easy life, particularly while raising two children as a single mother without a home and career of her own. (Also Read: Shah Rukh Khan hugs Farah Khan hours after her mom’s death, Gauri Khan, Suhana Khan visit her too. Watch)
Husband’s film career flopped
Maneka’s husband Kamran was a stuntman-turned-filmmaker. He gained initial success but eventually used to make only B-grade movies. His most ambitious film, Ilzham (1970), starring Dara Singh, bombed at the box office. Since he put his own money into the film, gradually, everything that he pawned the money on started getting confiscated. This included Maneka’s jewellery, their prized possession of a gramophone, and two flats in Mumbai. They eventually moved into their smallest flat in Nehru Society, Juhu.
Husband’s alcoholism
Kamran didn’t take the financial downfall too well as he turned to alcoholism. In a recent podcast on BHARTI TV, Farah recalled, “My dad used to drink from morning. Because he could not handle the (failure). It’s very difficult. When people say you’re an insider… it doesn’t work like that. It’s more difficult for them because they’ve seen the success. And then to struggle… the man who’s driving an Impala car, won’t get in a bus queue. That struggle should happen at the end of one’s life, not at the beginning.”
“When the clock used to strike 7 pm, we’d feel dread inside. Then the arguments would begin on any topic, even something as small as less salt in the dal. We used to get traumatised. Now, we laugh at that, how our father used to do that, how he (Sajid) would hide under the bed. Sometimes, he’d take out his double barrel rifle, and if that caused a hole in the mirror, then the hole would remain there for years because we didn’t have the money to get it repaired,” Farah added.
Separation with husband
Maneka finally had enough one day and walked out of her alcoholic husband’s house with her two kids. Since she didn’t have a house or a career of her own, she had to move in with her sister, actor-filmmaker Honey Irani. Honey was also separated from her husband, screenwriter-lyricist Javed Akhtar, back then and was raising both her kids – Farhan Akhtar and Zoya Akhtar – on her own. They went on to be successful filmmakers later, much like Farah and Sajid. Farah used to work as a background dancer to make ends meet for her family before she became an ace choreographer in the 1990s.
