At the Jaipur Literature Festival on Sunday, a little boy from the crowd asked popular songwriter Javed Akhtar what he was called when he was a child. With immense enthusiasm and spark in his eyes, Akhtar responded to him by saying, it all started when he was born and people started asking his parents what they will name their child. “My father was a great poet,” Akhtar said, and recited a line from his poem "Lamha, lamha kisi jadoo ka fasana hoga…"
“They were wondering what name to keep and suggested what could be better than ‘Jadoo’, taking inspiration from the poetry,” the 71-year-old quipped, adding, "For two or two-and-half years, my name was ‘Jadoo’ after that. But then I had to have a proper name before getting admitted to a school, so ‘Jadoo’ was turned around into ‘Javed’. Usually real names are modified but in my case, my pet name was modified into my real name,” he joked, and added in hindi, “Shuru se hi ganga ulti beh rahi hai…(Since the beginning, it was flowing against the tide)”.
