He wrote dialogues for Shah Rukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan's films, but was later made to sell his house, brought to the footpath

The late director Yash Chopra was often hailed as a visionary who redefined romance on the silver screen. Some of his most iconic films—‘Kabhie Kabhie,’ ‘Noorie,’ and ‘Chandni’—are still regarded as odes to romantic love and passion on celluloid. However, while the auteur provided the vision behind these evergreen films, it was writer Sagar Sarhadi who penned the memorable dialogues and screenplay for these movies.

According to film historians, Sarhadi not only wrote screenplays and dialogues for several Chopra films but also penned the lines for Shah Rukh Khan’s debut, Deewana, and Hrithik Roshan’s launch vehicle, Kaho Naa Pyar Hai. Despite shaping some of Hindi cinema’s defining works, Sarhadi lived away from the limelight, leading a life marked by loneliness and eventually passing away quietly in his Mumbai apartment.

Early Life and Roots in Partitioned India

Born as Ganga Sagar Talwar in the small village of Baffa near Abbottabad—then part of undivided India—he grew up against the backdrop of social and political turmoil. He adopted the pen name “Sarhadi,” inspired by filmmaker Zia Sarhadi, whose socially conscious movies like Footpath and Hum Log left a lasting impact on him. The choice also reflected his own origins from the frontier region. His early years were spent in Abbottabad, Pakistan, before relocating to Delhi at the age of twelve due to Partition. Eventually, he moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) to live with his elder brother.

Education and Struggles in Bombay

Sarhadi completed his English degree at St. Xavier’s College and worked briefly as an Urdu translator for a British firm. His true passion, however, lay in writing, and he soon abandoned the steady job to pursue a creative career. Like many newcomers to the city, he faced severe hardships. He attempted various odd jobs—from trying his hand at driving a taxi (an effort that ended disastrously on the first day) to seeking employment at a typing institute, which never materialized.

He summed up his taxi driving career to Scroll in a chat in 2017, “But on the very first day, I hit a pole while reversing.”

At one point, while managing his brother’s textile shop, he became so engrossed in a book that a customer walked away with an entire bundle of fabric.

A Chance Encounter with Cinema

Eventually, Sarhadi found employment at an advertising agency, but his Marxist ideology clashed with the corporate culture, leading him to resign. His real turning point came when filmmaker Yash Chopra noticed one of his plays and offered him the screenplay of Kabhi Kabhie. That opportunity transformed Sarhadi’s life, giving him recognition across the industry. He later recalled that Chopra trusted his writing completely, rarely interfering with his dialogues.

He told Scroll, “Yash made me a household name. Despite being so successful, he never tinkered with my screenplay and dialogue. Only once did he cut out a few lines from a scene, but not before consulting me.”

Sarhadi’s creative journey became deeply intertwined with Yash Chopra’s cinematic shift towards romance during the mid-1970s and 1980s. Beginning with Kabhi Kabhie, then moving on to Noorie (which Chopra produced), Silsila, and Chandni, it was Sarhadi’s pen that infused depth and poetry into these narratives. At first, film distributors dismissed his dialogue as overly literary and detached from mass appeal. However, when Kabhi Kabhie struck a powerful chord with audiences and went on to earn him two Filmfare Awards, those early critics were forced to retract their judgments.

A recurring thread in Sarhadi’s storytelling was the way his characters—especially the women—reflected his personal anguish rooted in the Partition. His female leads often served as symbolic vessels for the displacement, trauma, and loss he had endured when millions of lives were reshaped by decisions made far away from the people they affected.

According to a report by The Hindu, his 1979 film Noorie, directed by Manmohan Krishna and adapted from his own short story Raakha, carried traces of this personal history. The narrative drew heavily from Sarhadi’s childhood in the village of Baffa, a place he was compelled to abandon in the wake of Partition. The lush meadows, flowing streams, and natural beauty of his hometown remained etched in his memory, but life had forced him to adapt to the harsher realities of an unfamiliar urban landscape, where he had to forge a new sense of belonging amidst alien surroundings.

The Making of Bazaar: Art Over Commerce

Despite his success in mainstream cinema, Sarhadi was drawn toward socially relevant subjects. Inspired by a news story about women being forced into marriages for money, he created Bazaar in 1982. Although friends warned him that the film would struggle commercially, Sarhadi pushed forward. With financial help borrowed from acquaintances and technical equipment lent by actor Shashi Kapoor, he managed to complete the project. Featuring Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Farooq Shaikh, and Supriya Pathak, Bazaar achieved critical acclaim though its popularity was limited to certain audiences. The film proved that Sarhadi was determined to make cinema that reflected real social issues rather than chasing box-office formulas.

'Bazaar' which hit the theatres in May 1982 explored the theme of bride buying in India. It explored the tribulations of Najma (Smita Patil) a young, idealistic girl sold by her parents to wealthy Indians working the Gulf for earning money. Najma is torn between her long-tome lover Akhtar and Salim, an earnest poet. Inadvertently, she becomes complicit in the repulsive bride buying custom.

Financial Hardships and Betrayal

However, fortune did not always favor him. His next venture, Tere Shaher Mein, dragged him into a financial crisis. The film’s producer borrowed money from a moneylender, and when repayment failed, Sarhadi was forced to bear the burden. Deceived into signing a fraudulent guarantee letter, he had to sell his apartment to settle the debt. The financier’s threats pushed him to the brink of destitution. This marked the beginning of a series of struggles that overshadowed his career.

"When the producer couldn’t pay him, the financier forced me to cough up the money. He got my signature on a guarantee letter by fraud. I had to sell my flat,” he told Scroll, and added, “The financier used to threaten me that he would bring me on the footpath, and he did.”

A Writer Beyond Romance

Although Sarhadi continued to write for Yash Chopra in later projects, he chose not to restrict himself to the romantic genre. He believed that cinema should engage with wider issues and not be confined to formulaic storytelling. His creative vision made him seek narratives that challenged societal norms. For this reason, he distanced himself from the mainstream industry that, in his view, thrived more on glamour than substance.

Lost Opportunities and Unreleased Work

In the early 2000s, Sarhadi attempted a revival of sorts by casting a then-unknown Nawazuddin Siddiqui in his film Chauser. Yet, fate once again worked against him—the film never saw a release. For a man who had introduced powerful voices to the industry, such repeated disappointments were a source of disillusionment. He eventually concluded that meaningful cinema had disappeared from India, a belief that reflected his growing discontent with the changing face of Bollywood.

The Final Years and Legacy

Sagar Sarhadi passed away in 2021 at the age of 88, following a prolonged illness. His death marked the end of a career that had contributed immensely to Hindi cinema, though he never quite received the recognition he deserved. While Yash Chopra is remembered as the master of cinematic romance, it was Sarhadi’s words that gave those stories their soul. From shaping landmark films to daring to make socially conscious cinema like Bazaar, his journey was one of resilience, creativity, and quiet suffering.