Overview

• Javed Akhtar confronted Bushra Ansari’s advice to “stay quiet like Naseeruddin Shah,” questioning her authority to dictate when he speaks
• He sarcastically dismissed her claim that he can’t rent in Mumbai by joking that he and Shabana Azmi are “sleeping on the streets”
• Akhtar recounted a 25-year-old incident in which Azmi was denied a flat by an owner still nursing wounds from his family’s expulsion from Sindh after Partition
• He defended publicly condemning the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, which killed 26 tourists, and cited India’s retaliatory strikes on terror camps under Operation Sindoor
• At a recent book launch, he warned that political reconciliation between India and Pakistan remains unlikely due to vested interests of Pakistan’s army and right-wing factions