Produced by: Mohsin Shaikh
He lived on stolen puris and bananas. At ₹10 a day, his Mumbai diet was survival, not sustenance. For a boy once pampered in Benaras, the hunger was both literal and poetic.
Sameer was starving in Mumbai while his legendary father, lyricist Anjaan, didn’t even know he was in the city. It took a mother’s guilt-ridden letter to shatter the silence.
When he returned home in a tattered ₹10 shirt and hollow cheeks, his mother wept—and finally, his father woke up to the struggle he’d ignored for years.
A music director—also a family friend—listened to 40 of Sameer’s lyrics… then threw his diary out the window, calling him “a disgrace” and offering money to leave Mumbai forever.
That director told him to never share his work again. “You’ll ruin your father’s name,” he spat. It wasn’t criticism—it was character assassination.
Just hours later, the same lyrics were heard by music director Usha Khanna—who stopped him mid-reading and said: “I’m recording all four.” That was the birth of a lyricist.
Sameer didn’t meet his father for over two decades. When they finally spoke, it wasn’t a warm reunion—it was a confrontation forged from years of unspoken pain.
Before accepting his career, his father tested him with a challenge—not sympathy. Sameer passed. But approval came without referrals, forcing him to build everything solo.
Years later, he locked eyes with the same director who humiliated him. By then, Sameer had three Filmfare Awards. The man couldn’t look him in the eye. Sameer made sure he did.