Making cane products, paper bags and radio jockeying were part of prisoner number C-16656 Sanjay Dutt’s daily routine at the Yerwada Central Jail in Maharashtra. But apart from these what kept him busy was writing about his life experiences.
The 56-year-old Bollywood actor, who recently walked out a free man after serving jail term following his conviction in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, wrote over 500 ‘sher’ (couplet) along with two inmates and now he plans to release the poetry collection in the form of a book titled Salaakhen.
“I wrote something. And I will release the book, Salaakhen. We will show it to some [publishers]. Me along with, Zeishan Qureshi, Sameer Hingle (inmates) wrote 500 sher. They were with me in radio station. It is all in Hindi,” Dutt said.
The Lage Raho Munna Bhai star said out of the 500, he has written about 100 couplets and has also written about some of his real life experiences like the one when his wife Manyata visited him in jail.
“Out of the 500 sher I must have written 100 or so. At times I feel surprised that have I actually written this. I remember my wife had come to meet me once and she was having fever and still she came to see me. I insisted she should come to meet me. I felt very bad after seeing her,” he said.
“Then I wrote a sher [about the experience].”
But writing is not Dutt’s calling and he is now waiting to get back to acting.
“Let me be with my family. I want to be with them for some time. I missed working. I missed light, sound, camera, action flashes and all,” he said.
Though Dutt is yet to talk about the projects he will be taking up, it is confirmed that he will work in director Siddharth Anand’s next, an action drama which is likely to start production this summer. This is most likely to be the first film that Dutt will shoot after his release.
He will also be seen in the third instalment of Rajkumar Hirani’s Munna Bhai series.
Dutt’s close friend, Hirani, is also currently working on the biopic of the Vaastav star, with Ranbir Kapoor playing Dutt.
Besides this, director Indra Kumar also plans to make the third part of the Dhamaal franchise with Dutt. Oh My God director Umesh Shukla has a story for Dutt which he had narrated to Manyata when the actor was in jail.
Meanwhile, there are also rumours that Dutt’s friend, the Kaante director Sanjay Gupta also wants to make a film with him but the director has not yet confirmed this.
