Among his screenplays are Bandit Queen, Split Wide Open, The Rising -Mangal Pande, Red Mercury, Exitz and Kisna.
Farrukh was Channel 4’s Commissioning Editor for Multicultural programmes, creating several landmark series like The Ramayana.
Backgrounder
Farrukh’s Indian Army father fought against the Japanese for the British in the Second World War. His parents were from Pune.
“My earliest memory, age seven, was living in a house with my two maiden aunts and my grandfather because my parents moved about. We had a glorious, military brat childhood,” he told me.
Farrukh loved reading at Bishop School in Pune, but also observed poverty around him. “People died of hunger in the fifties.”
Put off writing by his family, Farrukh was determined to get out of Pune. His peers all had inherited businesses and he didn’t. Being short sighted meant he couldn’t go into the military as his father would have wished. He competed for a Tata Foundation scholarship for the Higher Education of Indians to study at Cambridge.
“There were twelve scholarships, with seventy thousand applicants. One had to impress the interview people. Having stood first in the University and got a medal for doing physics and getting my BSc, I was on top of the list.
The elderly lady interviewer said, ‘why Cambridge?’ and I said ‘because the best minds of the world are there,’ and she said ‘nonsense, you go to Oxford and Cambridge to make friends and cultivate people who will be useful to you in later life.’”
The lady asked Farrukh to go to the toilet to check if he used the flush and later kitted him out in tweed for the UK.
“Nobody would give me a scholarship to study English, so I came to study Physics, which is called Natural Sciences in Cambridge. I had a scientific rational mind and I started writing.”
Tough Times and Challenges
After Pembroke, Cambridge, Farrukh went to London and worked. “Painting the outsides of houses, walking dogs for women in Chelsea, cleaning dishes at kitchens, washing up to earn money.
I started writing for Indian newspapers and for some British newspapers like The Listener.” At a Listener party, Farrukh met a Leicester University professor who offered him a scholarship to do a thesis there.
In Leicester, met British Asians, principally Indians, and helped the Indian Workers’ Association with political campaigns, fighting for immigrant rights.
Farrukh started writing short stories for a newspaper and joined the Black Panther movement. He was also a school teacher.
“In March 1973, I was living in Brixton above the Black Panther bookshop. Some a---- threw a firebomb into the house and burnt me down. I had to jump out of the second floor window. Broke my ankles, bust this and that and got badly burnt. Those sorts of tough things happened but spiritually I never got dismayed in my life. I had those kinds of physical assaults. I was beaten up badly outside a club and was put into hospital for two weeks with brain concussion because some racist beat the hell out of me.”
One day, famous writer-philosopher C.L.R. James met Farrukh and encouraged him to start writing about himself. Dhondy later wrote a biography of James.
Farrukh also started writing up stories about his life in a newspaper he edited.
“About thirty editions in, a young guy turns up at my school in a three piece suit, and says ‘where’s Mr Dhondy?’ I said ‘depends, are you from the police?’ and he says ‘no.’
I say ‘do I owe you money?’ and he says ‘no, no I’m from the publishers. I read your short stories and I want you to write a book.’”
There was an appetite for multicultural literature but no-one was writing it, the publisher told him.
Farrukh never had to chase or seek a publisher or commissioner; just as with Macmillan, they all run to him and he is feted the world over.
He was groundbreaking too. The National Front protested against his book “East End at your Feet.”
Farrukh was commissioned to write stage plays in addition to the books. He was invited to BBC Birmingham to write episodes of Empire Road, a West Indian comedy series.
“I wrote a reggae musical called ‘Momma Dragon” after which Humphrey Barclay of London Weekend Television turned up and said ‘can you write us a sitcom for television?’
Farrukh co-wrote No Problem for Channel 4, and then wrote Tandoori Nights after being asked to write an Asian sitcom.
From there, C4’s chief executive, Jeremy Isaacs invited Farrukh to lunch at London restaurant, The Ivy.
“He said, ‘The multicultural commissioner editor is going away, we need a replacement.’ I said ‘I hope you liked my work?’ and he said ‘well, we want you to do the job.’ so I said, ‘me come into an office? I’m doing very well with the writing.’ He said ‘it could dry up you know’ so I thought about it and took the job.
I couldn’t write television series because I was working in Channel 4 but I did write under strange names. I wrote ‘Bandit Queen’ without putting my name down and I edited a lot of films.”
