Rickshaw Driver Rises To Movie Director

It's a real rags-to-riches story of the Hollywood variety, but this is a tale of a poor but talented auto-rickshaw driver who has now become a Bollywood film producer, director and actor.

39-year-old Waqqr Khan, from Uttar Pradesh, is apparently semi-literate, but has produced his film Ishq Na Karna, after working as an auto-rickshaw driver in Mumbai for 16 long years.

Critics are saying that the film should do reasonably well. Khan is currently promoting it and wherever it has played the film has received an overwhelming response.

Khan left poverty behind him and  moved from his native Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai some 20 years ago and started doing odd jobs before he started driving auto rickshaw. He is currently Vice-President of the Mumbai Auto Drivers' Association

According to Khan, more than 150 auto drivers in Mumbai pooled  financial resources and collected enough money to enable him to make a low budget film.

in the movie are Waqar Khan himself and Urvashi Chowdhury in the lead roles and Milind Gunaji as villain. Other prominent names which are associated with the movie are Udit Narayan, Kumar Sanu and playback singer Shreya Ghoshal.

"I had gone to Bombay some 20 years ago with a dream that one day I would be a Bollywood star. People in my native district as well as Mumbai used to make fun of me," reveals Waqqr.

Khan said that he was always very crazy about films and whenever he tried enter a studio to watch shooting he was shooed away by the guards.

Khan said because he had no security to offer banks refused loans and at several he was reckoned to be a lunatic. By driving rickshaw, he saved a few thousand rupees. Later, he developed good rapport with auto-rickshaw drivers who pooled in their resources and helped make his dream come true.