Anupama Chopra - A Place in My Heart

Sholay is my first movie memory. I was eight years old when it released in 1975. I remember watching the film in a theatre and being terrified, not just of Gabbar Singh but also of that screeching, wailing background score that kicked in every time he appearedthere was a haunting menace to it.

As I got older, I kept revisiting the film and it soon became a favourite. I started to see the masterful storytelling, the layers in its characters (even the minor ones like the Angrezon ke zamane ke jailer and Soorma Bhopali), the uniqueness of the setting (the rugged badlands of Ramgarh) and the astute comedy (the tanki scene is a classic but even Jais snarky asides to Basanti are gold). Sholay is one of the finest examples of the traditional Hindi film form, which seamlessly blends genres. As Veeru so memorably put it, Iss story mein emotion hai, drama hai, tragedy hai.

It is almost impossible for a viewer today to comprehend the seismic impact of the film when it first came out. It ran in Mumbais Minerva theatre for five years. Even in its 240th week, it was houseful. The films box-office collectionsit grossed approximately Rs 35 crore in that first runremained unmatched for nineteen years, till Hum Aapke Hain Koun .. ! released in 1994. The films cultural influence was even farther-reaching. So much of the dialogue has passed into colloquial usage that, even taken out of context, phrases like Bahut yaarana hai or Kitne aadmi the? or Arre o Sambha still carry a world of meaning. More than thirty years after its release, characters and lines from Sholay were being used to sell products and as comedic fodder in skits and in other films. In Mere Brother Ki Dulhan, released in 2011, Katrina Kaif re-enacts the tanki scene. Her character Dimple prefaces the performance with: Main batati hoon film kya hoti hai, dialogue kya hotein hai, acting kya hoti hai.

That is exactly what Sholay is: a masterclass in cinema. Other films from the 1970s might seem shoddy and dated now, but Sholay has aged like a bottle of Chteau Lafite Rothschild. It still hits all the right notes. As Shekhar Kapur so rightly put it: There has never been a more defining film on the Indian screen. Indian film history can be divided into Sholay BC and Sholay AD.

Sholay started as a four-line story, which writers Javed Akhtar and Salim Khan took a mere fifteen days to develop into an outline. The set-up isnt startlingly original: the prime mover of the story is Thakur Baldev Singh, who hires two petty thieves, Veeru and Jai, to hunt down a brutal dacoit named Gabbar Singh who has massacred Thakurs family. The writers, who then wrote under the moniker of Salim-Javed, were inspired by films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Sergio Leones Spaghetti Westerns and Akira Kurosawas Seven Samurai, arguably the mother of all mercenary movies. Sholay also has echoes of Raj Khoslas 1971 hit, Mera Gaon Mera Desh, and of the successful B-grade Indian Western, Khote Sikkay. But Salim-Javed and director Ramesh Sippy were able to take this familiar genre material and refashion it into something that proved to be innovative and enduringthe denim outfits, the horses, the guns and the steam engines give the film an ageless quality.

Sholay is a rare film that can be watched any number of timesI still get goosebumps when Thakur walks into his home with gifts for his family, only to see a row of bodies in shrouds. I still get teary when, after Jais death, the widow Radhawho had perhaps imagined a future of love and laughter with himshuts the window of her room, as though shutting out life itself. The writing, the characters, the performances, even the humour (think of Jai sarcastically asking, Tumhara naam kya hai, Basanti?) still hold. The beats of the narrative, which moves from terrifying violence to comedy, song and dance, and drama, still exert a formidable grip.

Sholay changed the lives of everyone connected to iteven the peripheral characters. The late Mac Mohan played Gabbar Singhs henchman, Sambha. Sambha has only one line in the filmwhen Gabbar asks what reward the government has announced for capturing him, Sambha replies: Poore pachaas hazaar. But Mac Mohan said that the popularity of the film made him lose his identity. He told me that when people approached him for an autograph, they looked bewildered when he signed Mac Mohan because they thought his name was Sambha!

Another minor player, Viju Khote, was immortalized as Kaalia, a henchman whom Gabbar shoots after famously asking: