Vision of Life; by Sanjay: Sholay, The Greatest Story Ever Told!

“It's not what a movie is about, its how it is about it”... Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. And yes it’s his above words hits the bulls eye when we are talking about movie. And when it’s about the movies our beloved country lives on three things, politics, cricket & movies is a fact. And when its movies, even though in a country with official languages spoken are more than thirty & mostly all has their own films yet Hindi i.e. Bollywood stood above all & in Hindi movies one the entire film industry’s history can’t be written without mentioning one name & that is none other than Sholay rather The Sholay! Reason of my this dramatic introduction is recently our country celebrated (one more) Independence Day i.e. 15^th Aug someone on my college group posted, “yaar Sholay la 45 warsha zali!” i.e. its 45 years now for Sholay movie got released. And then I too realized as being diehard fan of movies, I was six years old though when eventually Sholay got in the cinemas of my small home town it was already an year old so I saw it when I was seven years old! And then the discussion on whatsap group about Sholay went on for a while but the script which actually was hidden deep in my own mind surfaced with so many scenes as well stories about Sholay, so I decided to pen down the same.

"Kitane aadmi the?", "sardar, maine aapka namak khaya hai", "ye haat nahi fasinka fanda hai gabbar", " basanti in kuttoke samne mat nachana", "chal dhanno aaj tere basantike ijjat ka sawala hai, "itana sannata ku hai bhai", "hum angrejo ke jamane ke jailer hai", "humara naam surma bhopali e bhai he" & "muze to sare pulicewaloke shakal ek jaisi dikhti hai"... well, I am sure everybody who is past 40’s by age today may not be able to remember any sentence of history from his school days but can name the character of every above sentence (read as dialogue) & that’s what we call a real Super Hit , yes that’s what Sholay did to my genre, which released 45 years back on the independence day i.e. 15^th Aug 1975!!

And I remembered the seven year old boy standing in front of display window of Mohan Cinema hall in a small town khamgaon in rural parts of vidarbha as that was era without FB, YouTube, Insta or even TV & before the movie actually releases, small cut-outs (photos of the move scenes) are used to be displayed in outer part of booking windows of cinema halls & we used to keep looking at them with eyes popping out!! That way there are thousands of stories about Sholay right from its 70 mm budget to the black marketing of tickets & Dharam–Hema romance on sets etc etc but what I was always interested in is, what was it in Sholay which makes it greatest of all!

And then here is a film which has biggest of the star cast of that time with just one name unknown that of the villain character some Amjad Khan but no one could predict that name will fetch maximum of publicity. It’s like some unknown young player stealing Man of the Match in IPL final with all big names like dhoni, virat, bumhra & rohit etc playing from both sides!! But in this emotion run country this is what happens in films, game (cricket of course) or politics! In India just one match, one movie or one election can take you to the top of the world & so was Sholay; not just for Amjad khan but for many, even Dhanno the horse also got remembered ever as can you imagine people remembering name of some horse whose role was for few minutes for four decades!! And here is what makes Shloay different as with nearly six lead roles star caste like Bachhan, Dharmendra, Jaya, Hema Malini, Sanjeev Kumar & Amjad Khan, yet every other smallest character is still remembered by millions by that character's name & the dialogue. Can you imagine Mac-Mohan who played eddy to the Villain & his entire role may not be bigger than five minutes but that role gave him life time name "Sambha" which was name of character he played’. "arre o Sambha, Kitna inam rakhhe hai sarkar hum par?" Its the dialogue which Sambha even didn’t say but Gabbarsing says! Now you can imagine, you live on the popularity for decades for a role which doesn’t have a dialogue more than two lines, this was power of the movie which we are still witnessing!

Ok, I know enough has been written about Sholay yet I think such movies must be not just screened but discussed & read & write about, in every decade so every generation will know what it makes to be Great Movie which Sholay is! I teach my niece History for her 10th & in that, sources of history named one chapter is there where movies are also considered as source of history. Look at Sholay & it is living history as not just about the backdrop of the movie set in some remote village of central India but the characters merging from small town to village, the bandits (daku), the postman cycling from village to village, railway stations & steam engine railway, horse carts & weekly central bazaar of the village, all this today’s I-Phone & Samsung genre can’t even imagine such places exists right in this country though they still exists but the culture part is long gone! And then the way it’s been released, the way thousands & millions kept on again & again in the theaters to watch it! Who can imagine that people used to wait for more than 24 hours to get one movie ticket, this is history too in today’s era of Book-my-Show is the source to buy movie tickets by sitting in your car or in your bedroom! How today’s kids can ever imagine the thrill of standing in scorching heat of central Indian summer & wait in the seemingly endless queue just to get inside cinema hall. And the moment every character enters on the screen, the welcoming claps, whistles & shouts from the audience & fun is entire crowd chanting the dialogues with the character on the screen delivering it, guys that was mesmerizing, a rage, a phenomenon, yes that was history then also & we should preserve it, that's why Sholay is important! And if this is not enough, after that in all the Ganpati mandaps for nearly next three years Sholay’s characters dialogues has being played so while you were walking on road you felt like sitting in a cinema hall. Never my generation has seen such spellbound effect of some movie on the masses which Sholay did! Indeed there has been super hits & super stars & characters gaining popularity before also & fashion followers of these characters too but not to this extent & such wide spread for so long time span!

Well, again a lot has been discussed why Sholay become such hit & the success of it has been credited to the script & dialogues of Salim Javed to direction of Ramesh Sippi, to mouth organ based back ground music, (which still gives me goose bumps) of RD Burban, to cinematography which captured the raw Indian rural terrain in classiest way & yes every character selection like tailor made & then that character living to the expectation of everyone, makers to viewers, everything was spot on! But then that has been seen in many movies even the last decades Lagan or very recent Galli Boy, these all factors were present, so what makes Sholay phenomenal in compare to others! I think, it’s the era in which it has been released, the timing which clicked just perfect along with due respect to all other factors such as acting, script, direction music, casting & camera! It was hardly thirty years we have been independent & entire system was in its thirties with lots of unrest or say confusion about everything, even about law & enforcement(well that’s still true). But that was a time where even a khaki dressed constable was respected & ideas of good & bad were pretty simple. And on such background some police man, hurt from a bad guy, taking help of lesser bad guys & finishing the main bad guy & help villagers along by doing so (representation of common man), people just loved it. That was the time when 80 out of 100 movies were running to exotic locations just to show the dream world around to the masses which were worried actually about their daily needs & here is Sholay hit them (read as connect them) hard as here every character they could feel is someone from them, they can see Surama Bhopali, Viru & Jay, Basanti, The Jailor & even the Thakur in them & then vilan was common i.e. the system (which still is) & there was no other way to express anguish like FB/Twitter & Insta but watch the movie & clap for the fight which all good & lesser bad guys fought with sheer bad guys & defeat them!! And along with, there was tadka which India loves most i.e. dash of emotions right from romance to vendetta to patriotism to sacrifice for the friendship; what more one could have asked for!

This all I think at right time, is what made Sholay one of the most written or spoken or hit movie & more than box office figures made it a movie which even the time couldn’t defeat, that makes Sholay great. Today also on FM Channels of radio while driving the car on the traffic jam roads, when some radio ad uses Gabber’s voice & dialogue & when I know the artist is mimicking that voice & words may be bit different than that deep throat growling voice of Amjad Khan, uses the dialogue “Kitane aadmi the?”! The radio advertise, makes me forget the traffic around & for once my car become time machine & I went back in the stuffy, humid, house-full cinema hall of Khamgaon & around me there is ocean of human bodies yet I don’t feel it neither do any of that human ocean feels each others, as all eyes are glued on the screen & ears at the rundown sound system & the words echoes, “Kitane aadmi the?” Thanks dear Sholay, for giving me freedom for a moment from today’s chaos around me & making me that seven year kid again ever!

Sanjay Deshpande

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