In 3D, the cult film, ‘Sholay’ (1975) feel like a ‘travel
through a hologram postcard’. In digital manipulation, iconic figures become a
bit lesser than their demi-god status. The crowd that has come to see the movie
again in 2014, exactly after forty years of its making, is comprised of the
generation of people who had grown up Sholay and the youngest ones like four
year olds who have seen the film’s promo in television channels and have fallen
instantly in love with the characters, especially ‘Gabbar Singh’, the dacoit
who has been immortalized by the legendary actor, late Amjad Khan. ‘.. ke yahan se pachas pachas kos door gaon mein jab baccha rota hai toy Maa kehti hai..beta soja ..soja nahi toh Gabbar Singh aa jayega.. ’ (When kids throw
tantrums in village, their mother tell them, Gabbar would come). And kids go
silent, says Gabbar in one of the scenes. Children (who have seen more menacing
characters than Gabbar in various other movies) still cringe at the sight of
Gabbar on screen. For the grownups sighting Gabbar is a moment of nostalgia.
What is that in those dialogues mouthed by various characters in Sholay that
make even the kids of today repeat them with glee? None tells them to do so.
The dialogues get into their blood stream automatically, like the myths, fables
and folktales that they listen during their bed time. There is something in
those dialogues written by Salim-Javed duo that transcends the apparent and
takes them beyond feeling and imagination. Sholay has become a part of our
consciousness. Various film institutes both in India and abroad still discuss
the script of Sholay as a part of their curriculum. Some say it is a rugged
movie done in the western cowboy movie style. Some say it is a movie inspired
by Seven Samurais by Akira Kurosawa. But westerns are eminently forgettable.
Seven Samurais, though capture the anger and passion of hired soldiers, it
falls into comical depths at times. Sholay grips the viewer by force and it
remains.
Noted film critic, Anupama Chopra, in her book, Sholay- The
Making of a Classic (2000), gives a detailed narrative of how this movie was
made in a remote Karnataka village, where the director Ramesh Sippy had found
an adequate location for the ravines in the imaginary Ramgarh where the story
of Sholay unfolded. Ramgarh is not a South Indian village. It is a nowhere
place somewhere in the North. The closest allusion could be of Chambal Ravines in
Madhya Pradesh where the famous dacoits of our modern times lived. But Ramgarh
is a nowhere place, like Marquez’ Macondo, a magical realist place where
anybody could exercise their imagination within the limited but sufficient
economics of the place. For a movie that deals with the fight between good and
bad, and the ultimate victory of good over bad with some kind of sacrifices on
good’s part, a nowhere place is not a new thing. Except for those Bollywood
movies that revel in the idea of city, struggle and success, most of the
Bollywood staples have nowhere places as the ‘locale’ of the narrative. But
Ramgarh becomes exceptional because in the movie the presence of city is nearly
ruled out or even its presence is almost co-opted. Seen in this perspective, we
could say that Sholay’s success lies in the national imagination as a part of
its reclamation of a dream; the dream of/about an autonomous nation state
devoid of colonial incursions and the ensuing slavery.
How does this reclamation happen in Sholay? Or to put in
other words, why does that reclamation become absolutely necessary for the
Indian population that looks for solutions from a depleting socio-political and
cultural situation? Talking about the collapse of the grand Nehruvian dream
might not help us here much. After Nehru’s time, India had regained its
national pride through some strategic wars in the east; liberating Bangladesh
from Pakistan and checking China from further incursions. Indira Gandhi was on
the move. With carefully planned political strategies, she became the Prime
Minister of India. Her younger son Sanjay Gandhi, like an autocrat with extra
constitutional powers was trying to make India/Delhi a beautiful place through
industrialization and beautification. In this process, with the collapse of the
agrarian economy people were moving from the villages to cities, looking for
jobs and better opportunities. Gram Swaraj (autonomous village economy), as
imagined and upto an extent practiced by Mahatma Gandhi was not delivering
anymore. While cities were shown as the places of hope, therefore a
destination, villages were shown as the places of utter abjection. The hope
that ‘Mother India’ (1957) had given to people through a single woman’s
struggle against the male dominated system, was already gone. Perhaps, people
saw a mother in India Gandhi (elevation of her image from being a goongi
gudiya, silent doll to an aggressive mother proves it) and for a few years they
invested all the hope in her. Despite the five year plans and five and twenty
point plans of Indira Gandhi villages were losing out to the cities. The exodus
was already on and it still continues. But in late 1960s and early 70s,
villages were still a possible alternative though the possibilities had been
killed at every juncture. It is in this context Sholay takes place; definitely
in a village called Ramgarh.
Prof.Vinaylal, who has extensively studied the cultural and
socio-political nuances of ‘Deewar’ (1975) observes that pavement is an
important metaphor in this transitional phase of demographic shifts (from
villages to cities). Pavement is another nowhere place, between the sheltered
and comfortable places of living and exercising of power, and the road that
makes the movement of this power possible. The villagers who abandon their
natural environs come to a city and settle in this in between zone. Unlike the
romantic hopes expressed by Raj Kapoor in his movies, though his domain is
road/pavement, these villagers do not get easy access to buildings where
comfortable living and exercising of power is possible. Most of the time, for
Raj Kapoor and the later heroes, the movement from pavement to power is through
the agencies of state, women and crime. In Deewar, Shashi Kapoor moves to
comfort and power through the state as he becomes a police officer. Amitabh
Bacchan moves to power through crime. And both of them take a good look at the
pavement from where they came to their present positions. In Raj Kapoor movies,
the agency is often through women, as the hero is a permanent outcaste. His
good nature is not accepted by the powerful society so he has to exercise his
darker sides to survive in the pavement/road. Only through a compassionate
agency could identify and understand the good sap that flows behind the
troubled waves of his exterior behaviour. In a sense, the nowhereness of
pavement becomes a possibility in most of the film narratives of the time. The
only catch is either you have to become a part of the state which has pushed
you out of your village (that is a grand compromise) or you have to move
against the state through crime. In most of the cases, state co-opts the
criminal as he is perennially good and accommodates him within the structure.
If he cannot be accommodated in this way considering his past deeds to move
from the pavement to power, he is easily killed in an encounter, either by
mother (then the killing is justified as a godly intervention) or by brother
(he protects larger interest as he is already a representative of the state) of
by the state itself (through police). In Sholay, this familiar structure is
broken.
If in other films of that time, the villagers were moving
from villages to city, in Sholay, the city moves to a village. And the pivot of
pavement is completely abandoned in its narrative. In one of the story
establishing shots, what we see is a completely autonomous village; with its
cobblers, farmers, blacksmiths, priests, temple, water tank, irrigation
facilities, storages and so on. Everyone is completely happy in doing their
allotted/inherited roles. There is no police station or school directly shown
in Ramgarh, not even a hospital. I would say that it is a very deliberate
erasure of the ideological state apparatuses (as Althusser sees these
structures) therefore the erasure of the state. This nowhere place lies outside
the larger economics of a nation state, and shows a possibility and extension
of Gram swaraj. In this village, the presence of the state, if at all it is
faintly there, is shown as a failed state in the image of Thakur Baldev Singh, the
police officer, portrayed by Sanjeev Kumar. His hands have been cut off Gabbar
Singh. That means the state has already been rendered useless here. To bring
order one has to get some agencies that operates outside the state and its rules.
So in Veeru and Jai (Dharmendra and Amitabh Bacchan respectively) we have two
jail birds, who are taken out of the jail to wreck revenge upon Gabbar.
Interestingly, here the roles are reversed. Gabbar becomes the state, which is
ruthless, taxing and making unusual demands from its subjects. Gabbar exactly
does what the state of 1960s and 70s was doing to its people. So, in Sholay, if
at all there is a villain, that is state. So shall we see two guerrillas in
Veeru and Jai as we had seen two revolutionary fighters in Fidel Castro and Che
Guvera?
In retrospection, we have all the reasons to see a Fidel and
Che in Veeru and Jai. Veeru is aggressive and playful like Fidel is. Jai is
moody and romantic like Che. They come from the city as their clothes show.
They wear denim jeans, shirt and jacket. Even the colour coding is very
striking; Veeru wears dark blue and Jai wears light blue. They are the two
sides of one and the same principle; revolution. The symbolism becomes all the
more poignant and important when we see the coin that Jai uses to decide on
things by flipping it in the air, has only head on either side. That means they
are not Veeru and Jai as two different people; they are the two sides of the
same person, who has decided to operate himself out of the state; Thakur. The
song ‘Yeh dosti hum nahin todenge’ (we will not abandon this friendship)
accentuates this symbolism further. Sholay’s revolutionary edge gives it the
evergreen cultic status because people of all time including the four year olds
cherish the ingrained idea of change, the revolution. And when a film shows
that it does not operate from the limbo of the pavement but from the definitive
space of anti-state or out of the state, their presence becomes all the more
appealing. Because they are the breakers of all kinds of rules and regulations.
While singing the song about friendship they wreck havoc on the pedestrians.
Initially, when they come to become the foot soldiers of Thakur, they expect
money in return as they do not feel any commitment towards Thakur; once again
reiterating their status as people with no roots, no commitment but people who
live freedom and change. But the moment they understand the scenario, they even
return the money, a possible medium that connects them with the state. They are
now absolutely free agencies of Thakur, who has pushed him out of the state.
They become the friendly aliens in the village. When they are not on job, they
just play fools.
For the time of its making and its release, Sholay is very
much a revolutionary film. Veeru and Jai have Eros as their guiding spirit.
Veeru falls in and out of love with any woman whom he comes across. Finally, he
meets Basanti (Hema Malini), the tonga-wali in the village, then he is hooked
up. But Jai says that this too is a passing fancy. Even if in the last scene of
the movie, we see Basanti is waiting for Veeru to take her along with him, the
very aspect that Veeru does not given any importance to the institutions of the
state, including marriage, must have been a very fascinating therefore liberal
and revolutionary idea for the audience of that time. This freakish character
is counterbalanced by Jai’s silent romance with the widow enacted by Jaya
Bhaduri (later Jaya Bacchan). He is calm and silent and he does not demand
anything from the girl other than a few glances. Finally, Jai too decides to
marry her though providence does not allow him to do so. Interestingly,
marrying a widow by a heroic character was scandalous at that time and the rule
of the land was kept intact by killing Jai in the encounter with the thugs, but
still the possibility of widow marriage too looks quite revolutionary for the
time. There is no running around trees, there is no singing of songs; what
exists between Jai and the widow is a wailing note of harmonica that he plays.
Like she puts down her passion for him, she every day enacts the ritual of
turning off the lanterns.
Good finally wins over the evil. The anti-state agency kills
the state and restores an autonomous village economy. Considering the time of
its release, we can see that Sholay got a wonderful response from the people
because it was the time of Political Emergency in India declared by Indira
Gandhi. In one go, it decimates all the rules of the state and shows that the
village economy and the idyllic life is possible. Sholay, in a way demands political
decentralization but it also says that it can come only through tragedy. A
revolution takes place through a series of tragedy and only those people who
can see things in perspective from outside the system could alleviate it from
all the woes. Anupama Chopra tells us that when it was released, Sholay was a
big flop. The prints were pulled out of the theatres for a second cut in order
to reduce the length of the movie. But within a week’s time, people started
talking about Gabbar, Veeru and Jai. Basanti talked her way into the heart of
the people. The viewers knew that something was happening to them while
watching the movie but they did not know how to articulate it. It was not just
cathartic. It was a thing to live on with. Sholay showed the possibilities
outside the state and Sholay established the fact that freedom was possible.
Today, when I see it again, perhaps fifth or sixth time, I
can feel how each frame made sense to people at that time. In the opening
shots, when the dacoits follow the train and the shootout takes place, horses
with no riders on their saddle madly run along with the train. It is one of the
classic shots in the movie. The total annihilation of Thakur’s family is one
sequence that has made its mark through freeze shots and abrupt cuts. Sequences
and frames have international classical movies without copying any of the shots
from them. Sholay is an eminently inspired movie. From Bustor Keaton to
D.W.Griffit to Bergman to Kurosawa to John Ford to Chaplin to Clint Eastwood,
every possible inspiration is taken into the making of Sholay. But they do not
stick out from the movie. Sholay, pays tribute to the whole idea of ‘moving
pictures’ by introducing the famous train shot as one of the first moving
pictures in the history was about/of a train coming to the station.
Interestingly, Sholay has become point of reference for so many Bollywood
movies. In Karan Arjun made exactly after twenty years of Sholay, almost
imitates the cult movie in story line and frame division. But still Sholay
remains Sholay. To conclude, I would say, Sholay has become a cult film not
just because it has the right ingredients but because it shows an alternative,
a reversal of games and the possibility of a revolution. For the young
generation, it is the fascination with a myth. Sholay is not just a movie but a
culture.
No comments:
Post a Comment