Legendary tales – ‘Sholay’ and Dwarka Divecha

Stories are a fixture of our childhoods. We have all been told tales believable and unbelievable by our parents and our grandparents and sundry. Children love a good story and adore a good storyteller.

I too grew up on a staple of diet of stories. One of my childhood legends is the legendary movie ‘Sholay’, which I am convinced is one of the greatest stories ever told on screen.

My father loved the movie so much that he bought a video cassette tape of the movie even though we had no player with us – we used to borrow one from our neighbours. My his own count he had watched the movie at least 50 times. I had watched it with him at least 10 times and must have watched it at least 50 more times since his death over 20 years ago.

I loved the movie, of course, but I loved more the tales my father told me about the movie. Every time we watched it, he told me about how ‘Sholay’ was a pioneer in filmmaking techniques. We loved the scene at the start of the movie where bandits on horseback attack a moving good train. We loved the dialogues, which I did not take long to memorise. I can still recite nearly all the main dialogues of the movie. We loved the scene where Jai asks Basanti’s aunt to get Basanti married to Veeru. We loved the scene where Veeru gets drunk and climbs a water tank to coerce Basanti’s aunt into permitting his wedding to Basanti by threatening to jump off the water tank if she refused.

“Yeh suicide kya hain?”

“Arrey, jab angrez log marte hain, to use suicide kehte hai.”

“When I dead, police coming. Police coming, budhiya going jail. budhiya going jail, and jail mein chakki peesing and peesing and peesing.”

“Mausi se kaun shaadi karega?”

While we all know well the cast and the director and the music director, I believe that the movie owes its success to another key player, the cinematographer Dwarka Divecha, who was instrumental in creating visual flavour that the movie is famous for.

Dwarka Divecha took 20 days to shoot the one-minute scene of Radhaextinguishing the lamps while Jai played the harmonica during sunset.

It is the commitment to getting everything right regardless of the effort that ensures the possibility of success, even if eventual success is nearly always coincidental.