And now, for a movie celebrating its 50th year of release. Sholay. I have only watched it once in the theatre – with my aunt in Pune as an 11-year old.
As a kid in 1970s India, what movies I got to watch was tightly controlled. I once remember going to watch “Khoon Pasina” with my building friends and we had to buy the tickets in “black”. When I got back home, my furious mom gave me a long lecture on the immorality of what I had done. It didn’t stick for long though! In the 70s and 80s, many a time that was the only way of watching new movies.
Back to Sholay. I have since seen it on TV/OTT a few times. Sholay has very specific memories for me. As a kid, I had memorised many of the scenes from the soundtrack LP. And that became an entertainment program when guests would come over (primarily at my mamas’ place in Pune.) The Gabbar Singh scenes were always a big hit. And so was the Dharmendra water tank one. I always had my audience in laughter – perhaps at this 11-12-year-old acting them out!
Jai Arjun Singh wrote in a Mint feature on Sholay turning 50 a few months ago: “Is it possible for the most iconic and mythologised film in your life—the one that is most thoroughly familiar—to also feel like a jigsaw puzzle that took a long time to put together? Sholay is widely acknowledged as the most polished and fully realised Hindi film of its era, the most flawless technically, the one with the best action scenes and sound design, the fewest loose ends or awkward cutting. The sort of mainstream film that even Satyajit Ray could (grudgingly?) admire. But however complete it may be, I still think of it as a series of moments that are so embedded in one’s consciousness (and so easily accessed from the mind’s old filing cabinet) that it almost doesn’t matter which order those fragments come in—there are any number of entry points. It’s a bit like knowing key sections of a legendary epic—say, the Mahabharat—rather than every last detail, and still feeling like you know it in its entirety.”
Even today, I could perhaps stand up and recite all the dialogues and mimic the actions from muscle memory. That’s how we consumed movies back then — not through endless rewatches on demand, but by absorbing them into our bones. A soundtrack LP played until the grooves wore thin. Dialogues rehearsed and performed for anyone who would watch. Sholay didn’t just define a generation; it lived inside us, scene by scene, long before we could summon it with a click.
