Machismo, lightness, gentleness, and the spaces in between – another Sholay essay

(I have written a lot about Sholay over the years – more than I ever should have – but when Frontline magazine asked me to do a piece for their e-book about Sholay, I wrote a little something about my relationship with the film's depiction of “heroism” and “cowardice”)
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The earliest image-fragments in my head are of the two heroes standing side by side, one with a pistol, the other with a machine gun, taking on the bad guys. Veeru and Jai, eyes razor-focused, foreheads furrowed, sweat glistening: Dharmendra and Bachchan, inhabiting this hyper-dramatic, larger-than-life canvas so well, their performances a reminder that action sequences (much like song sequences) need good acting if they are to work well.

Can you picture Rajesh Khanna or Shashi Kapoor, Jeetendra or Rishi Kapoor in these roles? Well, maybe you could if you have a very rich imagination, but in my view the whole edifice would fall apart. No one could fill these shoes as well as Dharam and Bachchan did: the first a brawny “He-Man” (as so many one-note obituaries recently told us – but more on that in a bit); the second a tall, intense fellow who performed fight sequences with more conviction and wiry energy than anyone had before him.

In other words, this was the ultimate image of machismo if you were watching Sholay either when it first came out – or (like me) in the early 1980s, on videocassette or at a theatrical rerun.

That scene, with the two of them shoulder to shoulder, happens during the Holi attack. I had misremembered that there was a shot like this during the first action sequence on the train – but there wasn’t. In the train scene, Veeru and Jai are operating independently as they fight off the marauding dacoits: the former manages the engine, playing the fool, chugging from a liquor flask; the latter handles the rearguard action along with Sanjeev Kumar’s Inspector Baldev.

It is still a testosterone feast, though. And it begins with the banter between the three men, and all that talk about courage.

“Shaayad khatron se khelne ka shauk hai mujhe”, says the inspector slowly and deliberately. (“Maybe I enjoy playing with danger.”) “Hum 15-20 mein toh bhaari padenge,” boasts Veeru. (“The two of us can take on 15 or 20 in a fight.”)

And then, as the danger arrives, the gauntlet thrown down: “Kyon jailer saab, bahaduri aazmani hai?” (“Want to test our bravery?”) Followed by the iconic image of the cop aiming his gun at the handcuffs binding his two prisoners, shooting, and only then saying “Lekin bhaagne ki koshish mat karna” (“Don’t try to escape”) – because he is so confident in his ability to apprehend them again if necessary. This is swagger raised to the power of three, though Sanjeev Kumar was no one’s idea of a rugged man.

Even as a very young viewer high on adrenaline, two questions may nag you:
1) Why does he shoot at the cuffs, instead of unlocking them? That too on a moving train where a bullet gone awry could result in one of the two heroes becoming as handicapped as Thakur himself will be later? (Also, wasting a bullet!)
2) Why do Jai and Veeru offer to help fight the dacoits? Is it self-preservation combined with the opportunity to escape, or is there a deeper nobility, setting these two small-time rogues as morally above the attackers?

A quick and easy way of answering both questions is that such are the workings of mainstream cinema: you need the dramatic gesture, the big eye-catching moment; and you need to see the leading men as basically likable heroes, even if they are operating outside the law. Whatever the case, at this early stage Sholay is already investing a lot in bravery and decisiveness. (Words like “bahadur” or bahaduri” would occupy a prominent position on the screenplay’s tag-cloud.) And it continues. Later we will have:

“Loha hee lohay ko kaatta hai.”

“Loha garam hai, maar do hathoda.”

… and so on. Heaps of buff imagery: men made of iron, forged in the sun.

One can note that the dacoits are very brave too, or very desperate – relentlessly clambering onto the train even with bullets coming at them. Later in life, more “realistic” films like Paan Singh Tomar or Sonchiriya would give us a sense of these outlaws (Bandits? Baaghis? Naxalites? Some combination of all these?) as having their own imperatives and tragic back-stories. But the Sholay universe is an allegorical one: Gabbar Singh – when he arrives – is such a force of pure mythic evil, transcending realism, transcending all banal notions about shades of grey, that it is natural to see his men (and other dacoits like them) in similar terms; and to see Veeru and Jai in comparison as not just “brave” but also “good”.

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In his very first scene, Gabbar channels Shakespeare’s Caesar: “Jo darr gaya, samjho marr gaya.” This thought – it is better to die brave than to live a hundred years as a coward – is repeatedly affirmed through the film. Look at the dramatic moment, a terrifying lull before an action-storm, where Gabbar orders Veeru and Jai to put their heads at his feet. Jai seems to comply, drawing an aghast exclamation from his friend. Of course, it’s a ploy to blind Gabbar with Holi powder and resume the fighting – but the very idea that these two “heroes” could bow and ask for mercy… that’s unthinkable.

And yet, Sholay also has that key sequence – tense, wonderfully shot and choreographed – where the villagers respond with dismay to the escalation in violence, pleading that they are simple farmers who cannot afford the dacoits’ retribution. They make a case for ahimsa or non-violence; the Thakur equates this with cowardice and responds by saying that a valiant person can’t bend, he can only die. One is reminded of the Gandhi quote – “If I have to choose between cowardice and violence, I will choose violence” – that opened Mera Gaon Mera Desh, the 1971 Hindi movie that is seen as a thematic and visual forerunner to Sholay.

Thakur does of course get his way (as do we action-lovers), but a case can be made that the opposing argument is never quashed. Imaam saab, an important authority figure, may tell the villagers that an honourable death is preferable to a cowardly life, but this is after he has already lost his child. He has nothing more to lose, but the others do. And by the film’s end, even if one accepts that the fighting was necessary, the costs paid may have been too great. For many people watching Sholay, the unforgettable closing image remains that of the widow Radha, bereaved once again, closing the window as Jai’s pyre burns in the distance. The original ending where Thakur kills Gabbar – now in the newly restored prints – was described by Anupama Chopra in her Sholay book as depicting a hollow, Pyrrhic victory for Thakur Baldev Singh, who gets revenge but no real satisfaction.

As for “cowardice” – when I think about my childhood fascination with Dharmendra and Amitabh (and yes, I can still be almost as stirred by their action scenes), I also think of real-life encounters with bullies, and how there was usually no option but to back away. From aggressive residents in the neighborhood who got physically threatening when I tried to dissuade them against bursting loud firecrackers before Diwali, to the young boys who came too close, breathing menacingly down at me after our side-view mirrors had rubbed against each other in a narrow lane. Fear was my first response in these situations – and it may well have been even if I hadn’t been outnumbered four to one – along with the mundane thought that I was vulnerable since I was wearing glasses; what if someone took a swing near my eyes?

Such are the practicalities of the cowardly life. Such is the big gap between fandom and our own real-world attitudes to confrontation.

It’s well known that vigilante scenes in mainstream Hindi cinema played a cathartic-escapist role for us viewers – fantasies that would help us inhabit the avenger’s space for a few hours, feel better about the possibility of justice. But what adds a dimension here is that Sholay’s violence isn’t cartoonish: it is supremely well-choreographed (with a team of international stuntmen brought in for verisimilitude) and performed with seriousness of purpose, from the larger action sequences to the individual fights. (Watch the claustrophobic close-ups in the final fight between Veeru and Gabbar.) Action scenes in other films of the time feel quaint and synthetic next to this. The (comparative) believability of Sholay’s action makes it possible to imagine that Veeru and Jai could really exist, that one might aspire to be like them.

But at the same time, Sholay moves gradually from vagrant, untethered action towards a settled communal domesticity. Even as Veeru and Jai use their guns and fists, they are becoming more rooted, more sensitive to notions of family, community, adjustment. Scenes like the “match-fixing” one between Basanti’s mausi and Jai are played for comedy, but even this is part of the film’s arcing towards a traditional, socially approved life for its two leads. (Dibakar Banerjee’s pithy description of Sholay is “Anaath bachchon ko family milee.” Two orphans find a family.) Veeru and Jai speak of exchanging their guns for ploughs, settling into village life – and when they do, might they not adopt a cautious, pragmatic approach too? When you have children to worry about, can you afford to be constantly “brave” in the sense that is repeatedly lionized in the film?

If one can speculate along those lines, it is partly because Dharmendra and Bachchan, though such convincing action heroes, are much else. My mother added to the He-Man mythology when I was a child by pointing out how big Dharmendra’s hands were when he cradled the dying Jai’s head in them – yet she also loved the introspective “naram Dharam” of an earlier time. The same year as Sholay, the two stars appeared together in Chupke Chupke (a “small” film shot in quick time long after Sholay had begun production) – playing bhadraloks whose weapon of choice was linguistic playfulness, not guns.

There is no denying that Sholay is a very “macho” film on the surface. But it is also a film where, of the main characters, the only one earning a living as an honest, hard-working professional is a woman, Basanti. (Even Thakur, when he is a cop, airily says he doesn’t need to work – he has ancestral land.) It is a great action movie, sure, but it is also one where the boisterous hero shows a soft or goofy side, not only in romantic or comic scenes but in the dramatic ones. (Watch Dharmendra’s little facial expressions – eyes wide, constantly turning to his friend like a child seeking counsel – in scenes such as the ones where Thakur outlines their strategies.) In Sholay conversations over the years, I have often made the point that if you want to really see this for the multi-layered film it is, you need to appreciate the brilliance of Dharmendra’s and Hema Malini’s performances – rather than view them (as was too often done when I was growing up) as the glamorous adjuncts to the more “serious” actors. Their presence brings much-needed positive energy to a film that may otherwise have been unbearably heavy, even morbid. They open Sholay up, make us see its lighter possibilities.

Perhaps, then, in some faraway alternate universe, there is a sequel that isn’t an action movie at all, but simply a gentle yarn about two friends and their wives living a bucolic farming life in a small village, having adventures that could come out of a series like Panchayat – and with no grandstanding about bravery or cowardice, because that isn’t needed. The child-me may not have wanted to see that film, but I could probably find some time for it now.

Short review: I Met a Man Who Wasn't There

Arunava Sinha celebrated his 100th book as a translator recently, a staggering achievement even for someone whose work ethic many of us have been in awe of for a long time. One of his comparatively minor achievements of the past week – still a hefty one, though – was dragging me out of my 1930s/1940s crime-fiction reading into a more contemporary mystery, Sakyajit Bhattacharya’s I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There (translated by Arunava from the Bengali original Shesh Mrito Pakhi). I finished the book in less than a day and was gripped throughout, even though I wasn’t all that enamoured by its central character.

Having said that this is a contemporary work (the present-day narrative being set in 2019 Darjeeling), the story deals with an attempt to solve a much older mystery, the murder of a young poet named Amitava 44 years earlier, and the cloud of suspicion that has since hung over Amitava’s one-time friend Arun Chowdhury, who went on to become one of the country’s best-selling crime novelists. This story, now as mist-covered as the terrain it unfolded in, comes to us through the investigations of a reporter named Tanaya, who has travelled from Delhi to Darjeeling to uncover new material and a fresh perspective on the case for a series she has been writing about unsolved mysteries. What Tanaya can’t anticipate is that almost as soon as she begins her interviews, she is presented with a confession – as well as a never-published manuscript written by the long-dead Amitava, a murder mystery that may contain important clues to the real-life crime.

This means that for a large portion of I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There, we are moving between two stories: Tanaya’s own investigation, and the story contained in the manuscript she has been asked to read, about the locked-room murder of a possible blackmailer sometime in the mid-1970s. As parallels gradually emerge between the crimes, she must figure out how they dovetail, what is reliable and what is misdirection.

This was a solid page-turner. Tanaya and her precociousness got a little annoying at times (she only half-jokingly likens herself to Mycroft Holmes at one point, never mind that most unlike Mycroft she 1. gets out and about a great deal, 2. makes a series of mistaken assumptions and faulty deductions) but this didn’t really affect my enjoyment of the book. At one stage in the second half I did worry that this might be an anti-narrative that would turn out to be more about sociological observation and political commentary than the actual mystery (much of the 1970s back-story has to do with the Naxalbari conflicts in the region involving the local police and dissident youngsters), but that wasn’t the case: though there is some thoughtful commentary about the arrogance of the privileged, and how easily some people become dispensable in certain situations, the resolution of the whodunit/howdunit is satisfying and well-worked-out too; even though the final explanation could have been shorter.

*And* there are little references to golden-age crime fiction and even to Shin-Honkaku, as you can see in the image included here – coincidentally two of the books I set aside so I could read this one are the Alice Arisugawa mentioned here (The Moia Island Puzzle) and Carr’s Death-Watch.

Calcutta photos: the Alipore Jail, the lake, friends, and an old dog

I made a very brief trip to Calcutta, mainly to attend my friend Shamya’s sessions around the Ritwik Ghatak book at the Kolkata Literary Meet. Walked around the Rabindra Sarobar lake area with Shamya and another old friend Arijit (who had once famously danced in glee around my car after we watched Godard’s Pierrot le Fou at a Delhi film fest). Had a decent time in the Alipore Jail/Museum grounds where the fest was held, a space with many striking murals and statues and probably a few ghosts too. (Arijit and I passed snarky comments on what was said at some sessions, and had a running joke about a flogging statue being a convincing depiction of lit-fest organisers and recalcitrant speakers.)

Also had a solid Bengali dinner at Tero Parbon with friends including Soumik Sen (whose new show Jazz City will begin streaming in March); caught up, too briefly, with friends and acquaintances from the lit-community, including Jashodhara Chakraborti, Salil Tripathi, Sandip Roy, Arunava Sinha, Sohini Chattopadhyay, Kanishka Gupta, Manu Joseph, Jerry Pinto and others (there is only very limited photo evidence of all this); and spent a bit of time in Shamya’s Jodhpur Park flat, which I last saw, and stayed in, a full 27 years ago during post-grad.

Sharing a few pics at the bottom of this post. But before that: one of the highlights of my stay was getting to meet Arijit’s 12/13-year old Muzu, who came with him to Shamya’s house - a tad battle-scarred from a fight with a cat - and whom you see here. (Not that she paid me much attention.) She is clearly very well looked after and cared for, but in her eyes - with traces of incipient cataract - and general demeanor (looking a bit lost when her human was out of sight for a moment) I recognised the characteristics of the ageing, vulnerable dog. Things I have noticed a lot with some of our older community dogs in recent years (many of whom get badly neglected at precisely the stage when they need the most care and reassurance) - and which I had my own closest brush with when looking after our Kaali in her final debilitated months.

When I returned to Delhi, I saw a similar watchful vulnerability in Lara’s eyes for pretty much the first time. Something that felt subtly different from the more general nervousness that has always been part of her personality. She is 11 this year, the clock is ticking, I have been giving her daily kidney supplements for the past few months after some worrying test results, and it’s easy to anticipate (especially given her increased weight) that regular joint supplements will soon be needed too; that her movements will get slower and more strained. (She already makes very human-like complaining grunts once in a while when jumping on or off the bed.) For many years now Lara has been the most important “person” in my life (and certainly the only constant now) - and grateful as I have been to have her around so long (especially after having lost Foxie when she was only four), I also have to be in a regular state of preparedness for the end, and for everything that will precede it. It’s something I think about every time I see a really aged dog - whether one that’s feebly fending for itself on the streets or being well looked after in a comfortable home.

Here is a link to my Kaali tribute post from February 2024. And the other Cal pics are below.

(Pics from the Ritwik Ghatak Delhi events are here. And here's a 2009 post about the film Paa, and my speculations about Foxie living to an old age - which of course didn't happen; it may or may not be relevant to what I wrote above)

At Jantar Mantar, for the dogs

(From my occasional sharing of a few things I had only put on Instagram and/or FB earlier)

Jantar Mantar was buzzing on the afternoon of Jan 4: I was there for the events organised on behalf of community dogs, but there were other protests going on too - about the Ankita Bhandari murder case and the US attack on Venezuela - and the many rousing speeches, made just a few dozen meters apart, often overlapped with each other. (I shared a video on my Instagram page.)

At the animals protest, some heartening and sensible things were said by Manavi Rai, Gauri Maulekhi, Ambika Shukla, Anjali Gopalan, Navtej Johar and others - all of whom do an incredible amount for community animals in their respective spheres. Others on the stage included a 10-year-old boy who feeds at the NSD campus; a woman who feeds at Jamia; others who have been assaulted/beaten up for standing up for animals.

The speeches ranged, as one would expect, from the no-holds-barred, angry ones that directly took on the venom of BJP governments across the country (with Rekha Gupta and cohort described as no different from Aurangzeb in terms of tyranny) to the quieter, more circumspect ones: Anjali Gopalan spoke of the need for “animal-lovers” to move out of their own silos and to form larger coalitions with other marginalised groups - Dalits, housing society groups, LGBTQ groups etc. Navtej Johar said the ABC of Animal Birth Control should be modified to ABCWL (ABC With Love, something that the authorities haven’t come close to managing in the past). Scientific arguments were laid out, historical context for human-animal coexistence was discussed. There were some musical performances. And cautious optimism about what is to come on January 7 and afterwards… 

P.S. Of course, nothing to be particularly optimistic about happened at the hearings from Jan 7, extending till Jan 20, except that animal-carers, who had already made payments earlier to be allowed to present their cases to the SC, were finally given some sort of hearing; with the judges of course regularly interrupting with sarcastic or uninformed remarks. The fight, such, as it is continues - and meanwhile, with everything in limbo, there are plenty of reports from around the country, Telengana especially, of dogs being taken away and killed en masse.

In praise of Christianna Brand's Tour de Force

Excursions in Golden Age crime fiction continue, and here is one of my favourite reads from the past couple of months: Christianna Brand’s 1955 novel Tour de Force, which is not only an immensely satisfying murder mystery (with at least three solid false solutions presented to the reader before the true one emerges) but also an amusing travel book full of droll, witty descriptions of how a bunch of (largely insular) English travellers might experience a guided Mediterranean tour. Especially when they have to contend, among other things, with blithe displays of corruption and inefficiency amidst the local cops on a self-controlled island republic called San Juan el Pirata – “with a tiny parliament and a tiny police force and a quite remarkably tiny conscience in regard to its obligations to the rest of society; but with a traditionally enormous Hereditary Grand Duke…”

This place is a hotbed of open smuggling and other activities frowned upon in much of the rest of the world.

The charming Puerto de Barrequitas, Port of the Little Boats, sends forth its fishing fleet night after moonless night and in the grey dawn welcomes it back with its contraband cargo; all hands, including such members of the international anti-smuggling police as have not been out to sea with it, turning to, to help with the unloading. But even so, it has proved, since the war, impossible to feed the insatiable maw of the contraband-hungry tourist trade without recourse to the mainland, and San Juan reluctantly smuggles in the Swiss watches, American nylons, French liqueurs and Scotch whiskey especially manufactured in Madrid, Naples and Cairo for this purpose. These are exhibited in the local shops with “Smuggled” in large letters printed on cards in various languages…

When a member of the English touring party is murdered, the others in the group soon realise that 1) modern crime-investigating methods, such as fingerprinting and forensics, are barely known of in this little fiefdom, 2) all of them, including Brand’s series detective Inspector Cockrill, are now vulnerable because the local authorities quickly want to identify a halfway-plausible suspect and put him or her away for good. (Cockrill does in fact get arrested at one point – but he simply saunters out of the jail because the people in charge forgot to lock it.)

Many of you, even if you deem yourselves crime-fiction fans, will barely have heard of Christianna Brand, much less read any of her novels. (But then, there is a sizable population of us who erroneously *think* we are classic-murder-mystery fans even when the only author we have properly encountered from the 1920s-to-50s period is Dame You-Know-Who.) I was in that league until around four months ago; since that time, I have read three Brand novels (I posted here about her medical-hospital mystery Green for Danger) and a few short stories, and have gathered from perusing Golden Age crime websites that she is regarded as being in the highest tier of writers from that period; and that possibly the only reason she isn’t as revered as Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr is that her output was very small compared to those two.

Based on the evidence so far, her reputation makes sense to me. I enjoyed all three of the novels I read (Green for Danger and Suddenly at His Residence being the others), and intend to revisit them soon – during a first read, it can take a bit of time to really get into Brand’s writing, especially because of how she moves from the headspace of one character to the next; from one third-person-subjective narrative to another. (This entails some very skilful writing, given the varying degrees of guilt or innocence involved.) Her stock in trade is the closed-circle crime: there are basically seven or eight main figures in the story, it is understood that one of them will turn out to be the murderer, and at some point each of these people is examined for motivation and opportunity. (Interestingly much of this examining/speculating happens in the form of playful conversations between the characters themselves; though they have cause to be wary or afraid of each other in the given circumstances, there is some kinship or friendship between them, much bantering, and usually some complicated romantic relationships too.)

All this suggests that there can be no sudden blindsiding, or making the killer someone whom the reader couldn’t possibly have suspected (for whatever reason: airtight alibi, apparent irrelevance, etc). And yet, craftily, Brand ensures that the solution *is* surprising. Even if you have, as a seasoned reader of whodunits, looked carefully at each character in turn and imagined them as the murderer, there will always be a key missing element, something she misdirected you with. A motivation that turns out to be very different from what may have been expected for a particular person; or an unexpected “how they did it”; or an event or conversation that can be interpreted in two or three different ways.

Naturally it’s hard to discuss this without giving away plot details, but here’s a spoiler-free example, as abstract as I can make it. Near the end of Tour de Force a certain dramatic incident, involving most of the main characters, occurs: it involves an object being dropped. Shortly afterwards, when Inspector Cockrill provides one of the false solutions to the mystery, he explains how his epiphany was based on something he observed during the above-mentioned incident. It makes perfect sense as a connect-the-dots – and yet, when Cockrill eventually provides the *real* solution, it turns out that this one *also* hinged on a separate observation he had made during the very same incident. With each of the two revelations, you’ll find yourself flipping the pages back to the description of that incident, looking first at one detail and then another. This is brilliant plotting, and there is much else like it in this expertly structured book.

And, like I said, there’s the humour. A couple of amusing passages are below.

Thoughts on Ikkis (and on watching Dharmendra and Asrani together one last time)

(My latest Economic Times column: only partly a review of Ikkis, more a reflection on how our relationships with onscreen personalities can impact our feelings about a film)
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Going in to watch Ikkis, most well-informed Sriram Raghavan fans knew they should probably not expect a typical Raghavan film – “typical” meaning twist-laden noir-suspense, with doses of dark humour and affectionate tributes to the pop culture that has influenced Raghavan the movie nerd. Ikkis, it was understood, was going to be different from Andhadhun or Ek Hasina Thi or Johnny Gaddaar, more sober and perhaps self-consciously respectful – being a dramatisation of the real-life story of Arun Khetarpal, a martyred hero of the 1971 India-Pakistan war.

And yet, as a Raghavan fan nervous about the possibility of this being an impersonal, workmanlike project that almost anyone else might have helmed, I felt on safe ground the moment I saw an Asrani tribute appear before the film started – alongside a more expected tribute to Dharmendra. “Hum aapke qaidi hain” says the text, below an image of Asrani as the jailer in Sholay – and I thought to myself, that’s Raghavan’s voice all right. The boyish cinephile.

The two veteran actors (who died just a month apart) appear briefly together onscreen when Dharmendra, as Khetarpal’s old father, visits Pakistan. With Asrani playing an Alzheimer’s patient here, this is a moment that works neatly within the diegesis of a narrative about memory and forgetting (or letting go), about conflict and shared Indo-Pak culture. But it operates at another level too, for a movie buff invested in the personalities whose work he has been stimulated by over the decades – as a sentimental tribute, a swansong to two major performers of an earlier age.

Watching Dharam and Asrani, I thought about the first time they had shared screen space, 56 years ago – in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Satyakam – and of the moment in that heartfelt, hopelessly idealistic film where the Asrani character, clowning about, sings the words “Aadmi hai kya? Bolo, aadmi hai kya?” (What is a man?) and Dharam’s Satyapriya, all ponderous and solemn, replies that man is an elevated creature capable of love and friendship and compassion.

Those higher human potentials are the warp and weft of Raghavan’s film too. I was a bit worried – based on things I had heard beforehand – that Ikkis would try so hard to be “humanist”, to set itself in opposition to more strident, bellicose, chest-thumping narratives about nation-love and evil enemies, that it might feel contrived. Well, as a war film that is also an anti-war film, encouraging introspection about the better angels of our nature – especially in moments where individuals get a chance to bond – Ikkis IS everything you’d expect. It ticks every box that would make liberals feel warm and fuzzy inside, with (probably over-simplistic) ideas about universal brotherhood, and about fair fighting on both sides in 1971. But what could have been cloying pacifism is treated here so organically, so matter-of-factly, that it works. Even for someone like me who is always a little suspicious of virtuous cinema.

Ikkis does this by focusing consistently on the small picture rather than the big one – the war scenes give us not large statements about what Pakistan and India are doing to each other, or about the deeper histories of Hindu-Muslim conflict, but instead just a ground-level view of soldiers at a specific point in time, thrust into extraordinary, surreal situations, driving giant armoured vehicles across dusty terrain in which a “dushman” wants to kill them. The taking and passing of orders, staying entrenched in the moment, the razor-sharp focus as one does one’s job as best as one can, for the motherland – all this is part of the film’s DNA, as it is in more aggressive war films; one difference being that we see the same impulses play out on the other side too, with the dushman also speaking the language of patriotism, duty, and “god on our side”. The messy randomness of what might happen on a battlefield is encapsulated in a shot where our protagonist might easily have been blown away from the side by another young man, his Pakistani equivalent, who has his tank in his sights. But the chips just happen to fall the other way – and not because of heroism alone, or because one of them has the moral upper hand.

On the whole this didn’t feel like a film that was practising sapheaded wokeness for the sake of it, without adequate reflection, without at least some hard-won cynicism about the darker sides of human nature. To me it felt honest, apart from one scene that came across as too pat: the one where Deepak Dobriyal as an embittered Pakistani soldier who loathes Indians is quickly won over by a few gentle words. This felt like idealism taken to extremes. Surely a film that is otherwise so warm and empathetic, and so mournful about war, could also allow some space to one character – who appears in a single, short scene – who isn’t willing or able to forgive?

But to return to a point made above: one big reason why I could fully open myself to Ikkis was that speaking as a Dharmendra acolyte, his screen persona was central to the film’s effect on me. This effect was strange and multi-pronged: on the one hand Raghavan is, with some verve, telling a real-life story about an actual former Brigadier who travels across the border to the place where his son died in action thirty years earlier; but at the same time, this man is played by one of our most beloved movie stars at the very end of his career; and the real-life story merges somehow with Dharmendra’s reputation as a son of the soil, a Punjabi who as a child had known undivided India, a Sikh who has written poetry himself in Urdu (with one of those poems being movingly used in the film too). It was impossible not to be sentimental about his scenes in the film – and those scenes are about a hopeful, affirmative view of the world. I couldn’t dissociate any of this from that scene in Satyakam where Dharmendra’s Satyapriya tells his friend Naren: if we don’t have idealism, what do we have left? Or words to that effect.

So I’m happy to endorse Ikkis with a “Jai Sriram” – the Sriram here being Raghavan and no one else – but before that I must channel Utpal Dutt’s gleeful exclamation in Guddi: “Jai Dharmendra!”

P.S. while on Raghavan as purveyor of cultural references... Satyakam was released in 1969, which is a year that falls roughly within the “past” timeline of Ikkis – this being when the young Arun was just getting primed for his duties as a soldier. Within this narrative, the year is represented by references to the films Aradhana and The Wild Bunch (as well as Irma la Douce, made much earlier but perhaps released belatedly in India because of its risqué content). And, of course, Raghavan the Vijay Anand/Dev Anand fanboy also manages to include a talismanic image of Dev in this canvas.

A coexistence mela at PVR Saket

With a few members of our Stray Buddy family at the little “Coexistence Mela” organised at the PVR Anupam complex on Saturday. There was a waterbowl painting contest, a lucky draw, memory games involving dog names, and a crochet stall featuring the work of one of our most pro-active members, Shely, who does more for the PVR dogs than anyone else. And there were puppies, hopeful of being adopted, brought all the way from Noida.

And most of all there was plenty of enthusiasm and bonhomie - much needed in these tough times for community-dog-carers. I was especially pleased that all this was done with the cooperation of the PVR market association, and that two officials (not connected with Stray Buddy or any other animal welfare group) made brief speeches emphasising the importance of all life forms and the need for compassion and empathy. Hoping for many more such events in the near future.

 

 

 

(Meanwhile, in my neck of Saket - Golf View Apartments - things have been crazily stressful in recent days thanks to an unsterilised male dog having been let loose in the colony by an irresponsible "animal-lover". Trying to get the situation sorted, having just got a few of the surviving puppies adopted. People who don't have firsthand experience of these things have no idea how time-consuming and energy-sapping it can get. But one perseveres until the inevitable mental/emotional collapse happens...)

 

Kalamkaval (and the perks of being a leading man who doesn't age)

I liked Jithin K Jose’s Kalamkaval a great deal (though it was a bit surprising to see that a couple of 5/6-year-old kids were in the hall for this serial-killer film). I had gone in worrying that it would be another of those self-consciously “slow-burn” or existential thrillers that get fetishised a lot these days (nothing against that mode – I have enjoyed many such films, especially Malayalam films, in the past few years – but I wasn’t in the mood for something like that on the day). Was glad to find that it was stylish, moved at a good pace, and found interesting ways to cross-cut between the (past and present) activities of the psychotic protagonist and the cops on his trail. This jigsaw puzzle-like structure could have become convoluted, but they kept it clean and easy to follow. Some very good lighting in the indoor scenes (which have an incongruously warm texture even when the protagonist is doing creepy things). And Mammootty and Vinayakan were both terrific.

Even as a big Mammootty fan, I have sometimes felt that in this very productive recent phase of his career, he (and the writers-filmmakers working with him) might be trying a little too hard to tick every possible box: from playing a “respectable” family man trying to come out of the closet in a conservative social environment in Kaathal, to the monstrous glowering chathan in Bramayugam (a horror film I had high expectations of but couldn’t stay invested in), to the childlike but also paranoid and dangerous Kuttan in Puzhu. Some of the choices can start to feel contrived at times. But all that goes out the window when he is on the screen, giving a solid performance in a well-written and structured film, and that was the case with Kalamkaval.

P.S. yes, that inter-title *does* say “The Perks of Being a Subjective Nihilist”, but don’t worry – the chapter heads are mainly playful ones.

P.P.S. I have probably said this a few times in conversations, on my film group etc - but it is extraordinary how Mammootty can so easily pass off as being three-plus decades younger than he is. He is completely plausible as a 45-year-old, and this isn't so much because of boyish features or a super-fit-seeming physique (obviously he isn't a Tom Cruise), but just because of his movements and gestures and body language - all of that belongs to a much younger man. I can't think of anyone else who can pull this off in quite the same way. (Someone like Robert De Niro is very fit and alert, but it was discomfiting to watch him play a character half his age in The Irishman, notwithstanding the "de-aging" CGI used there. With Mammootty, on the other hand, it is currently hard to imagine what a believably 75-year-old version of the man would be like.)
 

Pupdate

A follow-up to my earlier post about these pups in Saket, who need a good and caring home. It is getting very cold, they are in a hostile neighbourhood, the mother is struggling to gather food, no one is really looking after them, and cars are still speeding along the lane at all hours. So please spread the word to anyone who might be interested (*and* has an understanding of the responsibilities involved when one adopts a dog).

P.S. one of the pups got very lucky last week when Dr Parul Saxena from Dwarka saw my Instagram post and then came all the way to Saket to adopt her. She is being well looked after by Dr Parul and her two little daughters, and it’s great to see the photos. (The last pic here is of Dr Parul when she came here to take the pup back home. I wish there were more such people.)

Some love for Fredric Brown and The Dead Ringer (and travelling carnivals)

In between all the intense crime literature I have been reading of late, a more laidback book that I loved was Fredric Brown’s 1948 novel The Dead Ringer – the second entry in a mystery series about the teenage Ed Hunter and his kindly uncle Ambrose. I had read the first book in the series, The Fabulous Clipjoint, some weeks ago, but The Dead Ringer works as a standalone too. And one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much was its carnival setting: Ed is assisting his uncle, who works at a travelling “carny”, and as the narrative begins they are touring various towns in the American Midwest (Evansville, Louisville), staying a week or so in one place before moving on.

Much in the book reminded me of my childhood fascination with the circuses in Enid Blyton stories. Back then, reading about this itinerant life – the caravans which served as both cosy homes and as vehicles for the circus-folk, the bonhomie and sense of community between people and animals, children who had just arrived warily into this world and were learning to settle down – created a weird, nostalgia-like sensation for a place and time I hadn’t actually experienced myself (I would later learn that “anemoia” is the word for this; the Blyton circus books were among the first of many books and films that would evoke this feeling in me).

Later, of course, there were other carnival stories in my reading and viewing life – including the darker iterations to be found in the work of Ray Bradbury or Richard Matheson, or in horror/noir films like Freaks or Nightmare Alley or Dr Caligari. But the interesting thing about The Dead Ringer is that though it begins with the discovery of a murder in the carnival premises on a gloomy, rainy night (and there are two further deaths to come), the book doesn’t feel nasty or dangerous in the way that the narratives mentioned above are. There is a gentle, conversational quality to Brown’s writing even when he is presenting noirish elements – and there is something very comforting about the relationship between young Ed (the narrator) and his uncle Am, who has taken him under his wing.

Both this book and its predecessor (in which Ed and Am had investigated the murder of Ed’s father) are primarily coming-of-age stories. In both, Ed learns not just about sleuthing/crime-solving, but about life in a more general sense – about thorny relationships (including the ones he himself gets into with complex women, who may or may not be femme fatales), or about why people might take a certain path as they negotiate hardships.

I think of these as slice-of-life mysteries – meaning that even as the investigation is on (and we know that Ed and Am have to conjecture and find things out), there is an unhurried naturalism to the telling. For instance, rarely if ever do these books have the chapter-ending cliff-hangers you’d expect in most thrillers or suspense novels. (One of the few big dramatic moments that Ed experiences firsthand in The Dead Ringer –where he sees, or thinks he sees, something unnerving outside a trailer window – occurs right in the middle of a chapter, and he is quite drunk at the time, so there is a haziness about the whole thing.) More often, what happens is that Ed and Am saunter about, having a drink or two at multiple joints along the way, talking, turning things over in their heads, making further appointments. There are occasionally passages where you might expect something to happen that will significantly further the mystery – or provide an important clue – but it turns out that the chapter is simply about a night out on the town. (Though something said during the chat *might* turn out to be significant later.) And none of this was disappointing for me: I enjoyed the pace, and the constant sense that there is room for other things in these characters’ lives.

That said, the actual mysteries are very satisfying too. The plot of The Dead Ringer, since I haven’t said much about it, concerns the stabbing of an unidentified midget – followed, some days later, by the possibly suspicious death of a chimpanzee belonging to the carnival… meanwhile Ed finding himself getting involved with the beautiful young woman, a carnival “poser”, who had discovered the first body.

This could be called “soft-boiled" noir, with a reassurance that things will turn out okay in the end – though Ed might have his heart broken a bit, in a way that will make him more resilient for the future, and for the next journey that he and his uncle take. (I believe the later books in the series have the two of them officially starting a detective agency together. No more carnival, which is a pity.)

P.S. a bit more about Fredric Brown: long before I had read either of these novels, I had read a few of his short stories, two of which are collected in two of my favourite anthologies. Brian Aldiss’s A Science Fiction Omnibus has a wonderful “short-short story” by Brown, less than a page long – it is called “Answer”, and you can read it here – it will take only a minute or so. Consider that it was written in 1954, and then think about its implications in a world that will soon come to be even more dominated by AI and Big-Brother technology than we currently are.

The other Brown story is much longer, and is one of my favourite impossible-crime mysteries: “The Laughing Butcher”, about a “no-footprints-in-the-snow” murder and the subsequent lynching of a much-despised man by townsfolk.
I also have Brown’s collection Nightmares and Geezenstacks, which contains many of those short-short stories – will be getting through that one in the coming days.

P.P.S. see this pic for an Indian connection in The Dead Ringer: reading a very local/provincial midwestern newspaper, Ed sees a mention of riots in Calcutta. Well, all this IS happening in late 1947/early 1948.

Loved the third Knives Out film...

Wake Up Dead Man is excellent. And not just because it contains explicit tributes to John Dickson Carr and the locked-room mystery (somewhat expected given how much of a Carr fan Rian Johnson has become in recent years). Or because Josh O’Connor’s hangdog expressions are always so sexy. This one is well paced, funny when you don’t expect it to be (given the ecclesiastical setting, and Benoit Blanc’s lack of belief, they have much fun with dialogue like this: “We’ve got to nail the real killer… I’m sorry, I mean catch him…”) … and also poignant and empathetic when you don’t expect it to be. (A scene where O’Connor’s Pastor Jud interrupts important business to take time out to provide solace to a woman who has started unburdening herself on the phone… it could have been pedantic, or an obvious attempt to make a point about the young priest – but it manages to feel right and be moving.) And of course there are some nice twists towards the end. Very good stuff. 

 

P.S. Rian Johnson’s love for Carr notwithstanding, he does offer a greatly simplified version of the “locked-room lecture” from The Hollow Man. Gideon Fell is very clear while delivering the lecture that he isn’t covering anywhere near all of the possibilities and solutions.

Big-screen Sholay (and a fire scare)

A surreal thing happened while watching Sholay (the new Film Heritage Foundation restoration) at PVR Select Citywalk on Friday night: as the Holi attack scene began, there was a fire-alarm scare and we all had to rush out of the exit doors (for a minute, before they gave the all-clear again). This was an annoyance, coming right in the middle of one of the film’s most immersive scenes, but it was suitably dramatic too, and amusing: our exodus mirrored the one on screen, the villagers fleeing in panic.

I can say a lot about the overall experience, from the perspective of both the eternal fanboy whose personal mythology is so tied up with this film, and the more detached observer who doesn’t unconditionally love everything in it (e.g. the Asrani and Jagdeep scenes take up too much time at a point when we need to get to Ramgarh) – but will try to keep it short. (I have written two Sholay pieces this year anyway, one of which is yet to be published.) Either way, even beyond the film’s actual quality, this is always such an emotionally overwhelming experience. All the associations. The earliest evidence of my mother leching at Dharam (while being very fond of SK and AB in a more sanskaari-mahila way). The observations she made to me: look how big Dharam’s hands are when he is holding the dying Jai’s head; countless other things.

Anupama Chopra in her book mentioned how the Sippys first realised it was going to be a blockbuster, after a slow start – because viewers were too shellshocked during the interval to go out and buy popcorn etc. I can believe it. Even today, the build-up to the intermission is so intense, and Amjad Khan’s performance so scarily believable (even as he plays a mythic-allegorical-no-shades-of-grey character) – it must have been incredibly dark and unpleasant for viewers in 1975. (As I keep saying, Dharmendra’s and Hema Malini’s superb performances bring so much essential positive energy to a film that is otherwise quite morbid.)

And yes, I have decided that I do prefer the “original” ending that has now been restored and screened here – with Gabbar killed and Thakur breaking down in Veeru’s arms. Makes much more sense overall, and completes the emotional arc of Sanjeev K’s performance (as Chopra also pointed out in her book).

Anyway, enough for now. Please try to watch it on the big screen.

P.S. as mentioned here, the last time I watched Sholay on a giant screen was in 1983 or 84, and we missed the first 10-12 minutes then; I properly got to see the great opening-credits scene, with the wonderful RDB score, only in adulthood. Though I do the bulk of my film-watching alone, this latest viewing wasn’t intended to be a solitary outing – it just turned out that way. Not ideal. But I stayed the duration despite originally thinking I would watch only half the film and come back for another show (since I had a very early morning the next day).

William Brittain's short mystery stories

Continuing my adventures with vintage crime fiction, and an enjoyable new find: the cosy short stories of William Brittain, who was a regular contributor to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in the 1960s and 70s. These two collections (published by short-mystery specialists Crippen & Landru) include dozens of Mr Strang stories – about the deductive skills of an elderly, (mostly) gentle science teacher. My favourites so far include “Mr Strang Finds the Answers” (which is suspenseful, well-plotted but also strangely moving in its premise of Mr Strang having to figure out which of three students stole the answer keys for an upcoming exam - and bringing their fathers, also his ex-students, in for a chat), “Mr Strang versus the Snowman”, “Mr Strang Accepts a Challenge”, "Mr Strang Picks up the Pieces", "Mr Strang Sees a Play", and “Mr Strang, Armchair Detective”.

But there are also 11 stories from Brittain’s “Man Who Reads…” series (see the contents page here), and for very obvious reasons I leapt right into the first one, “The Man Who Read John Dickson Carr”. This is a concise tale about a young man, obsessed with John Dickson Carr, who sets about plotting a locked-room murder of his own. And does a very clever job of it too… until he doesn’t. Delightful stuff, with a superb closing sentence.

 

P.S. if you zoom in on the cover of The Man Who Read Mysteries, you’ll see that the book being read is Carr’s The Problem of the Wire Cage – which, coincidentally, I read just last week. Tribute-literature can be such fun when it’s well-executed and has a distinct personality of its own – as is the case here.

 

Ritwik Ghatak, Unmechanical: photos from the Delhi events

A few images from Shamya Dasgupta's Delhi trip to promote his big Ritwik Ghatak anthology. 

Four Mayabazaaris and one Gulaabo gaadi. Shamya and I with the intrepid and resourceful Shillpi Singh (who recently translated Piyush Mishra's memoir into English), Yasir Abbasi, and a pink Ambassador at the eye-popping Museo Camera in Gurgaon – just before the Ghatak discussion, expertly moderated by Sanghamitra Chakraborty, on December 4.

Museo Camera is run by Aditya Arya, who was the young stills photographer during the making of Jaane bhi do Yaaro in 1982, and it’s always good to meet him and experience his continuing enthusiasm for his film and theatre days. (An old post about him here.)

The talk went well too, I think – Shamya is quite the pro now when it comes to talking Ghatak, and sounds very much like a seasoned film critic at times despite his protestations that he doesn’t know much about cinema. (You can see and hear him discuss the book in this long session which I hosted on Zoom a few weeks ago.)

At the Museo Camera session I spoke a bit about the things I have written about in the anthology – about being underwhelmed and annoyed when I experienced Ghatak films in poor prints and without adequate context around 20 years ago; and my very pleasing re-engagement with his work earlier this year, when Shamya encouraged me to watch the 1959 Bari Theke Paliye (followed by an experience of really good prints of Ajantrik, Meghe Dhaka Tara – and, of course, the wonderful Subarnarekha). 

A Ghatak talk (by Ira Bhaskar) at JNU the next day, in a packed room…

… followed by Shamya, Ira and Kaushik Bhaumik in conversation at India Habitat Centre on the 6th.

And finally, Shamya and I with a few of our Encyclopaedia Britannica colleagues (including Padma Pegu, who was first our post-grad friend before we were all at EB together).

(Unmechanical: Ritwik Ghatak in 50 Fragments is available here)