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.