Ram Gopal Varma Blog #216. A(aa)ging SHOLAY

On the eve of the 35th anniversary of SHOLAY I ask myself this question.

Why is it that Sholay doesn’t age? It just seems to stand still at the “pause” button of a Cinematic era for the last 35 years without aging one bit and I won’t be surprised if it stays that way for still another 35 years if not another 70 years.

People might talk about ‘Mother India’ with respect but in their heart of hearts every cinegoer of the country knows that it’s ‘Sholay’ which is the actual Mother of Indian Cinema in every which way.

Me being a film buff and a regular film watcher, I watched it in Hyderabad first time along with my cousin on its release day and both me and my cousin felt it to be very average on our first viewing. Three days later I overheard someone at an Irani café, about the sound effect of a coin being thrown by Dharmendra the way it felt in stereophonic sound at a theater called Ramakrishna 70mm. Just out of curiosity to understand what they meant by Stereophonic Sound I went to see it a second time and this time the film hit me like a thunder bolt. Not only in terms of its sound but in terms of its story, its characters, its Drama, it’s everything. It made me feel that it is the most flawless piece of Cinema I have ever set my eyes upon. Starting from that day onwards I saw the film 27 times in that theater alone. Simply put whenever I can afford a movie ticket and whenever I had the time I just watched ‘Sholay’ and “Sholay” and “Sholay”and I don’t think I can even remember the number of times I heard its dialogue tracks which were released on cassettes.

In the later years some critics and some specimens from the intelligentia breed started claiming that ‘Sholay’ is actually a lift from some films like the ‘Magnificent Seven’, ‘Guns of San Sebastian’, ‘The Secret of Santa Vittoria’ etc. out of plain curiosity I saw all of the so called source films from which supposedly ‘Sholay’ was inspired from and I still found it towering like an Everest compared to the Lilliputian originals.

First of all I don’t know if ‘Sholay’ can be called a film. To describe it just as a film no matter how successful it was I feel it is calling it too short. It was like an event which with luck will happen once in a lifetime. In sharp contrast to how we talk about the success of today’s films just in terms of their opening weekend collections, at that time people only talked about ‘Sholay’ and its scenes and its characters and never even bothered about its collections.

A very primary uniqueness of ‘Sholay’ for those times I think was its relatively highly underplayed performances, extremely strong and distinct characterisations, never before seen slick and such incredibily well mounted action and above all it had a very very high quotient of aesthetics combined with an even higher drama.

In later years after I became a Director I met with many who were a part of ‘Sholay’ and for me to hear the cast and crews own personal experiences of both in its making and in its after effects was as exciting as the experience of watching ‘Sholay’ itself. They all seemed to be in even more of a daze of its success than even the audience who watched it. Many of them claimed various reasons for why the film has become such a Mega success. They were crediting it to a variety of reasons ranging from the Cameraman to the Action Director who came from abroad to their individual characters and to ofcourse, ‘Luck’.

But from the experience I gathered from being a film maker for 20 years by just studying and understanding and realizing the craft that went into ‘Sholay’ I am convinced without an iota of doubt that Mr. Ramesh Sippy is the one and the only man who is solely responsible for that phenomenon called ‘SHOLAY’ and this is as true as the fact that I am the one and the only man responsible for making the inphenomenon called ‘AAG’.

SHOLAY(ing) “Aag”


After 30 years of living with the impact of ‘Sholay’ on me in every which way of its effects on my life, my career, my technique etc; the idea of wanting to do something with Sholay came to me approximately around five to six years ago. One day I got a call from Sasha Sippy saying that his grandfather Mr. G. P. Sippy wants to meet me. As he is a respected man by all, as well as the producer of Sholay and a senior in the fraternity, I went to meet him.

There Sasha told me of their Idea of wanting to make a sequel to ‘Sholay’. The big problem with the sequel of Sholay was that some of the cast and some of the characters of the film have died. For e.g.: One of the main characters (Jai) played by Amitabh Bachchan died in the film, and in reality (Thakur) Sanjeev Kumar and (Gabbar Singh) Amjad Khan had passed away. Therefore one had no choice but to make do with the remaining characters and cast and possibly attempt to create new characters.

Sasha already had a story line. Helen (the Mehbooba girl) gets pregnant by Gabbar and Junior Gabbar grows up to be the new dacoit and wants to take revenge on Veeru who has 2 grown up sons by now. So when Junior Gabbar kidnaps Veeru and Basanti, the sons go on a rescue mission.

In the above plot he wanted me to create a character for Jackie Chan. I first thought he meant some local actor who is probably nick named Jackie Chan until I realized that he was actually talking about the Honk Kong superstar. Sasha Sippy’s Jackie Chan brainwave was due to the influence of the huge commercial success of “Rush Hour” where if an American and an Asian actor together could gave such a big hit then we can repeat the same with a combination of Indian stars and Chinese stars. I found the whole thing so bizarre and I declined his generous offer and came out laughing. Little did I realize that the last laugh will be on me…!  

On my way back from Sasha Sippy’s meeting a thought occurred to me what if the story of ‘Sholay’ was set in contemporary times in a city.

Then just for the heck of it, I started doing changes as simple as instead of the rural ‘Kitne admi the’ the Urban Gabbar should say ‘Kitne’. I thought if Sanjeev Kumar doesn’t have hands so how could he have shaved everyday? So let’s have the Thakur with a beard. So I basically went on this trip of literally having interpretations of shots and dialogues and scenes, and completely forgot the basic emotional aspect of the original master piece.

When people ask me if I got hurt by the tremendous criticism I got and if I regret my decision for tangling with SHOLAY, I say no because I learnt a lot from that experience such as not to be arrogant and over confident and I am a much wiser man today after being badly and nicely burnt in the ‘AAG’ of ‘SHOLAY’