Sholay @50: Half-tickets in awe and Gabbar Singh’s rise to stardom

Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, and Amjad Khan on the sets of Sholay. File pic

Five years before clearing the SSC examination in 1980, Sholay's release in 1975 put school students like me in a dilemma. Word-of-mouth buzzed with curious chatter about an all-action movie. Seniors in the neighbourhood referred to a new picture in conversations. For us Class 5 students looking up to them in excitement, the buzz around a ‘flames' film was a mystery. Something interesting was happening in the air above our heads, but there was nothing about Sholay we could put a finger on. Fiery or fun, fights or comedy, no one chipped in with a clue or helped with a hint about what to expect. Something special had happened, but in 1975 we were the half-tickets.

For a year after the movie's release in a faraway theatre, out of sight and out of mind for our parents to take us, spending hard-earned money on travel and tickets, the Sholay@Minerva tagline took root in young minds. I watched it for the first time at the cavernous Samrat Talkies in suburban Goregaon on a Sunday, accompanied by parents for the evening show. By then audio recordings of Sholay, played over loudspeakers at public functions with a clear aim of hiking the entertainment quota at privately-organised football tournaments, had floored us, firing our fertile minds about action unfolding on a virtual screen inside our head.

Fiery and funny, Sholay became part of growing up.

For those curious to know about the feeling of ‘hearing Sholay' through huge speakers placed beyond the sidelines of a football ground in Shastri Nagar, compared to ‘seeing Sholay' on screen lit up by moving images inside a theatre, the audio Sholay sparked imagination in listeners like me, yet to watch the movie.

For eager kids crowding around the speakers in that ‘Sholay by audio' class, the characters took on a larger-than-life shape…. Gabbar and Thakur, Veeru and Jai, Basanti and tanga, Jailor and Samba. Jaya Bhaduri (character of Radha) was missing in the ‘Sholay by audio' version going round, the power of silence in her role was revealed in all its subtlety to us later, when we got to watch it on screen.

Realisation dawned about the movie centred around a deadly dacoit gang, descending on horseback to terrorise a village of simple folk somewhere in the Chambal valley. Hands on each other's shoulders to pass on courage, we stepped into Rampur gaon via the speakers. The eerie soundtrack when Gabbar Singh's footsteps came closer and the menace in his voice made us kids believe we made a mistake stepping out alone, without permission from our parents, who were worried about missing kids. Surma Bhopali's wisecracks made us smile. Asrani the British-era jailor barked orders in a staccato beat, another laugh riot act. Veeru and Jai were just naughty friends, trapped inside the jail for crimes not proven. Thakur Baldev Singh's entry into the soundtrack calmed us down.

Fifty years later in 2025, the flames of fame are still rising around Sholay: the Rampur characters and dialogues remain alive in our minds, as an action-packed movie celebrates an amazing 50th anniversary (August 15, 1975 launch date) on August 15 this year, a Friday for fun on a long weekend. Thakur Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar) looked more dashing on screen at Samrat Talkies than in our imagination, the audio from the speakers emitting breathless excitement. Gabbar (Amjad Khan), stocky and snarling, was more frightening. Veeru (Dharmendra), Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) were warming up for a risky ride ahead, none more eventful than in Basanti's (Hema Malini) horse cart.

The movie's dialogues (written by Salim Khan-Javed Akhtar), later memorised by us following repeat audio blaring out from the vintage speakers, took on a deeper meaning when uttered by characters on the big screen. Songs from the film - the uplifting ‘Yeh Dosti Hum Nahi Todenge' (playback Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey) to the sensational ‘Mehbooba, Mehbooba, Gulshan Mein Phool Khiltein Hai' (singer R D Burman) to an emotional ‘Jab Tak Hai Jaan Jaane Jaha' (Lata Mangeshkar) - made us break out into varied moods. Anand Bakshi, the lyrics writer, earned our respect much later, when our vocabulary increased and words resonated with deep meaning and could be linked to the film script.

The high-voltage action sequences (credited to Gerry Crampton) made us kids grip our seats tighter in cinema halls, back then in 1975 it was a close friend's shoulder feeling the clenched fingers. The movie remained in our thoughts, long after walking out of a dark theatre into the brightness outside, for the interplay between Amjad Khan's brutality and Sanjeev Kumar's anger, for the camaraderie among small-time crooks-turned saviours Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra, for the contrast between chatterbox Hema Malini and brooding Jaya Bhaduri, the injection of humour via Asrani, Kesto Mukherjee, Jagdeep and a fun scene featuring Leena Mishra and Amitabh, assisted in toning down the intensity momentarily, amidst the brutal dacoit scenes.

Gabbar's maniac laughter had a chilling effect on us half-tickets, giving Amjad Khan a ticket to fame. He is no longer with us, Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar) is missed as well. Since the dialogues and punchlines were committed to memory after those hours before the speakers, Sholay as a subject in the school curriculum would have been a delightful alternative.