A gun, a boy and the city

Uday Bhatia was only 14 when Satya released and yet it had a big impact on him It was only when he started watching movies more seriously that he realised ldquoa lot of roads in Hindi cinema led back to Satya at that point I started looking at it with fresh eyesrdquoHis new book titled Bullets Over Bombay HarperCollins India revisits Ram Gopal Varmarsquos film and how it went on to earn cult status ldquoA lot of people who were young when Satya released in 1998 took its lessons and incorporated its values into their filmmaking And thatrsquos why it continues to be relevant even todayrdquo Bhatia sharesThe bookrsquos dedication reads ldquoTo the films filmmakers and film viewers of rsquo90srdquo Bhatia starts by offering a glimpse of that time transporting every rsquo90s kid into the era speaking about all the significant events that occurred then before leading us to this iconic movie ldquoIn 199798 there wasnrsquot a lot of exciting cinema being released especially in a nonstudio Also small banner films were still not really coming out with the frequency they did post Satya and the industry at that time was largely drawn towards love stories and romantic dramasrdquo he says Satyarsquos grittiness and the fact that it was unpolished gave it an immediate qualitymdashsomething that was different from whatever was shown on screen in Hindi cinema according to the film critic While there had been gangster movies in the past ldquoSatya broke away from that by showing a very street level point of view without any gloss It also normalised the people who were gangsters on one hand and were also family men on the otherrdquo he says ldquoSo for the audience to see someone who was a gangster but without the mythology of itmdashjust ordinary people who also happen to be killersmdashit was quite revolutionaryrdquo But according to Bhatia this isnrsquot the only reason why Satya became so popular ldquoThe writing holds upmdashit is funny and fast and slightly profane which was unusual for that time and still is to this day It wasnrsquot just a great gangster film but also a great city film It hasnrsquot aged badlyrdquoUday BhatialdquoMore importantly at a time when Hindi cinema was spinning its wheels it Satya showed the way forwardrdquo he writes in the book Explaining further Bhatia says ldquoIt was also forward in ways that you didnrsquot need to have a big star cast you didnrsquot have to have a lot of choreographed songs and item numbers and you could just move ahead with a good story and a good idea of what you are doing rather than sticking to the formulardquoSatya created an impact on the people who worked on it ldquoMany who worked on Satya and who were inspired by it are still very much part of the industry right nowrdquo he saysBhatiarsquos favourite scene from the movie was when Satya played by JD Chakravarthy meets the gang for the first time ldquoItrsquos done in one take It lasts for around a minute but it a very exciting scene because we are not cutting away the excitement of this guy meeting his new life for the first time and thatrsquos quite a wonderful way to do itrdquoIn the book Gulzar talks about his song Goli Maaro Bheje Mein ldquoI wrote a songhellip for a character who is a violent man a man who listens to no one and shoots people who contradict him or come in his way He decides to sing a song when he is drunk The gangster cannot sing a Ghalib ghazalrdquo Bhatia believes that this song which was released a few months prior to the film gave the audience an idea of what they should expectmdasha direct gangster film