40 years of 'Sholay': A ticket for 5 rupees and some memories to last a lifetime

Some of my classmates learnt Sholay’s dialogues much before nursery rhymes. In our kindergarten school, most of the girls were notorious for breaking into an impromptu ‘Jab tak hai jaan’ routine when trials for annual day were held and boys for shouting ‘Basanti, in kutton ke saamne mat nachna,’ every time the teacher tried to test our public-speaking skills.

Sholay was released several years before I went to school in a mofussil town of north India. None of my classmates had seen it in a theatre. Even years after release, Sholay was in huge demand and its limited prints rarely made it out of bigger cities. And since VCRs and their pirated cassettes had still not become part of middle-class India, nobody had seen Jai, Viru, Thakur, Basanti or the aforementioned kutte on screen.

The source of our precocious dialoguebaazi was the ‘soundtrack with complete dialogues’ of Sholay–a two cassette treasure that was part of almost every household. In many homes I knew then, it was played religiously every morning right after Anup Jalota’s bhajans on tape recorders, endowing children with Googlesque knowledge of the script.

Parents loved to flaunt the filmi gyaan of children. “Beta, zara woh Sholay ka dialogue suna do,” I remember being often asked at birthday parties. The aunty ji sitting across the table would immediately inspire this gem: “Arre o Sambha, Yeh Ramgarh wale apni betiyon ko kaun chakki ka pisa aata khilate hai re?” To which, somebody would immediately add: “Taari ke haath to dekh, bahut qarare hain.”

The big moment came in 1985, full ten years after its release, when some blessed soul decided to screen Sholay in our town. The news broke first via a bhompu (loudspeaker) mounted on a tonga. “Aap ke shahar mein, das saal baad, phir se aa rahi hai Sholay. Rozana chaar show, aap ke apne Vishwajyoti theatre mein,” a man on a tonga pulled by some local Dhanno went around announcing the advent of cinematic satyug.

I do not know how Indians felt on 15 August 1947. But I am willing to bet that the joy, the ecstasy would have been nothing compared to the emotions that Sholay’s return to our town triggered amidst our school friends.

On the first Friday, after much pleading, you-must-score-10/10-in-maths type haggling, some of us managed to get a princely sum of Rs 5 for the film from parents. (Balcony ticket Rs 4.50; samosa 50 paise). But when we reached the theatre, our heart’s sank. The queue for the ticket started at the window, snaked out of the theatre, crossed the road and merged with the queue for reservation outside the railways station a few km away.

People were screaming and shouting, standing on each other’s shoulders, women were getting crushed, men were getting their pockets picked and cops were ordering bigger lathis to keep the madness in control. Such was the madness that there was fear that the district collector might order a curfew to ensure at least his family gets to buy the tickets.

We were a group of class V children, bags in hand, bottles slung from necks, having disembarked from the school bus midway to home. The queue suggested that there was greater probability of landing on the moon then Vishwajyoti’s balcony. The mind became so blank that only memories of Rahim Chacha’s “Yahan itna sannata kyun hai,” woke us out of our stunned stupor. “Black mein buy karte hain,” a classmate, who was a lot older but had been stuck in the same class for failing to clear the final exams, suggested. He disappeared into the cycle stand and after an eternity returned with the tickets: third class, front row; original cost Rs 1.60, bought for Rs 5.

We saw the film from so near the screen that if one of us had extended the hand, he could have pulled Thakur’s shawl to find out if he was faking it. And the necks had to be craned so high that the airhostess of an aircraft passing overhead would have been clearly visible.

But, within a few minutes, everything was forgotten. Sometimes I wonder, how did I feel the unbearable heat of a theatre stuffed with extra seats, billowing smoke from beedis and Red and Whites and the stench from overflowing toilets only after the film ended!

There was one hilarious moment though that distracted briefly. Just when Viru shouted his Basanti, in kutton ke saame mat nachna dialogue, there was mayhem. A burly tau in the audience had come to the theatre perhaps for the first time. He took umbrage at Viru’s instruction to Basanti.

“Kaise nahin nachegi, kaise nahin nachegi. Dus rupaye black mein de kar ticket kharide hain,” he hollered back from his seat. His chest seemed ready to explode with pride when Basanti listened to him and promised to dance till her last breath.

I have seen Sholay hundreds of times since; on TV, on home-theatre, in cinemas. I took my son along when its 3-D version was released recently. And I can still deliver each one of its dialogues.

Sholay and the memories it evokes, I believe, will remain a part of my life Jab tak hai jaan.