On Ramesh Sippy’s 76th Birthday, let's revisit his finest film… No, not Sholay but Shakti

Most Sippy fans swear by Sholay. And why not! It is a masterpiece, measured and treasured for its virile storytelling and fluent entertainment. But some Sippyites feel that Shakti, which came after Sholay was a better more dramatically plush film. Ramesh and I have had endless discussions on this. It is an apple-and-orange choice. Some may like one more or the other. It’s a matter of taste. My pick is Shakti . Ramesh Sippy shot Shaan and Shakti simultaneously. After he finished Sholay he began working on two projects Shaan and Shakti, one for his own production house and Shakti for producers Mushir-Riaz. It was always Ramesh’s dream and ambition to work with the mighty Dilip Kumar. One of Ramesh Sippy’s favourite films is Mother India. The director felt Mr Dilip Kumar had grown in stature as an actor to handle a role in that genre with ease. Ramesh wanted to make what you might call a ‘Father India’ with Dilip Kumar , about a man who sacrifices his son for his ideology. When Salim-Javed and Ramesh Sippy were talking about it, Ramesh told Salim-Javed about a film starring Sivaji Ganesan that he had seen. Ramesh suggested to Salim-Javed that they buy the rights for the Tamil film at a time when copyright infringement was not even a thought in this industry. Almost nothing of the original remained finally, except the father killing his own son. Then once the script was done they thought of only Mr Dilip Kumar. They toyed with the idea of casting someone new as the son since the father’s role was so powerful. Raj Babbar was considered. His screen test was done. Then Mr Bachchan heard about this project and offered his services. By then he had become a big star by then. Ramesh Sippy felt it wouldn’t be fair to Mr Bachchan and to his fans. But the temptation of bringing Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan together was overpowering. Mr Bachchan also carried some expectations in the audience’s heart. He was like a one-man entertainment machine. Ramesh was a little worried about disappointing his fans. And initially, when the film was released, that’s exactly what happened. They expected something else, just like they had expected a histrionic jugalbandi when Prithviraj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar came together as father and son in Mughal-e-Azam. But Dilip Kumar had to remain within the boundaries of his character as a son in Mughal-e-Azam. Likewise, Amitabh Bachchan in Shakti. The father’s character was far more crowd-friendly. Ramesh cast Raakhee Gulzar Mr Bachchan’s mother right after she did a very romantic film Kabhi Kabhie with him. But Ramesh’s rationale was, if Sanjeev Kumar could play Jaya Bhaduri’s father-in-law in Sholay why can’t Raakhee play Amitabh Bachchan’s mother? Shakti was like a stage play, a very internalized drama. Ramesh Sippy couldn’t open out that theme into a vastness of a masala product. If he did that he would lost the intrinsic drama of the product. The film was inspired by a hit Tamil film Thanga Pathakkam from 1960 where Sivaji Ganesan played an honest police constable who guns down his own truant son played by Srikanth. Ramesh Sippy bought the rights of the Tamil film. Only the germ of the original idea was retained. The son’s role was to be played by Raj Babbar who was then completely new to movies. Raj auditioned for the part. He was even paid a signing amount. But was dropped when the Big B showed an interest in playing the son’s part. Raakhee took the risk of turning prematurely into a screen mother, a la Waheeda Rehman in Phagun, only for the pleasure and privilege of playing the mighty Dilip Kumar’s leading lady at least once. Satish Shah made his screen debut in a bit part. He was one of the ruffians who accosts Smita Patil in the local train. During the outdoors, Raakhee would lovingly cook all of her favourite actor Yusuf Saab’s favourite dishes. But wife Saira Banu firmly stopped her husband from relinquishing his diet. There was no scope for songs in the film. R D Burman managed to squeeze in a popular Lata-Kishore duet _Jaane kaise kab kahan iqraar ho gay_a.

Anil Kapoor made a guest appearance at the beginning and end of the film as Dilip Kumar’s grandson and Amitabh Bachchan’s son. The film is narrated in a flashback with Anil listening to the story of his dead father’s life. It’s not just about the historic union of the mighty Dilip Kumar with his greatest successor Amitabh Bachchan. It’s a lot more. The sheer velocity of the screenplay, the structuring of the father-son conflict, and the deeply contoured sketching and execution of the characters as they hurl towards an amazing nemesis, simply make Shakti the most powerful script that the awesome twosome Salim-Javed ever wrote. This is a far superior screenplay to the duo’s other celebrated Bachchan films including Zanjeer and Deewaar. In fact, Deewaar and Shakti are in many ways first cousins. The script for Salim-Javed ‘s Deewaar was directly inspired by Mehboob Khan’s Mother India. Mr Bachchan’s uneasy relationship with his screen-mother Nirupa Roy culminating in the heart-rending annihilation of her own flesh and blood was directly traceable to Mother India. In Shakti, on Ramesh Sippy’s request, Salim-Javed turned the mother and son’s ideological conflict into a father-son drama. Here the father is an upright police officer who doesn’t think twice before telling his son’s kidnappers to kill the child if they so wish. But he wouldn’t budge from his line of duty. What psychological repercussion would this kind of eccentric idealism have on the poor child who is made into a sacrificial lamb goat in his father’s devout festival of idealism? It’s a great thought, ingeniously sex-changing the Mother India theme into a father-son drama. But retaining the mother-son core of human emotions that made Nargis and Sunil Dutt so vividly etched in the public mind. Rightly Ramesh Sippy shoots the drama with all the punchlines between the father and the son tilted in the father’s favour. The cop’s character holds the ideological key to the drama. Miraculously this doesn’t undermine the father-son conflict, nor does it make the son’s character look morally diminished. Rather, the father’s righteous quest for an ideological high ground makes those around him look humane in their frailties. If there’s an element of Mother India in Shakti there’s also a pronounced allegiance to Mahatma Gandhi’s troubled relationship with his elder son Harilal in the way Inspector Ashwini Kumar keeps pushing aside his fatherly duty for the sake of his work ethics. “Sometimes you can be part of a family and yet feel completely alone in the world,” Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) tells Roma (Smita Patil) when they first meet. In the films of yore, the hero generally met the heroine when he ‘rescues’ her from goons. In Shakti too the silently smouldering Vijay erupts in a local train when a bunch of rowdy Romeos accost the single girl. Smita may have looked ill-at-ease in the damsel-in-distress role. But she managed to win the troubled loner’s heart. Roma eventually moves in with Vijay who has now moved out of his parents’ home. Roma seems distantly related to Anita (Parveen Babi) the single girl in Deewaar who lives in with Vijay and becomes pregnant with his child. The progressiveness of the characters, and their determination to grab destiny by its balls and manoeuvre their lives into the darkest recesses of uncertainty without fearing the inevitable moral backlash, make human interactions in Shakti maturer mellower and more moving than most of the cinema in the 1980s. There is a remarkable sequence where Roma comes to visit Vijay’s estranged parents after she secretly marries him. The high-definition humanism and the sheer exultation as family values are celebrated in the scene were later echoed in the family drama of Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. If we make bold to compare the father-son dramatic conflict in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham with what we see transpire with such intimacy and inevitability between Dilip Kumar and the Big B in Shakti we soon realize that somewhere the family drama featuring larger-than-life superstars became progressively awed by their own casting audacity, thereby relinquishing the right to build a restrained and believable rapport between warring parties within a family. In Shakti, the equation between father and son is perfectly pitched. We feel the crackling tension created by the two intelligent actors in scene after scene. We know, even if we haven’t seen Mother India or Deewaar, what nemesis awaits Vijay as he guns down his mother’s killer (Amrish Puri) in the transit area of the crowded Mumbai airport. The mother-figure remained central to Salim-Javed plot. Bravely Raakhee Gulzar took on the challenge of playing the Big B’s mother right after playing his romantic interest in Kabhi Kabhie, Kasme Vaade and Barsaat Ki Ek Raat. The temptation here lay not in the challenge, but in the sheer joy of being teamed with Dilip Kumar. Raakhee crossed over to the matriarchal podium without fuss. Her death precipitates a war of bullets between father and son. The mother figure embodies the crux of compassion in Salim-Javed’s script. It was very important that an actress of great dignity and substance and with a fair stronghold at the box office play Dilip Kumar’s wife and Amitabh Bachchan’s mother. Raakhee took up the challenge and delivered a poignant if somewhat whiny performance. She binds the two warring men. Her death sequence makes remarkably eloquent use of silence. The Big B holds his grieving father’s hand, their acrimonious ideological division forgot in that interlude of mutual grief. It’s hard to imagine the impact of this film with any other two actors. This was one of Dilip Kumar’s last really great performances. Like the rest of the humanity from the entertainment industry, Big B and director Ramesh Sippy were in awe of the mighty Dilip Kumar. But they never allowed their reverence to come in the way of keeping the plot and characterizations balanced. The father-son conflict never gets tilted. Admittedly Dilip Saab had some fabulous scenes in the film. The sequence in the hospital where the inconsolably grieved Inspector Ashwin Kumar holds his dead wife’s hand and berates the doctor for declaring her dead when her hand is still warm will give us goosebumps for as long as cinema exists. The power of Shakti is star power at its starkest. But it’s also the power of the director and the actors to maintain an aesthetic and dramatic equilibrium between narrative and populism. The scenes are written in a seamless sequence of gripping drama. There is no pause for applause. Just a story about a father and a son who couldn’t see eye to eye, which had to be told to its tragic finale. Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and Instagram.