GALAT PICCHAR - SHOLAY

Today, I present to you the first post in a brand new series. It is aptly titled 'GALAT PICCHAR'. 'Galat' in Hindi means 'Wrong' and 'Picchar' is the Desi word for 'Picture' or a movie. So no prizes for guessing what 'Galat Picchar' means. Believe what you read here at your own risk.

Most Desis are film buffs. We know our 'Hum Aapke Hain Kauns' and 'RaOnes' 'DDLJs' by heart. But with almost half the population being born in the 90s, it would be a tad unfair for to expect everyone to have watched or even have heard about movies of the 70s, even if they were classics. Hence, it becomes a duty on the part of us veterans pre-1990ers to bring these wonderful movies to the poor novices. Today, I proudly give you the most accurate synopsis of the evergreen classic...*drumroll*...SHOLAY.

The movie actually shuttles between real time and flashback sequences. Because I'm too lazy to type For simplicity in narration, I will present the story to you in proper chronological order. For easy comprehension, I am also attaching images, wherever necessary.

Most fans of the movie will argue that Sholay is an action-packed tale of unconditional friendship, loyalty and the ultimate revenge saga. However, it is also the story of a power-struggle between a 'connoisseur of art' dacoit and a village Thakur with a strange obsession with male hands.

The actual story begins with the Thakur (who by the way also happens to be a former cop) hunting down a hairy Daaku - Gabbar Singh. At the very beginning of the sordid tale, we are greeted by the sight of the wicked Thakur harassing strangulating Gabbar.

To add insult to injury, Thakur gets Gabbar imprisoned and sentenced for unlawful assembly and for promoting obscenity (read: enjoying ganda naach gaana with his merry men). What's more, Thakur chose to put only Gabbar behind bars, and not his 'unlawful assembly' or the vulgar dance troupe. Some personal vendetta!

Anyway, before he is led to prison, Gabbar vows revenge against Thakur for his 'Misbehaviour', 'Suppression of Art & Creativity' and 'Moral Policing'. In other words, he vows revenge on Thakur's 'Dhoblegiri'.

Soon enough, Gabbar escapes from jail. He blocks Thakur's newly-acquired android phone using the IMEI number.

His ego badly hurt, Thakur sets out to put Gabbar in his place. He pays no heed to Ramlal's prophetic words. Ouch! That was soon gonna cost both of them dearly.

Ramlal should have been a little more aggressive with his convincing. It was in his own best interests after all. Alas, very soon he was going to have to face the consequences of his lethargy...for the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, Thakur acts like a dhedh-shaana, and confronts Gabbar, in his own lair. He also falsely claims that Gabbar has stolen his handsfree device. Gabbar responds with an amazing display of black humour, and sends him back home....hands-free.

Not one to be done in so easily, and also because he was beginning to enjoy this game of 'badla-badla', Thakur hatches a plan to get back at Gabbar. He sends for Inspector Bajrang Pandey.

The original plan was to book Inspector Pandey's railway ticket directly to the village station. However, a steep hike in rail fares makes Thakur resort to a 'super-value-saver' plan of booking the rail ticket for only half the distance, and then forcing Pandey to cover the remaining distance on 'horsepower'. Here's recorded footage:-

Inspector Bajrang Pandey is clearly not amused with Thakur's kanjoosi austerity measures. He makes known his feelings.

Quickly smarting from his faux pas, the Inspector seeks to know why he was called. The answer he gets makes him realise that his reservations about Thakur's orientation had been well-founded all along.

Jai and Veeru. Petty criminals. And yet, the quintessential Bollywood 'good-at-heart' heroes. When they're not burgling someone's house, these 'friends' move around aimlessly, painting towns pink with their antics. Check out their vintage Spicegirls-esque dance moves.

They're always focussing on giving 'stiff' competition to other criminal brothers.

Thakur stalks them around town. When he finally manages to grab their attention, he spills the beans.

Thakur and his raging hormones...sheesh!

Anyway, he tells Jai and Veeru about his plan to capture Gabbar - ALIVE. In true-blue Indian corporate style, he promises them ample growth opportunities, job satisfaction, perks, free transport, work-life balance and salaries as per industry standards. And they fall for it! Haha! Suckers!

As expected, they arrive at the village taxi stand...at their own expenses.

With no taxi in sight to take them to Thakur's 'mansion', they decide to travel cattle-class.

They hire Basanti's tonga. Basanti is the village chatter-box. Her hobbies include exercising her vocal chords for no rhyme or reason and boring people to death. Her horse's name is Dhanno. Both seem to have a bad reputation, because apparently, everyone in the village had taken a ride.

For reasons more suited to primates, Veeru has the hots for Basanti. He engages in a very enriching one-way conversation with her. Jai is not amused with the new development. 'Maybe he's looking at the prospect of free transport facilities', he thinks. Insecurity creeps in.

Finally reaching Thakur's office after an extremely torturous one-way chat session in the tonga, Jai and Veeru have a formal induction. They quickly undergo 'on-the-job' training. They also get to hear a gazillion horror stories from Ramlal about Thakur giving crap.

Their personal lives, however, are not sailing smoothly. Veeru is slowly but surely drifting away from Jai and spending more time with motor-mouth Basanti.

Finally sensing that his relationship with Veeru is as good as over, Jai begins to seek whiter greener pastures. He spots Thakur's always-in-white widowed Bahu, Radha.

In a matter of hours, the romantic tension that was just a spark in the morning had soon turned into a forest fire. The whole village could tell that Jai was smitten.

It wasn't hard to guess. It was all so obvious.

Soon, Jai can't handle his desperation. He wants to take this relationship with Radha to a different level. With Veeru having smoothly sailed through the beginner's level with Basanti, Jai feels he needs to act fast. He decides it is best to skip the 'intermediate' level and take his relationship directly to the 'expert' level without wasting time.

One day, Gabbar sends three of his collection agents, led by Kaalia, to Walmart the village to fetch his gang's monthly ration. Ramlal, who also doubles up as the village watch-tower manager, sees them coming and quickly warns the villagers. All of a sudden, the gaanv-waaley swing into action and act busy. They ignore the collection agents' demands. Having exhausted all their energy, the trio turn back. Jai and Veeru (who till then are hiding like snipers and smoking their beedis) decide to play target practice with them as they gallop away, just for kicks.

Of course, Gabbar is left fuming at his collection agents' performance. Since it was performance appraisal time, he decides to cut his wage costs by gunning them down laying them off (without severance package, gratuity and other benefits). Of course, in Indian Corporate style, he pretends to take his HR Manager's advice before taking the step.

Wasting no time, Gabbar immediately decides to organise a recruitment drive in the village to fill the three vacant positions in his gang. He tells his HR Manager to choose a 'holiday' for the same, so that candidates wouldn't have to compromise on their current work commitments to make themselves available for the interviews. But Samba doesn't hear Gabbar too well (what do you expect when he's always seated so high, out of the audibility radius), and chooses HOLI-day for the recruitment drive.

But Indians love their HOLI-day. After all, we men can't just let a one-day no-holds-barred license to get wicked naughty with the ladies slip out of our hands so easily, can we? So the villagers give Gabbar's interview calls a miss.

This incenses Gabbar so much that he comes to the village himself, with a more aggressive approach. There, he bumps into Jai and Veeru. Sensing an opportunity to hire skilled labour for cheap, he gives them job offers that he doesn't want them to refuse. But to his utter disappointment, they say no thank you. After all, girlfriend izzat naam ki bhi koi cheez hoti hai!

Disappointed, Gabbar goes to an open-air dance bar to drink his sorrows away, and to enjoy a DANCE performance.

But spoilsports that they are, Jai and Veeru show up and spoil the fun with sutli bombs and Diwali rockets. Nevertheless, poetic justice is done, when a sutli bomb bursts in Jai's hand.

Having had their fill of cheap thrills, Jai and Veeru get back to the village. Radha wastes no time in tending to Jai's injured thumb nail. Seeing the PDA, Veeru suddenly realises that he has a lot of catching up to do. He promptly resorts to Bollywood's fool-proof "Sing A Song To Ding-Dong" formula to get a promotion from motor-mouth Basanti.

After getting Basanti on board (WTF! How??), Veeru seeks Jai's help to convince Basanti's Mausi to agree to their alliance. Jai does the needful.

The wedding would eventually take place a few months later, much after the end of this movie. Didn't end too well though. The following was the last available footage of Veeru, taken a couple of days after the wedding.

Meanwhile, Gabbar is still sulking about the massive 'iggy' his recruitment drive has elicited. He's in urgent need of procurement officers. So he decides to adopt an even more aggressive approach to hiring, an approach that would make even multi-level marketing guys gawk in admiration.

This is Imam Saheb. He's old and blind (awww). He constitutes the minority quota that is so typical of Bollywood movies. He's an absolute gem of a person. If he was Christian, his name would've probably been Michael, and he'd have been the jolly good owner of a beer-bar.

This is Ahmed. He is Imam Saheb's young son. We already know he is Muslim because of his name and because we know who his father is. But the costume designer still wants to be sure that we idiots don't get confused. So here is how Ahmed is made to look 24x7, 365 days a year.

One of these guys' fate is sealed (read: one of them is about to die) because all Muslims/Christians/Parsis/Sardarjis in a Bollywood movie are brave and sacrificing in nature.

So yes, Gabbar kills Ahmed because he refuses to stifle his career prospects by joining Gabbar's sorry bunch of donkey horse-riding losers.

When the body is sent back to the village, everyone except Imam Sahab is devastated. Why? Because Imam Saheb is from the minority, stupid. We minority peeps groom our kids to become brave and honourable, and we raise them to sacrifice their lives for honour and for the nation. Geddit suckers? Lolz.

Oh, wait, lest you miss an evergreen classic moment, here it is.

Next, Gabbar gets Basanti kidnapped (haha, crazy daring shit).

Why does he kidnap her? Just because he wants to see her dance. Yeah, weirdass stuff.

Veeru finally realises that matters are serious (that's what girls do to you, they make you serious about everything), and sets off on a rescue mission. Alas, he gets caught in Gabbar's trap, because Ramesh and Suresh had made his patloon ek bilaang choti.

Gabbar forces Basanti to dance if she wants a Koffee with Karan gift hamper her lover to live. She obliges and floors everyone with her never-seen-before moves.

While Gabbar and his merry men lay on the floor clutching their bellies and laughing themselves half-dead, Jai arrives on the scene and shoots down a dozen helpless daakus. He also frees Veeru and Basanti, and they all try to run for their lives. A gun battle ensues, in which Jai gets fatally wounded. As he lay dying, he leaves behind a legacy for his dear friend Veeru.

Radha cries bitterly after Jai's death. But Veeru goes metal-thrashing mad. Undoubtedly, Jai was more than a talented harmonica player for him. He goes back to Gabbar's lair and slays all of his men, 'chun-chunke'.

In the end, he grabs Gabbar by the throat and is about to choke him to death when spoil-sport Thakur arrives at the scene to get a taste of the action. He commands Veeru to leave Gabbar to him. Veeru laughs hysterically as he leaves the scene, but you can't blame him for that.

Here's Thakur getting ready for the fight.

  
 
The following fight is a no disqualification, no count-out, no-holds-barred match-up.

In the left corner, from places unknown, weighing in at 330 lbs, we have Gabbar Singh.

And in the right corner, from Ramgadh village mansion, weighing in at 260 lbs, here is Thakur.

Gabbar starts off on the wrong foot. He tries to break the ice by making a risque comment.

Those would be Gabbar's last words. His sense of humour doesn't go down too well with Thakur, a Taekwondo black-belt as we can see from the following clipping. All it takes is a well-timed and well-directed drop kick from Thakur to kill Gabbar. If India had a few more talented prodigies like him, our crime rates would've been incredibly low.

And from there on, everyone lived happily ever after.

Except for Ramlal of course.

The End.

SHOLAY is and always has been one of my all-time favourite movies. For one, it has Amitabh Bachchan in it. Secondly, it had the right amount of melodrama in it - not too much. It is one the best 'Revenge' dramas and friendship stories every essayed. Jai's dying scene still brings tears to my eyes...sometimes. 

This post is the result of inspiration I got from reading another blog. Tons of applause for IMAANSHEIKH.

Disclaimer: This post does not claim ownership of any of the pictures displayed unless stated otherwise. We do not intend or attempt to offend anyone with this post. It is purely for tongue-in-cheek entertainment and in jest. Some images used in this website are taken from the web and are therefore believed to be in the public domain. If any images posted here are in violation of copyright law, please contact us and we will gladly remove the images immediately.

Cheers