Fool's Paradise

We believe what we want to believe. The rest does not matter. That is the truth that gets written in stone, as we grow in age though seldom in wisdom. So when I saw Sholay for the first time, I needed no coaxing to believe that it was an absolute masterpiece, that had been masterfully thought, written, directed, acted and duly appreciated. I remember seeing it for the first time on one of our country's numerous national holidays. It was an afternoon and the streets were desolate (as most holiday afternoons in Bengal are). Gabbar's rhetorical questions kept ricocheting from every building in the campus. His constant threats were only countered by the barking of the pariah dogs that had congregated under the lamp-post in an effort to celebrate their short-lived dominance over the human race on the streets.

The film stayed long and deep in my mind, every time I saw it. When I was younger I enjoyed the drunken revelry of Veeru. I failed to understand Thakur's obsession of having the last word with his not-very-lethal nagra shoes; but did laugh heartily at the overconfidence of the anglicized jailer and at Soorma Bhopali's buffoonery. I was too young to comprehend a complex emotion such as revenge, and therefore must have missed the entire premise of the movie. As I grew older I saw the movie in a new light. The evil embodied by Gabbar by now seemed all too real. Thakur's penchant for vendetta seemed suddenly rational; Helen's dance found greater appreciation, and Kishore's songs kept egging the good Samaritan in me. The angry man was by now standing tall among the rest of the film's cast as my favourite. Soon enough, mere love for the film was replaced by jingoistic advocacy for this truly original Bollywood movie.

They say ignorance is bliss. They also say that ignorance is not innocence, it is a sin. I perhaps got caught in the labyrinth of these two wise sayings. In my effort to do more than just enjoy the movie I started reading about it. The places where the scenes were shot, the numerous takes it took to get the perfect shot, the books that were referred, and the movies; Yes the movies that inspired it. I did not give much thought to the last part until many years later.

Then one fateful night I watched Once Upon a Time in the West. The glass bubble cracked, and the air of a self-anointed movie critic in me escaped with a whiff. There was Jason Robards straddling a horse and chewing the cud (or straw or something), emulating Amitabh. I was in no way ready to accept that the truth may be the other way round. Good movies are bound to have coincidences, I told myself. And just as I was feeling reassured I heard the periodic screech of a swing. What followed was the silhouette of a man on a horse appearing over the contour of a hillock. The sound of the swing had a Pavlovian effect and I sat up expecting to see the betel stained teeth  and the sinister smile of the devil, Gabbar. The teeth were stained alright, but they belonged to the face of Henry Fonda and not Amjad Khan. Fonda though did not deviate from the script I knew so well. He pointed his gun towards the little boy (who was not Thakur sahaab's pota but a tawny haired Caucasian kid), and just as he fired the shot the screen filled up with bellowing smoke from a steam engine and the prolonged whistle filled the air, just as I had thought it would.

This enchanting spell of parallels was broken when the very pretty Claudia Cardinale got down from that whistling train (instead of Sanjeev Kumar); But soon enough  she decided to ride to her husband's dwelling where she was met with four shrouded bodies lined up on the porch (along with the Raamlals of the west, if you can imagine them). Claudia stood with a pensive look on her face, but I could not resist imagining that any moment now she would jump on to a saddled horse and charge madly towards daaku Henry Fonda's lair! Luckily she proved to be wiser and saved me from having to see her beautiful arms being amputated. The parallels just kept flowing till I was confused in my head as to which movie I was watching. What followed over the next few nights was the viewing of a long chain of Spaghetti westerns. All originals! Till I watched the bag full of Kurosawa's movies and found where they were inspired from.

If I were to write a precis on this it would look like this. A Japanese director came up with some stories (I do not know for sure if these were inspired as well!) that inspired a bunch of Western movies which were then collaged into one mega Hindi-movie that wowed an entire nation and stands as its movie industry's magnum opus till date. A truly original tale in itself. Long ago in school I had heard the following: churi bidya boro bidya, jodi na poro dhora (the art of stealing is a great art, if you are not caught). I have only realised the profundity of the saying lately.

The purpose of writing this is not to do a parochial analysis of who stole what from whom and how. I realized through this experience that sometimes some things are best enjoyed without delving too deep into the specifics. While a deep understanding is desirable, it is not an absolute requirement when the intent is mere entertainment. And since I am no director, not even a mediocre movie critic, I shall continue to be satisfied as long as I am entertained.  The two wise sayings are both true but the unspoken truth is that one must be wise enough to know which one holds true, and when. As for me I still believe Sholay to be an original, in the sense that it does heavily take bits and pieces from elsewhere but presents to us a collage that is representative of all the different nuances of emotions, facts and dreams that make us a nation as a whole. And that I did not find in Once upon a Time in the West or The Seven Samurai, or Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid.