Seshadri's Musings

Second-last write-up on Sholay!!   Don’t worry, there is only one more blog left to write on this topic 😊 Feroz Khan’s “Khotey Sikkey” which came before Sholay also was a story where Feroz Khan hires 5 petty criminals to nab the dacoit Ajit!!   Joginder, another actor and director, complained that the story is similar to his “Bindiya aur Bandook”!!   The massacre of Thakur’s family was inspired by a similar scene in “Once upon a time in the West” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ptjc9Vono4 . Actual scene in Sholay can be viewed here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkDFAC2WbEs from 5:55 mark to 10:55mark!! Viru’s tank scene was inspired by a movie called “The Secret of Santa Vittoria” featuring Anthony Quinn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaIdjUTa9yU . And the Sholay scene here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbZZecTFlW4 Viru’s tank scene was written by Javed Akhtar while driving to Bangalore airport from the shooting scene.   He then kept on writing the ...

Sholay was written in such a way that every character that you find in the movie leaves you with memories.   These author-backed characters acted as if the part was specially written for them only! A majority of them had a very small part in the movie, but thanks to the dialogues that they had to mouth, the have been heralded in fame!!   I have provided below some interesting tidbits of some of the characters from the movie below.   I hope you too would have the same enjoyment as I had in collating these!!   The sources are the same as my previous blogs. Once Viju Khote was walking on a road with his son.   Some people pointed out to him and began calling him as Kaalia, Kaalia.   The son got angry and told his father that he does not like that.   Viju Khote told him, because of Kaalia only we have refrigerators and TV’s in our home!! Without Kaalia, we would not have been where we are now!!   Viju Khote was immortalized by the dialogue –...

You will be surprised to know that Salim-Javed as well as RD Burman took inspirations from different sources to make this film.   Thanks to Internet now, we can actually find out from where all their inspirations came from!!   Of course, it still doesn’t matter!!   The fact is that Sholay is the greatest movie ever made!!    Some facts mentioned below have been sourced from the book “Written by Salim-Javed – The Story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters” by Diptakirti Chaudhuri and the rest from Internet. Hariram Naii (Naii in Hindi means barber) was the name of the barber who used to come to Salim Khan’s house when he was a kid.   He used to come regularly and used to cut the hair of all the kids at the house at a discount.   When the character of a barber came in Sholay, he was aptly named Hariram Naii (Keshto Mukherjee) Salim Khan’s father was a police officer. At that time there was a particularly cruel story about a legendary dacoit ...

An Army officer’s family is massacred.  He remembers two junior officers who were court martialled.   They were rascals but also brave.   The retired officer decided to enlist them in his mission for revenge. With these 4 lines of story, somewhere in 1972-73, started the birth of a movie called Sholay, unarguably the best movie of all times, according to me 😊😊.   When it got released in 1975, it was announced as “The Greatest Star Cast Ever Assembled! The Greatest Story Ever Told” Apparently, the movie cost Rs 3 crores to make at that time and made Rs 25 crores for the Sippy family, during its run!!   In the current monetary terms, this turns out to be Rs 450 crores, only in Indian territory!!   And this does not include returns from re-releases for quite a number of times and the satellite rights!!   It was said that whenever the Sippy family required some money, they released Sholay again and again!!   And it ran to full-hous...

I am a movie buff.   That is to say that I watch a lot of movies.   May be 3-4 movies a week 😊😊 .   Sometimes it may even stretch to about 5-6 a week!!   I remember during my college days, when there was a Mystery week at the Chanakya theatre in Delhi where they were showing all mystery movies throughout the week.   Chanakya was famous for only English movies during those times.   I was able to watch 5 movies in 5 days during my college days, of course while bunking the college 😊 .   Saturday and Sunday, being holidays, there was no college!!! Otherwise I would have seen 7 movies for 7 days straight!! Now coming to the topic, in recent times, there were 2 movies that have been adapted brilliantly in Hindi and Tamil/Telugu versions.   The first movie is Badla, which is a scene-to-scene copy of a Spanish film called Contratiempo (The Invisible Guest, made in 2016) and the second movie is Thozha (Tamil)/Oopiri(Telugu) which was a remake of ...

Sorry for a long break!!   Let’s call it just laziness and proceed further 😊 I have a USB stick in my car where I listen to songs whenever I drive. As of today, I have about 1000+ Hindi and close to around 500 Tamil songs. All of these are super hits (according to me 😊) and have been meticulously collected by me over the years.   They range from the year 1960’s to the present.   In some of the songs, there is an intro by a singer or a musician before the song.   I am just representing the same here so that you too can be aware of this.   I found all of them to be interesting, so I am just sharing it with you.   This post may extend to 2 pages and I hope you won’t mind it this time!! 😊😊 A majority of the 6 songs feature the one playback singer I admire the most – Kishore Kumar.   Of course, I admire all of them; as I can’t sing like them 😊, but Kishore is just something else.   Almost a majority of the 1000+ Hindi songs that I have...

I came across this phrase last week.   I don’t remember where I saw this.   You can attribute it to my getting old!!   This phrase got into my mind and made me write this blog.   When I began to think about this, it all seemed to be too true!! Giving to others bring a great joy to the giver.   It can even be a small thing for the giver but the act itself is so pleasurable that you end up giving more than you bargained for!   And as long it brings you joy, you keep on giving!!   It may not necessarily be monetary in nature.   It can be things, things that can make them happy like wishing them on their important dates, doing something out-of-ordinary for them, making people cut cakes for the first time in their life on their birthdays/anniversaries when they are over 70+ etc etc.   On my part too, I give happiness to others whenever I can and I am happy that I have done all the things mentioned above 😊 .   Like calling the per...