Written by Salim-Javed: The Story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters

by Diptakirti Chaudhuri

  The reviewers did not catch the contemporary context that Salim–Javed brought to Deewaar. Writer-director Vinay Shukla says, ‘It was the first Hindi film made with a modern, urban sensibility. Traces of feudalism gone. All the characters, be it Amitabh’s, Shashi Kapoor’s, Nirupa Roy’s, Parveen Babi’s, were products of an industrial society.’

  Like countless people, the characters migrated to Bombay from a north Indian town. Both brothers faced the rampant unemployment and poverty prevalent in the country then, each choosing to tackle it in a different way. The menace of smuggling was an ever-increasing problem, which was the backdrop of the story. Even Parveen Babi’s character was a prostitute without any moral justification. She had no ill mother or paralysed brother to take care of and yet she sold her body. For the first time commercial cinema had characters that were real, characters the audience recognized as one of their own. And this is a major reason for Deewaar’s success.

  Deewaar, featuring the ultimate Angry Young Man, was helped—in no small measure—by the political events that were unfolding at that exact moment. People were already angry and there were leaders who were mobilizing this anger. After getting a great response in his home state of Bihar (during the latter half of 1974) and the rejection of his call to dissolve state assemblies, Jayprakash Narayan travelled across India in January and February of 1975 to garner support. Some commentators have called the JP movement ‘India’s second freedom struggle’. Despite the ban on entering Delhi and a near-curfew around the Parliament, JP led a procession of 7,50,000 people—all of whom were raising slogans against a ‘weak government’ and demanding action against the corrupt—into the city. While lakhs of discontented marched and crores seethed, they were presented with a ‘hero’ who was forced by the ‘system’ to a life of crime, which he eventually gives up for his mother.

  Deewaar’s position in the Indian cultural consciousness has burgeoned into something gigantic over the years. It has far exceeded its inspirations in the projection of The Mother Figure of Hindi cinema. The mere recounting of ‘Mere paas maa hai’—as a line without context—doesn’t even begin to explain the mesmerising hold it has had over Hindi film audiences all these years. However, the film’s biggest impact was on Amitabh Bachchan’s career, unequivocally establishing his stardom for more than a decade. It also firmly cemented the partnership of the star with Salim–Javed, what became a symbiotic relationship of producing some of the most memorable roles of Indian cinema. The mandir scene with Amitabh’s monologue ‘berating’ God for his mother’s illness is an excellent example of how well they worked together. Javed Akhtar recalls having a discussion with the actor before shooting the scene, which they felt had too harsh and defiant a tone. ‘But Amitabh was quite convinced and said, “If I start the dialogue on a low note, then somewhere in-between I’ll have to raise my tone. So instead, I’m going to start the delivery of dialogue from a very strong stance and work my way down.”’ Never before had an actor assimilated the writer’s vision so well and never before had a writer–actor team created so much impact at the box office.

  At the Filmfare Awards that year, Deewaar pretty much swept the evening, winning seven out of nine nominations. The two awards it did not win were—ironically—for best actor (where Aandhi’s Sanjeev Kumar beat Amitabh Bachchan) and best supporting actress (where Julie’s Nadira beat Nirupa Roy). Salim–Javed became the first writers to win all the three writing categories—story, screenplay and dialogues—in one year. Their three-in-one record stood till 3 Idiots equalled it in 2009. Imagine, thirty-five years.

  Deewaar—after conquering the box office—formally anointed Salim–Javed as the newest kings of the Hindi film industry. I don’t use the word ‘king’ metaphorically; the producers of Deewaar sponsored an ad in Screen that carried the picture of two crowns and the line ‘Story Kings Salim–Javed’. Forget composers and writers, even Amitabh Bachchan at his peak did not receive such an endorsement from adulating producers.

  In all the publicity material for Deewaar, the writers’ names were right below the director’s, and the actors, director and producer openly acknowledged their contribution. (Just to present a counterpoint, in the ads for Zameer—which released around the same time—the story and dialogue credits were tucked at the bottom of the page.)

  Coincidentally or not, Screen ran a front-page article less than a week after Deewaar’s release that talked about ‘The changing film scene: Seventies bring big improvement in form, content’, and went on to say that ‘Today the writer is a dominant factor in films – almost next only to the director (sic).’

  After the mega-success of Deewaar, if somebody had said that its records would be broken before the year was out, people would have laughed in disbelief. But when Deewaar was nearing its thirtieth week in Bombay, two Salim–Javed films released in successive weeks. One of them was the ‘greatest story ever told’. The other was a low-key production called Aakhri Daao.

  Aakhri Daao

  Aakhri Daao is Salim–Javed’s least-known film. In all the books, articles, monographs, interviews and reviews about them and their films, there is hardly any mention of this film. Even on the usually reliable imdb.com, the film was credited only to Javed Akhtar for the longest time.

  Probably the biggest reason for this ignorance is the timing of its release. Aakhri Daao was released on 8 August 1975, a week before the supernova called Sholay, which annihilated all the box-office records that stood then. The easiest casualties were the other films released around the time. Despite reasonable reviews and a bankable star cast, Aakhri Daao managed neither business nor memory space.

  In the O’Henry short story A Retrieved Reformation, safe-cracker Jimmy Valentine—after carrying off a few heists—falls in love and decides to reform. He is at a bank with his lady love when a little girl gets accidentally locked in a safe. Jimmy has two choices—open the safe and save the girl from suffocation, thus exposing himself to a police officer on his trail, or remain undercover and let the girl die.

  The heroes of O’Henry short stories have one thing in common with Salim–Javed’s heroes—even if they are thieves, they are men of honour. Or to put it in their words, ‘Choron ke bhi ussool hote hain.’

  As had become their modus operandi, Salim–Javed took this dilemma of a thief and created the character of Ravi, who advises safe-building firms by day and then breaks into safes by night, ostensibly to save damsels in distress from blackmailers. And then must return from his reformation for one last heist.

  Ravi (Jeetendra), a reformed safe-cracker, is tricked into opening a rich man’s safe by two thieves—Saawan (Danny Denzongpa) and Julie (Padma Khanna). They frame him for theft and murder. On the run from the police, Ravi reaches a hill estate owned by Mr Kaul (Satyen Kappu) and gets a job there. He also befriends Kaul’s daughter Reena (Saira Banu) and is soon accepted as a brave and honest estate manager. His safe-cracking skills are witnessed by the entire community—including DSP Khurana (Iftekhar)—when he rescues a little girl stuck in a safe. Soon, Saawan and Julie arrive at the estate with a safe—full of antique jewellery—which they have stolen but are unable to open. By blackmailing Ravi with threats of exposing his past, they install themselves at the estate as his friends and compel him to break the safe. Despite Ravi’s attempts to avoid them, he is cornered. Finally, he ends up breaking open the safe but manages to inform the police. Julie, in a dying statement, absolves Ravi of the previous allegations and Ravi starts a new life with Reena at the estate.

  Aakhri Daao certainly isn’t among Salim–Javed’s better scripts. When I say this, I am not comparing the film to their classics, but to the duo’s less successful but still competent ones. For example, the songs clearly hampered the pace of the film—a thriller—and seemed forced, unlike in, say, Deewaar. Salim Khan says, ‘Aakhri Daao got engulfed in the Sholay frenzy. It was somewhat like Shaan, which also fell short when compared to Sholay.’

  What is interesting in Aakhri Daao is the fair amount of similarit
y it has to other films—most notably Sholay. The bigger film obviously occupied Salim–Javed’s mindspace almost entirely and Aakhri Daao’s writing time was probably a subset of Sholay’s.

  Like in Sholay, a lady driver (Reena) receives a guest (Ravi) at the station and drives him (in a car, not a tonga) to his destination. A servant shows Ravi to his cottage, just like Ramlal shows Jai and Viru to theirs. Reena is shown shooting in an orchard when Ravi arrives and goes one better than her, a scene reminiscent of the more famous orchard shooting sequence.

  The similarities were not just limited to Sholay. Just as Davar questions Vijay in Deewaar and finds his confidence to be sky-high, Kaul questions Ravi’s ability to manage his estate and hires him on the basis of his confidence. ‘Tum iss ilake ko nahin jante,’ says Kaul. ‘Aap mujhe nahin jaante,’xxv replies Ravi. When two people are escaping after committing a crime, a police vehicle catches up with them and—after a few tense moments—it transpires that it is a false alarm and the police are after someone else. This scene from Aakhri Daao was repeated in Shaan (where Amitabh Bachchan and Parveen Babi are escaping after stealing a necklace). And the most curious example is a line that appears in a later film as well. Commenting on Ravi’s presence in the vicinity of a stolen safe, DSP Khurana says, ‘Agar yeh ittefaq hai to bahut dilchasp ittefaq hai . . .’xxvi—exactly what tycoon R.K. Gupta would say in Trishul several years hence.

  One of the reasons for the film’s pre-release buzz was that the plot was similar to a James Hadley Chase novel—Come Easy, Go Easy—where the anti-hero gets caught during a safe-breaking heist but doesn’t reform completely. Given the dark theme of Chase’s novel, the similarity with Aakhri Daao is more on the thematic level.

  Director Sriram Raghavan remembers being quite excited about this before the film released: ‘I was a big fan of James Hadley Chase and was very thrilled that they made a Chase novel. I have not seen a Chase film working. When you are reading a Chase novel, you see it as a movie unfolding and the real thing ends up being disappointing. I did not dislike it when I saw it at the time it came out. It was a theek hai kind of film, though not in the league of their other films.’

  This opinion was echoed by the reviews of Aakhri Daao, which weren’t bad but there was no praise for the script. Screen called it a ‘well-shot crime drama’ and said ‘The film has also been very well handled on the cinematic level by the director, who has employed a number of imaginative techniques for picturising the scenes. But it is a pity that the main content points, the scripting and the narration do not go to make a convincing crime drama.’ They wondered if a technical felicity could be attributed to the writers: ‘Jump cuts have been put to excellent use with a subtle link acting as a bridge. These could have been scripted or edited but are worth admiring.’ Trade Guide magazine reported: ‘Aakhri Daao does excellent in 1st week in Delhi, UP; distributor’s share [Rs] 3,22,000 despite heavy rains.’

  The choice of writers and the cast ensured the film opened well, but it immediately got caught under the juggernaut of the most successful film in the history of Indian cinema. And so Aakhri Daao became a forgotten interlude between two record-breaking, history-altering scripts. Though 1975 was the best year Salim–Javed would ever have, it was not because of this film. They had reached what appeared to be their zenith with Deewaar. They would surpass that with Sholay.

  Sholay

  ‘The Greatest Star Cast Ever Assembled! The Greatest Story Ever Told!’—Announcement of Sholay before release

  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 decides to enlist them in his mission for revenge.

  Salim–Javed had originally sold this four-line idea—and only this four-line idea, without any treatment—to producer Baldev Pushkarna for Rs 20,000. Pushkarna had just produced a hit—Roop Tera Mastana, starring Jeetendra and Mumtaz—and had signed on Manmohan Desai to direct his next film. Manmohan Desai, fresh off hits like Sachaa Jhutha and Rampur Ka Lakshman, found the subject too grim and too different from his forte of breezy comedies. Salim–Javed ended up selling him the concept of a lost-and-found comedy, Chacha Bhatija. Prakash Mehra, who was making Zanjeer then, also passed on the idea.

  That was when Salim–Javed went back to their first employers—the Sippys. After the towering success of Seeta Aur Geeta, G.P. Sippy was sniffing around to make a blockbuster and was therefore on the lookout for a suitably grand story. His son, Ramesh, had promised Salim–Javed credit and publicity when they wrote a film for him (as they hadn’t been credited for the work they did for Seeta Aur Geeta). In any case, Ramesh’s modern sensibilities were more in sync with these two maverick writers than with the older, diligent writers of the industry.

  The Sippys bought the four-line plot for Rs 1,50,000 and told the writers to develop the script for a ‘badi film’.

  Salim–Javed started writing Sholay in March 1973, in a small room in the Sippy Films’ office. Bouncing ideas off Ramesh Sippy, reliving childhood memories, digging into long-forgotten books and movies, they came up with the first treatment in fifteen days.

  The story was hardly original. Apart from illustrious foreign predecessors like Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven, several desi plots were also done in the same vein. Raj Khosla directed Mera Gaon Mera Desh in 1971, taking Vinod Khanna to negative role stardom as daku Jabbar Singh. While Sholay was still being made, Khote Sikkay, in which an avenger (Feroz Khan) hires five petty criminals to help him catch dacoit Jhanga (Ajit) was released in 1974.

  Producer–director–actor of cult B-grade films, Joginder also entered the fray—officially—by suing Ramesh Sippy and Salim–Javed for stealing the idea of Sholay from his 1972 film Bindiya Aur Bandook.16 Salim–Javed themselves acknowledged the influence of Sergio Leone and admitted that the massacre of Thakur’s family was inspired by a similar scene in Once Upon a Time in the West. The inspiration for Viru’s famous tank scene came from a movie called The Secret of Santa Vittoria featuring Anthony Quinn.

  What Salim–Javed did in Sholay was take all these bits and pieces and shape them into a massive structure of drama, action, emotion and tragedy. Encouraged by the confidence Ramesh Sippy showed in them, they were actually able to understand each other’s visions and ‘see’ the film as they wrote the scenes.

  In her book Sholay: The Making of a Classic, well-known film critic Anupama Chopra says, ‘Ideas were tossed back and forth, scenes written and rejected, characters created and killed. Mostly they just hurtled on. The characters kept coming through. It was as if the story was writing itself. “There was a wave of creativity,” says Salim, “like a sea at high tide.”’

  Javed Akhtar describes Gabbar Singh as ‘one of the few [characters] I enjoyed writing . . . I remember very clearly that while writing Sholay, I would get very excited and relish the prospect that once I completed two scenes, the next would have Gabbar in it.’ Writing Gabbar was so much fun because they developed an entirely new vocabulary for this iconic villain that made the character even more menacing.

  Not surprisingly, both Sanjeev Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan wanted to play Gabbar. The role had such an aura that two of the leading men of the times were willing to give up their ‘heroic’ image to play the villain, something unprecedented in the convention-bound Hindi film industry. It is said that Sanjeev Kumar offered to do all kinds of things—like shave off his hair, blacken his teeth and develop some mannerisms—to bring an interesting dimension to the character.

  The process of finding the actor who would do justice to this edgy character was trickier. It is a well-known fact that Danny Denzongpa—originally signed to play Gabbar—dropped out because of an earlier commitment made to Feroz Khan’s Dharmatma.

  Fortunately, Javed Akhtar remembered seeing an actor called Amjad Khan in a play called Ae Mere Watan Ke Logon performed at a youth festival in Delhi way back in 1963. Amjad’s performance as an army officer had mad
e such an impact that he had mentioned it to Salim several times during their partnership. Salim, in turn, had worked in a few films with Amjad’s father, Jayant, and knew of the young actor too. In a coincidence of epic proportions, Salim bumped into Amjad at Bandra Bandstand one day. He immediately offered to take him to Ramesh Sippy, saying that the finest role in the biggest film in recent times could be his. Salim’s suggestion was endorsed by Satyen Kappu (who had worked with Amjad in theatre) and Amjad was taken on. The connect was so strong that, several years later, Ramesh Sippy admitted, ‘The writers brought him and the moment he entered the room, I knew we had our man.’ Thus after Amitabh Bachchan as Jai17, Amjad Khan as Gabbar was the second major casting decision that was made on the basis of Salim–Javed’s recommendation.

  Ironically, Salim–Javed never worked with Amjad Khan again because of a major misunderstanding during the filming. Amjad Khan’s unconventional voice was seen by many as a major dampener, and with so much riding on the character of Gabbar, there was a lot of negative buzz around the casting. It is a testimony to Salim–Javed’s ownership of the project that they told Ramesh Sippy to replace Amjad, since they didn’t want their recommendation to spoil the chances of the film. When Amjad found out about this, he was extremely upset. He never forgave the writers for what he considered a severe blow to his nascent career.

  As writers, Salim–Javed need not have concerned themselves with a potential error in casting. After all, it was the director who always took the final call on the cast. But just as they never shied away from taking credit where it was due, neither did they back away from their responsibility of making a film successful. Although Ramesh Sippy was clearly the captain of the ship, he was greatly aided by Salim–Javed’s vision of the film and their involvement in the process of filming.