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

by Diptakirti Chaudhuri

  Javed Akhtar says, ‘It was neither a conscious decision, nor a coincidence. People have written theses on these films and their socio-political relevance, but we were blissfully unaware. I am happy that we had no idea, because if we had, it would have meant that we were looking at society from outside. We were a part of it, breathing the same air, living the same life.’

  However, like many of their creations, Salim–Javed were not the first to develop the idea of the Angry Young Man. There were precedents that the writers were aware of and from which they took bits and pieces to give shape to the iconic figure which reigned for more than a decade and spawned many imitations. Javed Akhtar has himself said that Mother India’s Birju (Sunil Dutt) was a character he loved because of his rebellious streak and that he had made a deep impression on him. He has even wondered if Balraj Sahni’s character in Do Bigha Zamin—another favourite of his—should have revolted against the system instead of being a mute victim.

  In Hollywood of the 1950s, James Dean had a very brief but influential career playing angst-ridden youngsters (most notably in Rebel Without a Cause). He was often called a replica of Marlon Brando, who again portrayed characters violently angry with the system (in films like The Wild One and On the Waterfront).

  Back home, Gulzar’s Mere Apne (1971) was one such film in which the plight and the misguided energy of the unemployed youth were portrayed quite brilliantly. Vinod Khanna and Shatrughan Sinha—still known for their negative roles—made two awesome anti-heroes, Shyam and Chheno. The supporting cast of youngsters (Paintal, Danny et al) was disillusioned bunch of people though their anger was channelled through sarcasm (‘Haal chaal theek thaak hai . . .’) and they were not violent (or at least not demonstrably so) towards the system.

  Mere Apne was a remake of the Bengali film Apanjan (1968). The Bengali film industry had smelled the anger a little earlier. Satyajit Ray’s acclaimed Pratidwandi (1970) was another superb depiction of the Angry Young Man, albeit in a more realistic way. A scene from Pratidwandi shows the protagonist Siddhartha (Dhritiman Chatterjee) facing an interview panel where he does quite well till he cites the ‘war in Vietnam’ as the significant event of the past decade. The panel construes his eloquent answer to be a sign of communism and potential activism.

  This scene finds resonance in the scene in Deewaar where Ravi (Shashi Kapoor) does very well in an interview till nepotism rears it ugly head and a candidate with connections in the company beats him to the job.

  All these characters were cut from the same cloth—recent graduates in search of employment; intelligent, sensitive and yet ignored in the rat race because the establishment wants people who will toe the line, who won’t think independently or challenge the status quo.

  The success and appeal of Salim–Javed’s films and the recognition they received as creators of the character are due to their near-perfect blend of realism and escapism.

  Their Angry Young Men were born in very real circumstances—the honest police officer fighting the unresponsive system; the dockyard coolie being extorted; the bastard son growing up to be vengeful because his father abandoned his mother; the disgraced naval captain seeking redemption.

  And they took the system on mostly successfully. Theirs was not the ‘anger of the taut bow’ (as Satyajit Ray once described his wronged character in Sadgati) but the anger of an exploding bomb. Their characters did not tremble in impotent rage. They picked up a gun and mowed down the villains. Their smouldering eyes were backed by hard fists.

  Salim–Javed’s Angry Young Man was inconceivable for the Hindi cinema audience of the time and yet when he appeared, it seemed they had been waiting for him.

  Angry Young Man Redux

  ‘So many other actors have tried to ape Amitabh, but they’ve failed. Because they didn’t have the sophistication and the tehzeeb that Amitabh grew up with. As an actor, Amitabh’s anger was never ugly. Other actors mix anger with arrogance. But Amitabh’s anger was mixed with hurt and tears’—Javed Akhtar

  In Arjun (1985), there is an almost exact replica of the ‘job interview’ scene that Shashi Kapoor was seen in in Deewaar (1975). But while in the earlier film, the interviewer was somewhat embarrassed about taking the job away from the deserving candidate, the interviewer in Arjun is absolutely blasé and throws back the file containing the certificates without even opening it. ‘Naukri kisi aur ko de di gayi’xlix is the common response in both places, but the intervening decade had institutionalized the unfairness.

  When Salim and Javed started writing independently, Indian society and politics had changed a lot from their initial days as a team. In the early 1970s, there were still some vestiges of idealism left that made people feel extremely frustrated and angry at the sight of corruption and crime. Thus, for the average Indian a man taking the law into his hands or taking on the establishment became a hero—almost a messiah. It was this feeling of awe that was behind the mass appeal of diverse characters like Jayprakash Narayan, Bal Thackeray and Amitabh Bachchan’s Angry Young Man.

  By the mid-1980s, the decline in public morality had become much worse. Corruption in politics had become so widespread that anger had given way to cynicism. The lumpen elements of society had started to receive political patronage and the nexus between crime and politics had becoming very strong.31 Politics in India had never been free of unsavoury characters but the criminal links had become more overt now.

  In fact, the smugglers and criminals who made their ill-gotten fortunes in the 1970s were now seeking legitimacy through elections. The best example of this is one Haji Mastan Mirza, who started off as a smuggler but ‘reformed’ after a period of incarceration and ventured into politics by forming a party and forging alliances with existing leaders. In more ways than one, the smuggler of Deewaar had been replaced by a more powerful character who was no longer the anti-hero but a full-blown villain—the ‘dirty politician’.

  Salim and Javed read this mood perfectly—nearly as well as they understood the mood in 1970s. The people’s idealism had given way to hardened cynicism, the employment situation had become grimmer and the subversion of justice had become easy to the point of being laughable. And, in their best traditions, they built these elements into scripts that brought realism without sacrificing entertainment or pace. For example, the Middle East job scam (where youngsters were sent to Dubai with promises of jobs that didn’t exist) formed the backdrop for Naam, while the dying small-scale industries of Bombay were a key element in Arjun. The results were some very interesting characters that utilized the actors’ talents very well. The Angry Young Man was still a wronged individual out to seek revenge or redemption, but now he was appearing in different avatars.

  Anil Kapoor played characters that were aggressive and intelligent. In Mashaal, he was the tapori who was inspired by an idealistic newspaper editor to become a journalist, whereas in Meri Jung, he was the hotshot lawyer taking on impossible cases to ensure truth triumphed over manipulated evidence. And in Joshilaay, he was the strong, silent type, going after a bandit to avenge his parents’ death.

  Sunny Deol was the gullible idealist who turns vigilante after run-ins with corrupt politicians (Arjun) or village despots (Dacait).

  Sanjay Dutt was the forever-in-trouble youngster teetering on the wrong side of the law, before deciding to reform. Sometimes he got hired by international crime bosses (Naam) and sometimes by local dadas (Kabzaa).

  Most often, the common factor—like earlier—that served as a catalyst for the underdog to take on the system was a tragic death. Just as the death of a fellow coolie at the hands of the dockyard goons shakes Deewaar’s Vijay, similarly, Arjun is traumatized when his friend is killed by a politician’s henchmen.32 Be it Alok Nath’s death in Kabzaa or the father’s unjustified hanging in Meri Jung, it was death that brought out the fighter in the young man.

  The mother figure—a central character in Angry Young Man films like Deewaar and Trishul—was no longer the inspiration, at least not overtly. For example, in
Dacait, the mother (Rakhee) loses her senses in the attack that destroys her family. She is a victim of atrocities along with the rest of her family but she doesn’t inspire her son to take up arms.

  Even in Meri Jung, the mother (Nutan) loses her memory and is missing from her children’s lives for a major part of the film. While the injustice against his father and mother propels the hero (Anil Kapoor) to become a legal crusader, she is not the prime mover, as Waheeda Rehman’s character was in Trishul.

  And while the mother figure does make an appearance in Mashaal, she (Waheeda Rehman) has a benign impact on Anil Kapoor, who is more inspired by Dilip Kumar. Her death triggers a different kind of reaction in her husband, as his disillusionment with the system is complete and he turns into a criminal. The wife here is not only not the beacon of morality she was in Salim–Javed’s films, but in fact she propels the hero in the wrong direction.

  In Naam, the mother figure is present but is neither as crucial to the plot nor as critical about her son’s wayward behaviour as we saw in her earlier avatars.

  And, finally, in Arjun, the mother figure is actually a stepmother (Shashikala)—a harsh and irritating background presence in the hero’s life. She has no interest in him or in his career choices as long as he brings in a salary. She has no message, let alone a positive one, for her stepson and is reduced to just a grating noise in his life.

  Sunny Deol, Anil Kapoor and Sanjay Dutt turned out to be the new avatars of the Angry Young Man in most of their earlier films. Sunny Deol’s performances in Arjun and Dacait laid the foundation for Ghayal, his career-defining film. Similarly, Anil Kapoor was brilliant as a tapori in Mashaal and his exceptional dialogue delivery in Meri Jung set him up for Tezaab, the film that made him a superstar. Even Sanjay Dutt, whose subsequent career was riddled with interruptions, got a great launching pad in Naam that signalled his return to Bollywood after his dream debut (Rocky) went sour due to his drug problem.

  And it was not only the youngsters whose careers got a boost with Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar.

  Dilip Kumar established himself as an exceedingly strong character actor in the 1980s with his roles in Mashaal and Duniya. In both cases, he was the centre of attention (despite the presence of a younger hero) and brilliantly played the Angry Old Man out for revenge.

  Amitabh Bachchan, grappling with poor health and a disastrous stint in politics, did films with both writers that gave his anger as well as his youth a new twist. In Main Azaad Hoon, he was a bystander who became the face of a revolution against corrupt politics. He went from being an ordinary man with no point of view to a vocal critic of the establishment, but his anger was not about fists and guns any more. Here, the Angry Young Man got a Gandhian twist as it was more about inspiring people with words. In Akayla, the anger and bullets remained but the character was a jaded police inspector. Repeated run-ins with powerful criminals and a failed romance had turned him into a hardened man with a drinking problem. The man was angry, still going after criminals, but was not so young after all; it was an intelligent way to project the ageing Bachchan.

  The Angry Young Man returned in the 1980s with a bang, and made careers once again. Unfortunately, the popularity of the character led to its becoming commonplace, for film after film flogged it to death. Conceived by master writers like Salim–Javed and brought alive on screen by a talented director like Yash Chopra, the character became a caricature as the anger ceased to be impactful and the violence was no longer worth even the fake blood it spilt. This cycle of violence in Hindi cinema continued for most of the 1990s, ending only when three men—each about five years apart—brought in a fresh burst of stylish romance that not only revived Hindi cinema but also made it cool in the years that followed. These three men were Salman Khan (Maine Pyar Kiya, 1989), Aditya Chopra (Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, 1995) and Farhan Akhtar (Dil Chahta Hai, 2001).

  Villains

  An honest police officer is wrongly incarcerated due to the machinations of a crime boss. When the seething officer is released from jail, the first thing he does is walk into a restaurant where the villain, protected by his bodyguards, is having dinner with his moll. He sits down at the villain’s table, and announces, ‘Teja, main aa gaya hoon.’l

  The villain looks up from his soup. ‘Hello,’ he replies coolly.

  —from Zanjeer

  W hen Salim–Javed started writing, Ajit was one of the top ‘villains’, playing smuggling kingpins and unscrupulous industrialists in his trademark cool-cat style. Two out of his three best-known roles were written by Salim–Javed. Yaadon Ki Baaraat’s Shaakaal (he of different-sized shoes) and Zanjeer’s Teja (he of molls called Mona) formed the crux of his characterization which would eventually become the subject of ‘Ajit jokes’.33

  For the first time, villains were intelligently devious. They had interesting tics and their speaking styles were eminently imitable. They even had backstories to explain their villainy. Zanjeer’s Teja, for example, rises from being a faceless mercenary in a spurious medicine racket before he kills his own boss (played by Sapru) and usurps the throne.

  In creating the character of the Angry Young Man, Salim–Javed built an entire mythology around him, making him a superhero hitherto unseen in Hindi cinema. A core part of creating this mythology was to invest the hero with a worthy adversary.

  Film historian Kaushik Bhaumik says, ‘Salim–Javed had a very strong understanding of the extremely popular nautanki culture where Raavan is as much part of the attraction of Ramleela as Ram is. In fact, Raavan has to be the spectacular pivot around which the Ramleela revolves.’ He further elucidates that the myth-making with which the Angry Young Man flourished needed everything to be hyperbolic and exaggerated.

  The duo realized that for the heroes to be big, the villains had to be as big—if not bigger. If the hero was to be someone audiences would not forget in a hurry, the villain he vanquished had to be memorable. This process of building the villain as painstakingly and meticulously as creating the hero is something that is taken from the mythology of our country.

  To take forward Bhaumik’s Ramayana analogy, in the epic, Raavan is presented as a great king and a formidable foe, an opponent worthy of Vishnu’s incarnation. His son Meghnad and brother Kumbhakarna have their own strengths and get their own build-ups. This myth-making has been perpetuated—and to a large extent, exaggerated—by the annual Ramleela festival across the country. The visual spectacle of Raavan and his cohorts being constructed over an extended period of time is something we have become used to, right from our childhood. And eventually, on Dussehra the huge figure of Raavan looms over all of us as the symbol of evil. The heroes—Ram and Laxman—have only cameos in the programme as they arrive right at the end to finish off the villains in a grand spectacle of colours and fireworks.

  In a way, in several of their films, Salim–Javed mimicked this slow construction of the Raavanesque figure and his larger-than-life presence. In Sholay, we are treated to an edgy mix of ominous music, a very unusual voice, a pair of boots and a scraping belt for an extended period of time before Gabbar Singh erupts on to the screen with an explosive ‘Sooar ke bachche! ’lii The fact that Thakur Baldeo Singh hires the two heroes to catch him alive makes the ‘mashhoor daku’ a presence in the film even before his first appearance. There are hints of an old enmity and there is a king’s ransom—‘pooray pachaas hazaar’—as bounty on the villain. By the time Kaalia openly threatens the villagers with Gabbar’s wrath, the audience is dying of curiosity to see him. More than an hour into the film, we are at last ‘treated’ to Gabbar Singh in a six-minute long introduction sequence, that certainly blows away more than a few minds.

  Five years after Sholay, we have Shaakaal in Shaan.

  The entry of Shaakaal is even grander as we follow his lieutenants—formidable villains themselves—on a long journey to the mega-villain’s lair that looks like it is straight out of a James Bond film. Again, the villain, the fearsome ‘Shaakaal saab’—played by then-unknown theatre
actor Kulbhushan Kharbanda—builds on his mystique for quite some time before he swivels into view with a huge control panel in front of him and sharks swimming in the ocean behind him. Shaakaal’s version of Russian Roulette was even more elaborate than what we had seen in Sholay, as were his army, his network of informers, his array of gadgets, his physical presence and—eventually—his end.

  This creation of an iconic villain was taken up a notch with Mogambo in Mr India. The super villain wanted to rule India by spreading murder and mayhem, even destroying the country with his nuclear missiles if the need arose. Even before we see the hero (or rather, the common man who eventually becomes the hero), we see Mogambo’s den, his army, his Führer-like command over loyal subjects and hear the three words that will transcend time—‘Mogambo khush hua.’ Mogambo’s entry is framed—rather, choreographed—through long shots as we are given vague hints about the villain till he leans into the screen with this trademark line.

  It was not only the build-up that Salim–Javed gave the mega villains, but the general strain of intelligence that ran through almost all their villainous characters that made the difference. The Hindi film villain has always been a snarling buffoon who brings misfortune through brute force before being beaten into submission.

  Not in Salim–Javed’s films.