Much has been said about Trishul’s Shanti (Waheeda Rehman), whose son rises to destroy his father because he abandoned her. In a departure from convention, Shanti in fact brings up her son to repay her debt (‘Maa teri hoon, mera karz chukana hoga’) and presumably take revenge against R.K. Gupta. But Vijay’s lines—after her death—suggest that it was she who had been stopping him from targeting his father and that barrier no longer existed. Nevertheless, Shanti’s strengths as a woman and a mother are remarkable.
There is another mother in Trishul who usually goes unnoticed. R.K. Gupta’s mother (played by Sudha Chopra) is the pragmatic mother, whose fierce ambition pushes her son to abandon his middle-class fiancée and marry a millionaire’s daughter instead. She is the one who spots the ‘opportunity’ for her son, and in a telling piece of dialogue she ‘sacrifices’ the life of comfort a daughter-in-law like Shanti would have given her. She believes her son’s shot at a business empire is worth much more than that and, in a way, precipitates the rest of the film.
Although the fathers were missing in their films, Salim–Javed created some very memorable ‘surrogate fathers’ for their heroes in their scripts.
When Deewaar’s Vijay is polishing shoes on the pavements of Bombay, a man spots his potential and eventually lays the tracks for this ‘lambi race ka ghoda’lxxix to run on. Davar sahib (Iftekhar) is the smuggler who is willing to place his bets on a dock worker who is—in a way—hungry to prove himself to figures of authority. And Vijay, in turn, is willing to give his life for this father figure who pulled him out of the gutter. Kulbhushan Kharbanda’s character in Shakti was written along similar lines. This Vijay considers him to be more important than his own father because this criminal had helped him when his father had refused.
Zanjeer’s Sher Khan (Pran) starts off by challenging Vijay to prove his mettle but once he has done so, Sher Khan becomes his greatest friend and guardian, helping him emotionally as well as financially. Majboor’s Michael (Pran) too has a similar relationship with the hero, though his role was shorter. Here was a man willing to go to any length to ensure another man was not wrongfully convicted. Sometimes, the ‘surrogate father’ is the leader of a gang of pickpockets (Haath Ki Safai) and our hero, his favourite student, whom he raises with care and affection. And sometimes, he is a respectable science professor (Mr India) who has seen the hero’s father getting killed and is carrying a secret invention that only he knows of. As the flamboyant hero (Rajesh Khanna) makes an exit in Andaz, a more practical one (Shammi Kapoor) enters and establishes himself as the ‘father’ whom the unwed mother’s son can idolize.
When Javed had just come to Bombay and had turned away from his father, Sahir Ludhianvi became a ‘father figure’ and helped him in many ways. Even Salim was helped by many such ‘seniors’ when he was fending for himself. As both of them fought for a foothold in a ruthless industry, these people mentored them and helped them off on the path of success. These people returned—or rather, were immortalized—in their scripts as surrogate fathers.
Dialoguebaazi
‘“It’s very easy to write in difficult language but it’s very difficult to write in easy language because you have to have tremendous command over language to put an intricate or complicated idea into simple words.” In my own writing, I have tried to develop a diction which is simple so it communicates, it reaches people’—Javed Akhtar quoting his father Jan Nisar Akhtar’s advice to him
Javed Akhtar has often talked about being influenced by a not-so-lofty branch of literature. ‘Like many other people, I had a weakness for a good line. I’ll say that I was influenced to some extent by the modern American novel. Not great literature, to be honest, but bestsellers, paperbacks. They taught me one thing: precision. One-liners. Saying things in a few words, making an art of understatement.’ And this is so well borne out in almost every Salim–Javed film.
Ravi (Amitabh Bachchan) barges into a room where Mr Rai (Madan Puri) is closeted in with his mistress and asks for information. Rai refuses to tell him anything and threatens to call the police for disturbing an honourable man like this. ‘Main ek izzatdaar shaadi shuda aadmi hoon . . .’ he bristles. Ravi drawls, ‘Police ko inform mat kijiye. Varna na aap izzatdaar rahenge aur naa shaadi shuda . . .’lxxx This line—and indeed the script of Majboor—is in the best traditions of American pulp fiction where pithy epigrams and sharp comebacks energize the storyline. Salim–Javed were big fans of the genre and their voracious reading obviously helped them create dramatic situations where such lines–flourished.
Writer–director Sriram Raghavan has his own favourite of this genre. ‘And in a film [Deewaar] full of memorable lines, I must mention Vijay’s first meeting with Samant, his first assignment. He sees Samant and his goons entering a lift. Vijay stops the closing doors of the lift with his foot. The gang stares suspiciously at him. Moving lift. Suddenly Vijay stops the lift midway. The goons pull out their guns in a jiffy. Vijay says relax, I want to talk business with Samant sahib. Samant says if you want to talk business come to my office. Vijay says: “Suna hai lift ke darwazon ke kaan nahin hote . . .”lxxxi Why don’t we hear such dialogue today?’ With this one line, we get a glimpse of Vijay’s intelligence and daredevilry, and realize that the dock worker has neatly fit into the world of smugglers.
Salim Khan repeatedly uses film-maker Alexander Korda’s quote, ‘Film dialogue should be like a poor man’s telegram’, to drive home the same point—that lines need not be long and/or bombastic to be considered good.
Javed Akhtar says, ‘Exaggeration is traditionally accepted in literature. In the theatre and in cinema, we nearly always had lengthy dialogues that were full of similes, full of metaphors, an overdose of melodrama. In films, every time the characters would try to describe his emotions, he’d go into great detail. We didn’t do that. Our dialogue was intense but crisp.’
One of their biggest strengths was writing simple lines that became memorable in context. Salim Khan laughs when he says, ‘People are repeating lines like “Kitnay aadmi thay” or “Holi kab hai ” and those have become very famous. But what are they really? They are not great lines!’ Javed Akhtar explains this further, using what is probably their best-known and most-repeated dialogue. ‘Ravi could have said all sorts of things, for example, “Aaj mere paas Maa ka pyaar hai, mujhe yeh mil gaya, woh mil gaya”. By contrast, take Vijay, who is providing the platform for this punchline. He has many lines before Ravi makes his mark with his single statement. And it works!’
This felicity in creating short, sharp punchlines was complemented by their equally strong ability to write well-constructed scenes that were either a give-and-take between two people or a long monologue establishing a complex emotion.
The antithesis of Deewaar’s ‘Mere paas maa hai’ is the mandir scene from the same film, where Vijay confronts God with an angry monologue. The scene builds from Vijay’s atheist angst that is evident right from his childhood when he refuses to enter the temple. It is only when his mother is critically ill that he finally walks into the temple and confronts God for the injustice done to his mother.
Another equally famous monologue is Gabbar Singh’s first scene in Sholay. Starting from the shaming of three hapless cronies to bragging about his notoriety to conducting a totally unpredictable execution, the monologue—written in a curious mix of dialects and unusual words—was like a roller-coaster ride. You never knew where Gabbar was going and that scene set the pace for the villain’s crazy unpredictability. And yes, it ended with yet another crisp punchline—‘Jo darr gaya, samjho mar gaya!’lxxxii
While Gabbar’s was an iconic scene, even a lesser-known one like the jailer’s conversation with Thakur is a great example of how the writers set up two characters to feed off of each other’s dialogues and throw some memorable lines (though they got lost in a dialogue fest like Sholay).
– ‘Thakur sahib, main yeh to nahin jaanta ki aapko kya kaam hai lekin itna zaroor jaanta hoon ki yeh dono kisi kaam ke nahin.’
– ‘Khota sikka to dono hi taraf se khota hota hai.’
– ‘Sikke aur insaan mein shayad yehi farq hai . . . woh badmaash hain lekin bahadur hain, khatarnaak hain isliye ki ladna jaante hain, bure hain magar insaan hain.’lxxxiii
This ability to construct a longish passage of words that built up a certain mood was something Salim–Javed had right till the very end. In Shaan—not considered to be a great script—one line stands out in the scene between Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) and Sunita (Parveen Babi). Exiting a hotel after stealing a priceless necklace, Vijay compliments Sunita by saying, ‘Soch raha hoon aapke gale ki taarif karoon ya aapke haathon ki, aapki awaaz ki taarif karoon ya aapke andaz ki, apni jeet ki baat karoon ya aapke haar ki.’lxxxiv Fantastic! But this was not the only clever line in Shaan, which had a surfeit of them. In fact, in this scene itself, Vijay and Sunita carry on a conversation that crackles with chemistry.
If one of Shaan’s strengths was the characters’ cleverness, it was the film’s weakness as well—since all the characters spoke in a similar style. This was a result of the jadedness that had crept in to their later scripts and certainly not how they planned their characters.
Javed Akhtar says, ‘When you listen to people, you should notice the particular style they have of speaking, what stress they place on different words. You remember such phrases and expressions, and how a person constructs a sentence. Then you imagine your character speaking as a person who might be a composite of different people you’ve met.’ Different kinds of speech for different characters mean a distinct character graph for each, making even similar characters in different films stand out.
We all remember Sholay’s Basanti as the talkative working girl who had a lot to say and did so in her typical brand of chatter. Hema Malini played a somewhat similar role in Chacha Bhatija, where she was Mala, a country bar owner. She had a set way of delivering clever lines—‘Tu case karegi to main suitcase . . .’, and ‘Tere saare tension ko pension de doongi’lxxxv—that not only distinguished the character from all the others in the same film, but also from the earlier roles they had written for Hema.
In Immaan Dharam, Rekha played a Tamilian and had a substantial number of lines in Tamil when she was speaking to other people from her home state. The writers planned this right at the script stage, using Rekha’s mother tongue to good effect.
In Seeta Aur Geeta, foreign-returned doctor Ravi (Sanjeev Kumar) often starts speaking in English, while the upstart cousin—a shallow college girl—also uses a smattering of English but her words are more basic. Roadside performers Raaka and Geeta use typical tapori lingo; their language has a different tempo and meter from the ‘upper-class’ characters in the film.
In Haath Ki Safai, the use of ‘local colour’ is taken a step further when Shankar (Vinod Khanna) greets a French smuggler in French.
Another element that the duo did very well was the changing speaking styles for characters as they evolved during the course of a film. In the first scene in Trishul, R.K. Gupta (Sanjeev Kumar) is a relatively junior employee in the company and expresses his solution in a somewhat diffident manner—‘Is tarah aaraam se kaam kaise chalega? Aap beshaq dus pandrah aadmi zyada le lijiye lekin kaam waqt par ho jaana chahiye . . .’lxxxvi—though you can sense his impatience. But by the time he becomes a tycoon, his confidence and impatience have both peaked. In his first scene the older R.K. Gupta barks into the phone—‘I don’t want any bloody excuses. Just get the work done. Labour double kar do.’
In a more famous example, Mafia boss Don speaks in a clipped style and exudes ruthlessness while street performer Vijay—though identical in appearance—has an accent straight out of eastern UP by the banks of the Ganga. When Vijay impersonates Don, their languages merge but the ‘Ganga kinarewala’ language returns later in the film to build a nice story about the character’s predicament—explained by a one-liner, ‘Jaise dhobi ka kutta, na ghar ka na ghaat ka! ’
In Kaala Patthar, the two leading characters—Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) and Mangal (Shatrughan Sinha)—have two very distinct speaking styles that pit them against each other right from the beginning. Interestingly, there are occasional glimpses of Vijay’s hidden past as the disgraced naval captain in his outbursts in English: ‘Pain is my destiny and I cannot avoid it.’
And in the mother of all scripts, every set of contrasting characters has very different speaking styles. Thakur’s measured tone is countered by Gabbar’s slightly insane ramblings; Jai’s sardonic one-liners are matched by Viru’s garrulous banter; and Basanti’s non-stop chatter is a contrast to Radha’s silences. Even bit parts like Imam sahib (A.K. Hangal), Jailer (Asrani) and Soorma Bhopali (Jagdeep) have distinctly different speaking styles that make the story more interesting.
The character graphs led to some very memorable ‘takiya kalaams,’ a pet phrase that is usually repeated several times by a character.39 Asrani’s ‘Angrezon ke zamane ka jailer’lxxxvii is probably the most famous such phrase that has stuck on despite his character having screen time of just a few minutes. But nevertheless, many of their characters had one such line that served as a quirky reminder of their nature and brought a smile to the lips. In Haathi Ki Safai, Raju (Randhir Kapoor) had a cocky ‘Kyun, kya khayal hai?’ to go with his every line.
Often, even the villains had a phrase like this. In Chacha Bhatija, Laxmidas (Jeevan) accompanies his treacherous behaviour towards his employer with an ironic ‘Maine aap ka namak khaya hai’lxxxviii while in Kranti, Shambhu Singh (Prem Chopra) underlines his two-faced behaviour with ‘Shambhu ka dimaag do dhaari talwar hai.’ lxxxix
These are certainly not Salim–Javed’s best-known lines but they are an interesting indicator of the thought that went into the creation of memorable characters. As they understood audience psychology really well, the duo packed their scripts with these interludes that were not critical to the plot but nevertheless increased the enjoyment and repeat value of the film.
Due to the nature of many of their stories—families separating, brothers becoming estranged and then dramatically reuniting—Salim–Javed often brought in situations of heightened irony. The audience (and sometimes one participant of a conversation) knew of the relationship and the exchange was full of ‘loaded statements’.
In Haath Ki Safai, the famous line of one-upmanship, ‘Bachche, tum jis school mein padhte ho, hum uske headmaster reh chuke hain . . .’ is followed by a smart exchange between the two brothers separated since childhood. Shankar (Vinod Khanna) catches Raju (Randhir Kapoor) in the act of stealing his wallet and says the (now famous) line. He then follows it up with an allusion to the photo in the wallet that will eventually unite the brothers. And Raju ends the scene with yet another loaded statement: ‘Ye to apna bhi bada bhai nikla.’xc
The separated brothers are seen coming together once again in Chacha Bhatija when Shankar (Dharmendra) bumps into his elder brother Teja (Rehman) at the cinema where he sells tickets in black. When admonished by the elder brother (who does not recognize him), Shankar says ‘Chhota hoon isi liye chup hoon, bhaisahab,’ and then returns his wallet, which Teja had accidentally dropped. ‘Ye to sirf batua hai, bhaisahab. Aap khud kab, kahan, kitna gir gaye . . .’xci
Probably the most famous such exchange takes place in Trishul, when Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) saves R.K. Gupta’s daughter, Babli (Poonam Dhillon), from an accident and is injured while doing so. He comes to R.K. Gupta’s home with Babli, where father and son shake hands and R.K. Gupta’s hand is smeared with Vijay’s blood. Vijay says, ‘Theek se saaf kijiyega varna koi dekhne wala samjhega ki aapke haath kisi ke khoon se range hue hain.’ And R.K. Gupta replies, ‘Maine jab apne haath pe khoon dekha to ek second ke liye maine samjha mera apna hi khoon hai. Baad mein pata chala tum zakhmi ho.’xcii This too is a masterfully written scene where a regular conversation alludes to Vijay’s mother who died bitter and angry after R.K. Gupta abandoned her, and Vijay
’s own relationship with him—except he doesn’t know about it yet.
By all accounts, Salim–Javed brought in a very modern sensibility to their characters and the way they behaved or spoke. Moving away from the exaggerated, theatrical notions that typified all emotions in Hindi cinema, they brought in a more urbane, understated way of dealing with them. Hence, their dialogues—in most cases—were very real, even when conveying something very heroic. In Deewaar, for example, a dock worker calmly reminds a millionaire smuggler about an incident from many years ago and then drawls, ‘Main aaj bhi phenke hue paise nahin uthata.’
This and many other such lines elicited a very different kind of audience response, completely unlike the typical exultation or tearfulness. In many of their early films, the characters and their lines were so radically altered from what the audience was used to that cinema halls would be completely silent; the exclamations were more of surprise than anything else (Sholay and Zanjeer, for example). Their dialogues were sharp, simple and fit their situations perfectly. In a way, Salim–Javed revolutionized Hindi film dialogues—the way they were written and the way the audience expected them to be.
Written by Salim-Javed: The Story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters Page 22