movie memories

Sadashiv Amrapurkar was an actor in Bollywood. Recently he passed away. He was a fine actor. My first brush with him was in his debut film Ardh Satya as the principal villain. I remember watching it with my parents and I remember idle conversations in which my mom said: the movie is not Ardh satya (half truth) but Full Satya. I remember talking intelligently to my friends in the same tone – you should see Ardh Satya – it’s the whole truth or something like that.

My next big brush with him was his really most memorable role in the movie – Sadak. He plays the role of the villain - Maharani – a eunuch who controls the flesh trade in the city.

 This movie was on many levels an interesting one for me. A lot of my childhood was spent on stuff that my brother and sister liked. Right from fashion to music – it was what they heard and liked – and that became the norm for me. Those days it was the time of Sanjay Dutt. My brother loved him. The big guy with long hair, big body and Mahesh Bhatt films. My brother was pretty enamored by his films. Both Mahesh Bhatt and Sanjay Dutt. He liked them both and would spend hours discussing them with me. He even harbored notions of being a big movie producer. His dream was to make a movie with no money at all. All the people would bring in their own monies or work free just to be a part of the movie. He would pride himself on having innovative twists to the plot. In between he would ask me to throw him plot challenges and he would figure the solution. Like how would the hero react to situation etc. Once I decided to really throw him off course. The premise was thus – a hero was entering a town and all the guys with guns are on the rooftops and around and are waiting for him to come in and shoot him. How does the hero come into town and escape? Hah! Obviously we have been highly influenced by too many spaghetti westerns. Think Clint Eastwood. Many years later I realized these were the ‘spaghetti westerns’ as they were financed by the Italians as they loved these western themed movies. The best part was of course the sound – the horse riding and the whistling tune for the theme music. In fact it seems Sholay was inspired by exactly this. They then set the same thing in an Indian context. On a side note – there was another similar movie released before Sholay – khotte sikkey – a similar story of misfit criminals turning vigilantes. So coming back – I thought now I have him. This is an impossible plot – he protested. I stuck to my ground. I remember he later thought about it and came back. His solution – the hero rides into town on a horse and then all the town folk pump all their bullets into him only to realize in the end that it’s only a dummy. They finished ALL their bullets on the dummy and then he walks in fully armed to knock everyone out with ease. I didn’t admit to him but yes, I thought that was pretty cool. Remember these are spaghetti western inspired moves. Everything, especially incredulous is especially possible.

So now we had a Mahesh Bhatt movie with Sanjay Dutt. He had two other movies we loved – Naam and Kabzaa. All his movies had very strong villains. All the support roles were pretty strong as well. There are two scenes which my brother drilled into me as epic. In Naam – the hero walks into a subway to be accosted waiting to kill him. He responds with amazing chutzpah. He tells them that all of them together can kill him but he will not spare the first guy who attacks him. This immobilizes the gang and the hero walks away unharmed. Was this naam or was this Kabzaa – I don’t really know. The second scene is definitely from Kabzaa where Alok Nath is to be killed by two henchmen. He is to be killed in the garden while he takes his morning walk. As they are about to accost him, one guy trips and Alok helps him. Then the henchmen remove the guns. Alok Nath – a Gandhian is not scared and breaks off into a lecture of kindness or something and one of the henchman loses his nerve. The other guy urges him to pull trigger – blah blah – BOOMBOOM…

So when Sadak came in – the posters did raise a lot of hype. The arch villain is a eunuch. I remember watching this movie in Ambernath. We were in a NCC camp there and we asked for an evening off. The CO okayed it and we went in for a movie. The movie was – Sadak. A Sanjay Dutt starrer with Mahesh Bhatt direction. And with an over the top villain – it was the perfect potboiler for high testosterone NCC cadets. There was nothing much about the movie but I remember liking it then. Full action and drama. I think Mahesh Bhatt was well past his prime but all we needed was action and drama. In fact I clearly remember one scene where the hero goes to a red light district. In that district – just in a the scene as extras – there are a bunch of navy uniform clad extras. The whole contingent who was there rose in laughter. That was fun.

So that’s my connection with the gentleman who passed away. Memories...

Bonus - soundtrack of the good bad and ugly