Sholay turns 50: Thakur’s consuming obsession with vengeance destroyed so much and yielded so little

Sholay, to me, is not the towering epic it became in the history of cinema. It is the film that breathed in the spaces between the spectacle, in the pauses between gunfire and laughter, where all there was, was grief. Look into Thakur’s eyes when we first meet him in the film. Watch him as he narrates that first flashback, recounting who he once was. There’s a sense of loss that haunts him. It is evident all through the film, especially in those moments which he share with Radha, where you can almost see an unspoken loss. The way he looks at her, you feel he wants to tell her to let it all go, to start again, together, from the wreckage. And in the climax, when he finally walks towards Radha, she collapses into him, weeping. And still, even in that moment of closeness, he cannot hold her. Look at his face, it’s full of anguish and defeat. It’s the face of a man who knows he is a prisoner of his own pain. It’s the face of a man who is a victim in his own eyes.

A sense of looming sadness haunts Sholay, and it’s most evident in the scenes featuring Thakur and Radha. (Photo: Express Archives)

That’s why, in one of the greatest moments ever penned by Salim–Javed, Thakur finds himself at a loss for words when Imaam Saab’s son is killed by Gabbar. Framed masterfully by Dwarka Divecha and Ramesh Sippy, this scene reveals two sides of Thakur. We see the villagers turn on him, disappointed, disillusioned. And we see Thakur making a plea for blood. A cry for violence. An eye for an eye. He tells them he has never bowed to anyone, never compromised, and never will. He will live with pride, and die with it. But just when we’re in danger of being swept up in the grandeur of his defiance, the scene cuts piercingly back to Imaam Saab. Although he also reflects the same sentiment: “Izzat ki maut, zillat ki zindagi se behtar hai.” But the weight of those words, spoken from his mouth, carries something Thakur’s cannot. The mise-en-scene reinforces this: as the old man walks back to the mosque, the camera frames the crowd in two subsequent wide shots. And in both, Thakur is nowhere to be seen. Because even the frame understands: in that moment, Imaam Saab’s humility has outshone Thakur’s arrogance.

Also Read | Ramesh Sippy came on Sholay set only to direct Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, recalls Sachin: ‘Amjad Khan and me handled second unit’

There’s another remarkable moment, when Thakur is shown a mirror to the destruction his vengeance is causing. It comes just after the interval, following the ‘Mehbooba Mehbooba’ song. Jai is wounded, bleeding, and he and Veeru make their way back to Thakur’s haveli on horseback. From her upstairs room, Radha sees them, and then, she runs. As she moves through the vast haveli, descending from one floor to another, you almost begin to think how lonely both Thakur and Radha must be in this sprawling, empty house. And when Thakur sees Radha’s concern for Jai, her urgency breaks through his monomania. He is stunned by her action, by her impulsiveness. And in that look, in that pause, we sense it: he realises, perhaps for the first time, that others live in this house too. People with needs he has long forgotten to see, while chasing justice for those who are already gone.

Sholay’s silent moments often outlast its iconic dialogues, especially in Jai and Radha’s romance, built on aching glances. (Photo: Express Archives)

This is a wordless scene, and there are plenty of these silences that speak far more than the famous dialogues ever could. The way Jai plays that same love theme for Radha, again and again, as she lights the evening lamps, the way every major decision in the film is arrived at by tossing a coin, and the way it all ends, you don’t walk away with joy or triumph. You walk away empty. Empty of friendship lost, of love left incomplete, of a man who lost his entire family…and gained what, really? Each major moment is laced with sadness. Say, the opening and closing shots, of trains coming and going, mirror each other like bookends to a tragedy. Even the interval, where we glimpse Thakur’s haunted past, still hurts deeply. But nothing hurts more than the climax, when you see Jai’s funeral pyre burning against the dusk, and Radha, standing at a distance, closing her window and shutting herself off from the world. Someone once told me Sholay is the great Indian epic, the ultimate masala film, where good triumphs over evil. But all I see in it… is melancholia. All I see in it is everybody losing something, and triumphing far too little.