Weekend

Friends, last Friday in my weekend blog I had written some facts  about the characters played by various actors in a  Bollywood  film called Sholay. Do you know before Sholay was released in 1975, four years earlier a dacoit film also came and it also did a wonderful  business at box office and was declared super hit film of the year. The film was “Mera Gaon Mera Desh”, which was directed by very famous director of that era, Raj Khosla. It starred Dharmendra, Vinod Khanna, Asha Parekh, Laxmi Chaya and Jayant in pivotal roles. It had a music score by Laxmikant Pyarelal and songs were written by Anand Bakshi. That time the production cost of the film was Rs 90 lakh and in the domestic market did the business of Rs 3 Cr during its first run, totally world wide it did the business of Rs 6 Cr. Given below of some interesting facts related to this movie:

1 In the year 1970, after the success of his film Do Raaste, Producer & Director Raj Khosla had signed Dharmendra, Asha Parekh and Vinod Khanna, but at that time he had no story idea on which this film will be based. But after some time Dharmendra & Vinod Khanna started asking him about their roles in the film, he could not give them proper reply. After consistence persistence he told Vinod Khanna to brace himself to play a dacoit character , who is very angry by nature and is in habit of firing  gun on the small issue even. During the same period he read an article in newspaper, about someone recruiting private persons to fight a dreaded dacoit in his village, and there was one article about a retired army officer hiring petty criminals with the idea that to rehab them in the society. From these two ideas the film’s story was developed.

2. Do you know the film Sholay had many similarity with this films

a. In Sholay Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar) takes the help of Veeru & Jai (Dharmendra & Amitabh) to fight Gabbar Singh (Amzad Khan), in this film Jayant ex army officer engaged Dharmendra to fight the evil created by dacoit Jabbar Singh ( Vinod Khanna).

b In both the films Dharmendra played the happy go lucky dare devil guy, who fights the dacoits.

c In both the films Dharmendra’s character was found of singing songs and both the roles had a comical touch.

d The villains name in both the film sounded similar- Jabbar Singh & Gabbar Singh. In both the films villain had a passion for seeing dance being performed by girls.

e In both the films dacoits were seen on the horses, and not on any four wheelers.

f In this film Dharmendra teaches Asha Parekh to shoot using revolver/gun, and in Sholay he teaches Hema Malini how to shoot.

g In this film Jabbar Singh fills his revolver with one bullet, while in Sholay Gabbar Singh leaves only 3 bullets to kill his people.

3 This film had a super hit music, and all the songs became very popular like ‘Kya Kehta Hai Yeh Sawan’, ‘Sona Lai Ja Re Chandi Lai Ja Re, and 3 dance songs performed by Laxmi Chaya ‘ Aya Aya Ataria Pe Koi Chor’,  Hai Sharmaoon Kis Kis Ko Bataoon’ and the  most popular song of the film ‘ Maar Diya Jaaye Yo Chod Diya Jaaye’.

4 Surprisingly in this film the character of villain played by Vinod Khanna got more praised and popularity then the character of hero played by Dharmendra, and similarly character of vamp played by Laxmi Chaya scored over heroine’s character played by Asha Parekh.

5 Vinod Khanna and Laxmi Chaya benefited most from this film, as after this film their career zoomed.

6 After this film many films came which had dacoit based theme, but this film became the pioneer dacoit based film of 1970s.

7 This film was shot on location in Rajasthan, in a village near Udaipur city.

Friends, I hope you must have liked this information regarding one of biggest hit films of 1970s.

Waiting for your views/feed backs/comments.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

94h October 2020