The Law and the Lawless (Screen on Deewar)

thanks to Gabbar…
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It was the mid-’70s…a period of social chaos and political turmoil. The ruling party was running amok. Emergency had been declared. Rebel politicians were being marched off to jail. Constitutional rights were being curtailed. Strange things were happening under the garb of maintaining law and order. Disenchantment and discontent was in the air. The average Indian was slowly losing faith in all institutions be it the police, the judiciary, the government or the bureaucracy. “When travelling by the local train in Mumbai, I could see anger simmering in the faces of people packed into a small compartment,” recalls script-writer Salim Khan. This anger was cleverly tapped by him and his partner Javed Akhtar in one of their early scripts. The result was explosive! Deewaar made a messiah of Yash Chopra’s hero, Vijay.

Two years earlier, Vijay had first appeared on screen in Prakash Mehra’s Zanjeer. After 13 straight flops, Amitabh Bachchan became an overnight sensation. Vijay’s victory had been unprecedented. However, less than 24 months later, when he reappeared his persona had changed. Vijay had crossed the laxmanrekha…the line of the law. From a policeman he’d turned into a smuggler. But surprisingly, even in his new avatar he continued to be a role model. Wildly applauded and widely aped!

To understand what made the anti-hero of Deewaar a hero in the eyes of his adoring audience, one has to consider the general mood of the times. Emergency had brought a kind of seething resentment because basic human rights including the right to freedom of speech and expression, were being clamped down on. When Iftekar throws a coin to a shoeshine boy and he returns it with the terse, “Main pheke hue paise nahin uthata”, the youngster’s defiant attitude struck the right note with people who were beginning to tire of a high-handed dictatorship. With one subtle act of rebellion Vijay was quickly able to capture the imagination of the dispossessed and the disillusioned who packed the darkened theatres.

Vijay is no ordinary child. The tattooed message forcibly imprinted on his arm, “Mera baap chor hai!” is a constant reminder of his father’s shame and the family’s humiliation. He was only a boy when he was robbed of his childhood, but Vijay still blamed himself for not being able to save his father from disgrace and safeguard his mother from untold sufferings. Javed Akhtar insists that what was appealing about Deewaar was this anger. “Vijay’s anger was against the system, against his birth. He was angry with himself. But his anger was never ugly. Other actors in trying to ape Amitabh mixed anger with arrogance. Amitabh mixed anger with hurt and tears, as a result his fans were fascinated,” Akhtar rationalises.

Picking up the train of thought his erstwhile partner, Salim Khan states that both he and Akhtar were very clear that they didn’t want Vijay to go in search of the man who had made his father suffer like he does in Zanjeer. His anger was not rooted in revenge but was a reaction to the injustice he had seen inflicted on his father. As Vijay slowly rises from a shoeshine boy to a worker in the docks, his anger builds up. The system, he realises, is the exploiter. He could not save his parents but he can save his co-worker from similar exploitation. Protection money is being extorted from them and when they refuse to pay up they are mercilessly battered. When Vijay sees a worker dying in the hands of thugs, the anger which all these years was tightly reined in, erupts. He revolts. And became not just a “hero” for the frustrated youths of his generation, but also gave us one of the most memorable scenes in Hindi film history…the confrontation scene with Peter in the garage.

The image of Amitabh Bachchan lolling in a chair, his shirt knotted at the waist, his feet resting on the table, the key to the garage dangling from a finger, is imprinted in the mind for all time. His Kolhapure chappals and knotted shirt in fact started a new fashion fad. College boys not only started speaking the street lingo but also began to dress up like taporis with their shirt tails knotted. There’s an interesting story behind this fashion statement. Minutes before he was to face the camera, Bachchan discovered that the shirt he was to wear was too long and flapping around the knees. There was no time to cut it short so he used the only option available. He bunched up the shirt and knotted it at the waist. Little knowing that it would start a trend.

Besides his dress and demeanor, Vijay’s careless dare and the drubbing he gives Peter in the scene also made a powerful impact. Perhaps it was this scene and the one of Bachchan hurling Madan Puri’s nude body from the window that had fingers pointing to Salim-Javed for bringing in the element of undesirable violence into our movies. But as Javed Akhtar points out, there is more footage showing fights in Bobby than in Deewaar. It’s a view that Bachchan endorses. “There were few slug-out fights in my films. The violence was more felt than seen,” he asserts.

If Vijay struck out in the garage it’s because he can no longer contain his rage against the system that made him a child of the mean streets. He could have shut his eyes to the oppression and quietly walked away from the confrontation but that would have been taking the easy, defeatist’s way out. He can never forgive his father for accepting defeat without putting up a fight and when his mother reprimands him for getting embroiled in a not needed bash-up, he turns to her mother and asks incredulously, “Are you suggesting that I too should have run away?” The “too” implicates his father in an act of omission and earns him a stinging slap from his mother. But the slap fails to stop him. Before long Vijay’s lording it in the underworld, a smuggler who is king.

Vijay’s choice of a career again was not surprising given the times. The early ’70s saw crime coming out of the ghettoes and into the drawing rooms of the power brokers and seemingly respectable industrialists. Big time criminals have always been solicited by our netas because they promise millions and unlimited muscle power during elections. However, Zanjeer and Deewaar were among the first few daring, devil-may-care films to bring this nexus between crime and politics out into the open. Suddenly, people were made aware that the so-called law-enforcers were putty in the hands of the lawless gang lords. And it was this realisation that made Vijay a nayak rather than a khalnayak in the eyes of the teeming majority. He became the lone rebel seeking social justice operating outside and more efficiently than the law.

Salim-Javed’s rough-and-tough protagonist who stood up to the “big bully” establishment and made a mockery of the existing law and order system, brought about a radical change in genteel, middle-class morality. It is widely believed that Deewaar and Vijay were to an extent modeled on Haji Mastan and his life. Javed Akhtar has refuted the notion insisting that the film was not about the underworld but about deep-rooted hurt and the paradoxes of human relationships. However, he admits that there were some striking similarities between Vijay and that of the king-pin smuggler. Like Vijay, Haji Mastan too started out in the docks and had a lucky billa. His rags-to-riches story was also not very different from Vijay’s. This revelation sparked off a new ideology about ethics and aspirations. Till then most people had believed in the straight and narrow road to success. Now they discovered a short-cut to the good life. The dons of Mumbai who lived lavishly and had enough clout to keep out of jail, drew the unemployed and the uneducated in droves to the dark world of crime and instant gratification. Few remembered that Vijay’s choice of career had alienated him from his mother and brother, abruptly ended his marital dreams and felled him with one lone bullet when he was still in his prime. What they remembered was his chakachak lifestyle, the power of the gun and the political power he wielded and the social standing he enjoyed. “Outlaws have always fascinated people, especially children. An average human being often fantasizes about breaking the discipline imposed upon him,” muses Akhtar.

To be fair to the team of Deewaar they never tried to promote the myth that crime pays. Vijay loses his mother, brother and eventually his life and that was more than enough punishment for his life of crime. But to the frustrated masses, his high-risk but high-reward life though short was better than a lifetime of poverty. And that’s what made Vijay a hero.

A hero who was unlike the suffering, sacrificing Devdas of the ’30s and ’40s. A hero who was also unlike the Junglees and Janwars of the ’50s and ’60s. This was a hero who was ready to pay any price for success. A hero who even when he failed still managed to make failure look magnificent. In Vijay’s death was not just his redemption, but also the key to his mass appeal. Is it any wonder then that actors and makers down the decade have unabashedly borrowed from Deewaar and found their muse in Bachchan’s power-packed performance.

“My performance in Baazigar was inspired by yours in Parwana and Deewaar,” Shah Rukh Khan confessed to Bachchan during the course of a conversation. Not everyone’s quite so candid but there’s no denying that Deewaar spawned off many copies.

Deewar had its own muses. There are strong traces of Marlon Brando’s On The Waterfront and Harold Robin’s A Stone For Danny Fisher in the story. Salim-Javed were also influenced by two of their favourite films, Mother India and Gunga Jumna. But though Deewaar resembled Mother India and Gunga Jumna in its plot, it’s sensibility was very different. “It wasn’t only because the characters in the film wear trousers and jackets. We introduced a certain modernity in the setting of the film, its accent, tempo and language too. Its cinematic language had also changed from the language in Gunga Jumna. It was much more urban, much more contemporary and the kind of moral dilemma it posed was very much of its own era. In Gunga Jumna whatever was happening was happening to Gunga. In Deewaar whatever was happening to Vijay was happening to many of us. May be we didn’t react like Vijay but we could identify with him more than we could with Gunga,” maintains Akhtar.

Despite it’s many muses, Deewaar was the perfect script. “It was flawless,” avers Bachchan. ” Even if the songs were removed from the film it wouldn’t make any difference to its impact.”

Salim-Javed wrote the script in one go. The detailed screenplay was ready in just 18 days. The dialogue took another 20-25 days. At the first reading every actor was presented with a complete, bound script, a novelty in itself. Another novelty was that the film had no songs. The writer duo insisted that songs would detract from the intensity of the plot. Eventually though they had to give in to producer Gulshan Rai’s demands and incorporate three songs including a mujra number. Five songs were recorded, three were picturised. It was RD Burman’s least remembered score.

Salim-Javed and Yash Chopra had to compromise on the subject of songs but where the title was concerned they were firm even though not everyone was happy with it. “It’s too dry,” was the general complaint. “Let’s call it Geeli Deewaar then, dryness chali jayegi!” the film’s writers would quip with dry wit. Deewaar they were convinced was an apt title for a film about two brothers whose differing ideologies and aspirations drives a wall between them and puts them on opposite sides of the law. This conflict between right and wrong, moral and amoral also builds a wall–deewaar-between mother and son.

“Vijay has also been badly hurt and that makes him rein in his emotions to save himself from more hurt. That’s why he finds it so difficult to tell Parveen that he loves her. It is equally difficult for him to express his love for his brother and mother. There is a storm raging within him so he has closed the doors. That’s the only way such characters feel safe. They create a deewaar between themselves and their emotions,” says Javed Akhtar offering yet another explanation for the title.

Here one can mention that Deewaar was one of those rare films where the heroine who is not a holier-than-thou virgin but of questionable reputation, openly lives in with the hero without any apologies or any feelings of guilt, and only considers marriage when she discovers that she’s pregnant. It was an unconventional romance for the ’70s but then, despite its hero-dominated story, the woman of Deewaar were not passive or submissive. In fact, be it Vijay’s girlfriend or his mother, both were women with minds of their own.

Deewaar had been written soon after Zanjeer with Shatrughan Sinha in mind. It was quickly bought but the film took its time going on the floors. Meanwhile, Salim Khan had a fall-out with the producer and demanded his script back. Once it was returned to him he passed it on to Yash Chopra. Chopra riding high on the success of Daag, had taken off for a long-deserved vacation. In London he bumped into Jaya and Amitabh on their honeymoon. The Chopras had known Jaya Bhaduri for a long time, since she was a student at the FTII. For years Yash Chopra had been toying with the idea of making a film with her and Dilip Kumar. When he learnt that she was married he decided to stall his dream project with her and make a film with her husband himself. Bachchan was a familiar figure from the time he would escort Jaya to and from sittings at Chopra’s Bandra residence but those days he had been very shy, strangely aloof young man. It had taken Zanjeer to break down those barriers somewhat. Prakash Mehra’s surprise hit had turned Bachchan into an overnight star and it was not surprising that Chopra decided to cash in on his success and announced Gardish with him Parveen Babi and Neetu Singh.

They shot for the action thriller for 18 days before they discovered that a film on the same subject was also on the floors and likely to pip them to the post. Without much ado Chopra shelved the project and started Kabhi Kabhie, a film about two lovers who get married to different people and what happens thereafter.

Chopra approached Bachchan to play the role of the poet with the brooding eyes and deep baritone, whose arid life and inherent bitterness is the result of having lost the woman he loved. Raakhee with her doe eyes and peaches-and-cream complexion, was best suited to play his lost love who doesn’t forget him either but still manages to make a good marriage with Shashi Kapoor. Rishi Kapoor was cast in the role of their lively son. Neetu Singh’s dates were utilised when she was cast as Rishi’s playmate and Bachchan’s wife, Waheeda Rehman’s illegitimate daughter. “Kabhi Kabhie had the most magical star cast, except all the stars were so busy that their dates were taking a long time to get confirmed,” recalls Chopra.

Meanwhile, Salim-Javed narrated to him the story of a dock worker who becomes a don.”I was spellbound,” says Chopra. When Bachchan heard the story he was equally fascinated and convinced Chopra to put Kabhi Kabhie on hold and start Deewaar immediately. “It was a good suggestion. Kabhi Kabhie being a more complex and elaborate film needed better planning,” Chopra maintains. His distributors were happy too. All along they had not been too keen on Kabhi Kabhie convinced that a film that departed so radically from Bachchan’s hit-hot image would not work. Deewaar was more in keeping with Zanjeer’s much celebrated angry young man image. So Deewaar was launched in March ’74 with Amitabh Bachchan inthe role of Vijay, Parveena Babi as his lover, Shashi Kapoor as his brother and Nirupa Roy as his mother. Neetu Singh was cast in the role of Shashi’s girlfriend.

If reports are to be believed, Chopra had first approached Navin Nischol to play the role of Vijay’s police inspector brother. But Nischol had second thoughts about playing second fiddle to the villain Parwana. Chopra then took the role to the happy-go-lucky Shashi Kapoor who had already been signed for Kabhi Kabhie and got an immediate “yes” from him.

Kapoor’s career zoomed after he won the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the film. The phenomenal success of Deewaar made Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor a hit jodi. They did many films together including Suhaag, Kabhi Kabhie, Silsila and Ajooba. “I enjoyed working with Amitabh and he with me,” says Kapoor. He will not be drawn into a discussion about Bachchan always getting the better role and overshadowing him. “It is the quality of role that matter. In Deewaar Amit had a bigger role. In Kabhi Kabhie I had the better role even though once again his role was bigger. Such things don’t matter,” he shrugs. What matters is that their relationship has stood the test of time because they respected each other’s talent and privacy.

In fact, it was Bachchan and his wife Jaya who encouraged Kapoor to turn director when he confessed that he couldn’t find a director for his Indo-Russian co-production Ajooba.

The role of the mother also came to Nirupa Roy on the rebound when Vyjayanthimala for whom this was to be a comeback film, developed cold feet at the last minute and Yash Chopra decided to make a mother of the eternal bhabhi. After Deewaar which won her the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress, Nirupa Roy became every makers first choice for mama in the ’70s and ’80s, particularly if the son was Amitabh Bachchan.

The mother was always a respected figure in Hindi cinema but Deewaar made her the central figure like Mehboob Khan’s Mother India. “The mother is the most important person in the world. A father can command respect, awe and affection but he can never give as much love as the mother. I lost my mother when I was nine and my world collapsed right before my eyes,” reveals Salim Khan.
The English dubbed version of Deewaar was titled I’ll Die For Mama and even in the film’s posters it was the mother and not the film’s heroines, Parveen Babi and Neetu Singh, who teamed up with Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor. With her arms around her two sons, she represented a certain value system and was the link between the modern and the traditional, good and bad, right and wrong.

Shashi Kapoor’s terse rejoinder to his brothers monologue about how he had everything, a house, bank balance, servents, “Mere paas ma hai,” has become one of the best remembered punch lines in Hindi film history. Undoubtedly, Deewaar was one of Salim-Javed’s best works. The words flowed easily and took on a kind of mesmeric power when uttered in Bachchan’s deep baritone.

Incidentally, the film’s taut script and pithy dialogue fetched Salim-Javed the Filmfare Award for Best Story, Screenplay and Dialogue. The film swept most of the awards for ’74 including that for Best Film and Best Director. The only awards that eluded it was that for Best Actor and Best Actress. Bachchan’s omission was surprising even though Sanjeev Kumar richly deserved the statuette for his sensitive act in Gulzar’s Aandhi. Bachchan’s performance in Deewaar may not have been award-winning one but it was still a winner as Javed Akhar will tell you often enough. “Deewaar had a very good screenplay. Heavy but good. The dialogues were superb and so was Amitabh,” he asserts.

Shah Rukh Khan agrees. “In my first on-camera death scene in Baazigar, lying there with my head on Raakhee ma’s lap, I was strongly reminded of Deewaar,” Khan once confessed during an interview. “I tried hard to be different but I don’t think I really succeeded in shaking off the Amitabh Bachchan influence.”

That death scene was one of the film’s highlights. Through many high-risk adventures Vijay has been protected from danger and death by his lucky charm, the billa with the number 786. By incorporating Haji Mastan magic talisman into the script, Salim-Javed cleverly exploited popular religious sentiment. The number 786 is as sacred to Muslims as Om is to Hindus. As long as he has the number plate on him, Vijay is invincible. But this time while fleeing from the police the badge falls. And he is hit by a bullet fired by his police inspector brother. Bleeding and dying, he staggers up the steps of the very temple where not so long ago he had lashed out at a cruel God, and collapses in the arms of his mother, mumbling, “I’m tired, I’m very tired mother!” The gesture in a way symbolises his return to innocence. Death brings him home to his mother and all’s forgotten and forgiven.

However, Yash Chopra has yet to forget the filming of this classic. It was completed in record time. Flagged off in March ’74 it was released in January ’75. And for that Chopra is eternally grateful to his artistes, in particular Bachchan who through the day would shoot for Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay and allot the nights for Chopra’s Deewaar. “The day and night shifts continued for weeks because 80 per cent of Deewaar was shot at night. But Amitabh didn’t report late even once for either my shooting or Rameshji’s. He has an amazing stamina for hard work and never tires. No matter how long it takes, his concentration never strays,” raves Chopra.

He recalls how when they were shooting the climax at Ballard Pier it began to rain. “We had to pack-up but Amitabh wouldn’t allow anyone to go home. Instead he drove us all to Bhendi Bazar and treated us to junk food. Such midnight feasts had become a daily ritual for the unit,” he smiles. There were also times when Bachchan had to drive to airport straight from the set and would insist on dragging everyone along to keep him company. “He’s an insomniac and can live without sleep so all this was fun for him. I enjoyed it too but I’d be tired out by the end of it. I need my eight hours of baby sleep,” Chopra says laughing at the memory.

The sleepless nights were well worth it because when Deewaar hit the theatres a few months before Sholay, it stunned everyone with its unconventional storyline and its angry young anti-hero. The crime drama may not have been as big a blockbuster as Ramesh Sippy’s curry western, but it found a select and committed audience. It became a trendsetter of sorts and Bachchan a role model for generations of actors.

In later years Bachchan modestly insisted that he had little to do with the success of his films. He was special only because I was Salim-Javed’s creation. “Their scripts had novelty that was the need of the hour. The conditions and environment was conducive to the creation of a new kind of hero-one who would revolt against the system. Vijay fitted the bill. People were in the mood to rebel. Any actor playing the role would have succeeded,” he insists.

Salim Khan doesn’t agree. “He’s a modest and cultured gentleman but I cannot imagine Deewar, Sholay or Trishul without him. When Amitabh picked up the gun it didn’t look as if the gun would just go off. He was so convincing, his anger was real!”, asserts Khan.

However, the writer duo agree with Bachchan’s contention that Deewaar which was big in ’75 might not work today because people’s life patterns have changed and so has cinema. The dilemmas that were relevant then are no longer so. “Today people are looking for a balm. The feel good factor .

They’re tired of anger, they’re even tired of being cynical. They want to see things that are nice and gentle. Pleasant things that will settle on the nerves like a feather,” Akhtar insists. May be that’s why the street-smart Vijay has metamorphosed into a suave quiz master who promises his audience a crore every evening instead of social justice. It’s victory of a different kind for Bachchan but even today there are many in his enraptured audience for whom just one line, “Mere paas ma hai” can bring back a flood of memories. Take them back to 1974 and a film called Deewaar.

—Roshmila Bhattacharya