Anupama Chopra's Sholay: The Making of a Classic

I read Anupama Chopra's entertaining "Sholay: The Making of a Classic" yesterday - and I heartily recommend the book if you are interested in cinema, and especially, Indian cinema.  The book clocks in at an easy 190 pages and is easily read in one sitting.  Chopra's prose is breezy, and if the tone struck me as too adulatory in parts, there is enough detail about the process of film-making to make it well worth your while.  (The photographs - some black-and-white and a few color - are an added bonus.)

Perhaps the most surprising thing I learnt was that Sholay had an ending where the Thakur kills Gabbar - savagely - and then breaks down into tears - because revenge doesn't really get him back what he has lost.  Of course, since this was India in 1975, and even beyond that, an Emergency was in effect, the Censor Board found this piece of vigilante justice disturbing and insisted that the Sippys change the ending - that the police step in and stop the Thakur from killing Gabbar.  Already over the bduget, and desperate to release the film, the Sippys agreed.

It's Chopra's final lines that chilled me:

But apparently, somewhere in this world, rumoured to be impossible to trace now, a few prints survive of the original untouched film, with all its final bleakness intact.  Occasionally, videotapes and DVDs of this original film surface, copied from copies of copies.  Those who have seen these nth-generation copies say that despite the fuzziness and the bad sound, the Thakur's hopeless weeping is chilling, and it becomes clear to the viewer that all the visceral attractions of power and violence lead inevitably to this agony, this loss.

I wondered: had ALL copies disappeared?  Why hadn't the Sippys kept a few prints?  What was wrong with people?

But a few Youtube searches helped.  Here, then, are the original excised scenes, the ending and Ahmed's killing, which was also cut (not by the censors but by Sippy himself).

What are the lessons of Gurgaon?

The recent New York Times piece on the city of Gurgaon is pretty good - and naturally, has gotten everyone talking.  (For responses, see Alex Tabarrok, Kevin Drum, and Matt Yglesias.)

Me, the first thing I thought after reading it was: why are well-researched and well-presented solid pieces like this not printed in the Indian media?  Why is it that it is the New York Times that publishes a story like this - which we all (Indians, that is) then email to each other saying "Have you checked out this nice story about Gurgaon?"

Of course, the answer to that came pretty immediately.  The story wouldn't really make sense in an Indian context because most Indians (middle-class Indians that is, who would be reading such a story) would know exactly what it was talking about and greet it with a yawn.  Yes, shabby or non-existent government services are the order of the day in India.

As Yglesias points out (contra Drum), the one "ideological" conclusion you can definitely draw from the piece is:

The first takeaway point from Gurgaon’s success in the face of the lack of municipal government is to underscore the incredible value of good government.

True enough - although this is hardly an ideological point.  Ideology comes in when we debate what services the government should provide - and everyone pretty much agrees that whatever services it provides need to be good. 

And of course, the next question becomes: what exactly is the way towards good government services?  And the answer - at least right now for India - is to encourage neo-liberal reforms and hope in turn that the rise in the standard of living and competition from private services leads to a citizenry that expects better government services.  It's by no means clear that this will work - but it seems to me the only possible way.