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By:

Rajeev Puri

24 October 2024 at 5:11:37 am

Before Sholay, there was Mera Gaon Mera Desh

When the comedian and television host Kapil Sharma recently welcomed the veteran screenwriter Salim Khan onto his show, he made a striking claim. India, he joked, has a national bird and a national animal; it ought also to have a national film. That film, he suggested, would surely be Sholay. Few would quarrel with the sentiment. Released in 1975 and directed by Ramesh Sippy,  Sholay  has long been treated as the Everest of Hindi popular cinema -quoted endlessly, revisited by generations and...

Before Sholay, there was Mera Gaon Mera Desh

When the comedian and television host Kapil Sharma recently welcomed the veteran screenwriter Salim Khan onto his show, he made a striking claim. India, he joked, has a national bird and a national animal; it ought also to have a national film. That film, he suggested, would surely be Sholay. Few would quarrel with the sentiment. Released in 1975 and directed by Ramesh Sippy,  Sholay  has long been treated as the Everest of Hindi popular cinema -quoted endlessly, revisited by generations and dissected by critics. In 2025, the film marked its 50th anniversary, and the release of a digitally restored, uncut version introduced the classic to a new generation of viewers who discovered that its mixture of revenge drama, western pastiche and buddy comedy remains curiously durable. The film’s influences have been debated almost as much as its dialogues – from scenes taken by the Spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, particularly ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968) or to the narrative architecture of ‘Seven Samurai’ (1954) by Akira Kurosawa. Others note echoes of earlier Hindi films about bandits and frontier justice, such as ‘Khotey Sikke’ (1973) starring Feroz Khan. Yet, rewatching ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh,’ directed by Raj Khosla, one cannot help noticing how many of the narrative bones of  Sholay  appear to have been assembled there first. Released in 1971,  Mera Gaon Mera Desh  was a major hit at the box office, notable for holding its own in a year dominated by the near-hysterical popularity of Rajesh Khanna. The thematic framework of the two films is strikingly similar. In  Sholay , the retired policeman Thakur Baldev Singh recruits two petty criminals - Jai and Veeru - to help him avenge the terror inflicted upon his village by the bandit Gabbar Singh. In  Mera Gaon Mera Desh , the set-up is not very different. A retired soldier, Jaswant Singh, seeks to protect his village from a ruthless dacoit and enlists the help of a small-time crook named Ajit. Even the villain’s name seems to echo across the two films. In Khosla’s drama, the marauding bandit played by Vinod Khanna is scene-stealing performance is called Jabbar Singh. In  Sholay , the outlaw who would become one of Indian cinema’s most memorable antagonists was Gabbar Singh. There is an additional irony in the casting. In  Mera Gaon Mera Desh , the retired soldier Jaswant Singh is played by Jayant - the real-life father of Amjad Khan, who would later immortalise Gabbar Singh in  Sholay . The connective tissue between the two films becomes even clearer in the presence of Dharmendra. In Khosla’s film he plays Ajit, a charming rogue who gradually redeems himself while defending the village. Four years later, Dharmendra returned in  Sholay  as Veeru, a similarly exuberant petty criminal whose courage and irrepressible humour make him one half of Hindi cinema’s most beloved buddy duo alongside Amitabh Bachchan as Jai. Certain visual motifs also appear to have travelled intact. In Khosla’s film, Ajit finds himself bound in ropes in the bandit’s den during a dramatic musical sequence. A similar image appears in  Sholay , where Veeru is tied up before Gabbar Singh while Basanti performs the now famous song ‘Jab Tak Hai Jaan.’ Other echoes are subtler but just as suggestive. Ajit’s pursuit of the village belle Anju, played by Asha Parekh, anticipates Veeru’s boisterous attempts to woo Basanti, portrayed by Hema Malini. Scenes in which Ajit teaches Anju to shoot recall the flirtatious gun-training sequence between Veeru and Basanti that became one of  Sholay ’s most cherished moments. Even the famous coin motif has a precedent. Ajit frequently tosses a coin to make decisions - a flourish that would later appear in  Sholay , where Jai’s coin toss becomes a running gag. Perhaps most intriguingly, the endings of the two films converge in their original form. In  Mera Gaon Mera Desh , the villain is ultimately killed by the hero. The uncut version of  Sholay  reportedly ended in a similar fashion, with Gabbar Singh meeting his death at the hands of Thakur Baldev Singh. However, censors altered the climax before the film’s 1975 release, requiring that Gabbar be handed over to the police instead. All this does not diminish  Sholay . Rather, it highlights the alchemy through which cinema evolves. The scriptwriting duo Salim–Javed took familiar ingredients and expanded them into a grander narrative populated by unforgettable characters and stylised action. On the 55 th  anniversary of  Mera Gaon Mera Desh , Raj Khosla’s rugged western deserves a renewed glance as the sturdy foundation on which a legend called  Sholay  was built. (The author is a political commentator and a global affairs observer. Views personal.)

Aviation Besieged

Updated: Oct 25, 2024

Aviation Besieged

A wave of hoax bomb threats has plunged India’s aviation industry into chaos, forcing flight diversions, delays, and heightened security measures. The surge has disrupted nearly 100 flights over the past week alone, leaving passengers stranded, airports on high alert, and airlines scrambling to mitigate financial losses. Last week’s chilling incident, in which a Mumbai-Chicago Air India flight was diverted to the icy isolation of Iqaluit, a remote city in Canada, starkly captured the reality of these disruptions.


Passengers were stranded for over 18 hours in freezing conditions before being ferried to their destination by a Canadian Air Force plane. While the threat turned out to be false, the financial and logistical damage was significant. With other similar hoaxes targeting Indian airlines, the aviation sector now faces a mounting crisis that is taking a heavy toll on operational efficiency and passenger confidence. The deluge of threats is unprecedented. In just one week, over 90 bomb threats were reported, forcing multiple flights to divert, cancel, or return to their point of origin. These threats peaked even as Indian airlines carried a record-breaking 484,263 passengers on 14 October. The process of dealing with these threats, which includes deploying fighter jets to escort planes and conducting exhaustive searches of aircraft, cargo, and luggage, often stretches into hours, leaving both passengers and airlines grappling with long delays.


The financial fallout is significant. Airlines, already grappling with rising fuel costs, are forced to reroute planes, dump fuel, and accommodate stranded passengers. Air India alone reportedly lost over Rs. 30 million in one incident, including the cost of fuel, grounding of the aircraft, and arranging alternative transportation. This burden, combined with post-pandemic recovery challenges, adds another layer of pressure to an industry still struggling to regain its footing.


Hoax bomb threats are not new to the aviation industry, but the current spike in India is particularly troubling. Between 2014 and 2017, there were 120 recorded bomb hoaxes at Indian airports, with Delhi and Mumbai bearing the brunt. However, the recent scale and frequency of these incidents are unprecedented, and the cost of inaction is becoming unsustainable. The recurring nature of these threats raises serious concerns about the robustness of India’s aviation security framework.


The surge in hoaxes has been largely facilitated by anonymous social media accounts, complicating efforts to identify and prosecute perpetrators. Indian authorities have enlisted the help of social media platforms like X to trace the origin of the threats, but their efforts have been hampered by the use of VPNs and dark web networks. So far, investigations have made little progress, save for the arrest of a minor who issued threats in a petty personal vendetta. The question remains: are these isolated incidents, or is there a larger, coordinated effort at play? Failure to act swiftly could erode confidence in India’s aviation sector, which, with over 3,000 daily flights and 150 operational airports, is a crucial driver of economic growth.

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