Police hires ‘dacoit’ to stop people from spitting at public places
Shubhadeep Choudhury
Tribune News Service
Kolkata, May 1
At a time when two Bollywood heroes have exited the world one after the other much to the grief of the film loving public, a long-gone Bollywood villain is making a comeback!
Gabbar Singh, played by the late Amjad Khan in the cult classic ‘Sholay’, keeps making appearances in various forms in West Bengal to create awareness about fighting the dreaded novel coronavirus.
Gabbar, being a dacoit, was on the other side of law. However, the Kolkata Police – the keeper of law in the eastern metropolis – have knocked his door in their search for a popular character to discourage people from spitting at public places.
A Kolkata Police cartoon released today show Gabbar spitting on the ground unrepentantly, even as his three adversaries – Jai, Veeru and Thakursaab – were frowning at him.
In ‘Sholay’ (1975) – a Hindi remake of Akira Kurosawa’s classic ‘Seven Samurai’ (1954) – Gabbar was shown addicted to chewing tobacco – a habit that entails frequent spitting. Gabbar most famously spat when Jai and Veeru – the two ‘samurais’ hired by Thakur to avenge the slaying of his family members by Gabbar – were left to his mercy during a raid on Ramgarh village by him on the day of Holi.
The Bengali movie industry too has produced many hit films over the years. But Kolkata Police had to borrow a character from Bollywood for making an effective advertisement against spitting in public places.
“We could not zero in on any Bengali film character who spat frequently in a movie”, sheepishly explained a police officer when confronted with the question.
Saptarshi Biswas, an award-winning poet, however, says that the use of Gabbar in the cartoon shows that the character has made a greater impression on the people of Bengal than any character in a Bengali film.
“Maghanlal Meghraj (played by late Utpal Dutt), the villain in Satyajit Ray’s movie ‘Jai Baba Felunath’, could have perhaps also made an equally strong appeal to Bengalis. But, I don’t remember Maganlal spitting in the movie”, Biswas said.
Earlier, a theatre group in Raiganj near Siliguri in Wet Bengal used the character of Gabbar in street plays to underscore the importance of social distancing and keeping indoors to avoid contracting Covid-19.
