As opening scenes in movies go, Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro is like the dart that lands smack on bullseye. From a distance, Salim walks towards...
As opening scenes in movies go, Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro is like the dart that lands smack on bullseye. From a distance, Salim walks towards the camera. He is in the middle of the road. He has a cock-a-hoop stride and a bearing that radiates recklessness. When a bus driver has the temerity to urge him to step aside, he offers up a fitting reply. Limp? What limp?
In Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s classic from 1989, Salim doesn’t let the the impediment in his leg act as a cramp for the ambition in his head. A petty criminal from Mumbai’s Dongri neighbourhood, Salim makes a living from small jobs and is mostly pleased with himself. There are irritants – an unemployed father, a sister on the verge of marriage, an unavailable girlfriend, a pesky rival. But it’s nothing that Salim can’t handle.
“Apna bhi time aayenga re,” Salim brags in a typical expression of the Mumbai street – a line that gained currency and a touch of glam when used in Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy decade later.
Salim’s beehive world of crisscrossing streets and buildings rubbing up against each another is actually an open-air prison, as Mirza’s screenplay deftly reveals. Through a portrait of a small-time ruffian, Mirza creates a...
