Noted script writer Javed Akhtar, script writer for Sholay, while speaking as chief guest at the Save a Child Today mentioned that Gabbar Singh turned out the way he did because he was abused as a child, by his rogue uncle. This uncle, Makhan Singh, was a history sheeter with known cases against him in about 30 police stations in the Ramgarh area. Gabbar, who lost his parents when he was 3 in a police shootout while they were trying to protect Makhan Singh, was consistently abused by his uncle, who also used his young nephew as a conduit for his wild ways such as armed robbery and murder. To avoid this abuse, Gabbar ran away from home (if you could call it that..) at the age of 14 using his uncle's horse and single barrel rifle with no education to speak of and only 56 rupees in his pocket (which he had stolen from his uncle, who was knocked out drunk, one Diwali night). He had learned only one way to live.
Upon hearing Mr. Akhtar's comments, noted social worker Asim Sarode expressed the hope that this raised awareness about the pitfalls of child abuse and more cases would come out in the open.
All this is a complete hoax. It's as much of fiction as the whole of Sholay. But hey, if Albus Dumbledore can have a history, so can apna Gabbar!!!
Does it make any difference to anyone? Not to me, and should not make any difference to anyone else, if you ask me. I found the whole thing so idiotic. Especially the part where the audience responded with "gasps and applause". I mean, how exactly is this even news?? People have nothing better to do than to discuss fictional histories of fictional characters. Is it really so important to someone, anyone, that a character in a seven-part series of the most fanciful imagination possible had a history which was not covered? Grow up, and take it as a piece of fiction. If it was worth noting, it would have been in one of the books. She had seven chances to put it in there.
Am I missing something here?
1 comment:
I agree with you, but I think the problem may come into play when you take into account that these books are meant to be children's novels. Albus Dumbledore is one of the most favorite and revered characters by children, and I can see how parents would have a real problem now with allowing this character as a role model. This issue came up last week (pre-outing of Dumbledore) when I realized how conservative some of my cousins are being raised. At nine years old, they would disown any one of the rest of us if we were gay. They love the Harry Potter books and I'm sure this will change that for them. I can hope that maybe they will see that being gay is not as awful as a thing as they are being told, but unfortunately, I don't think they will see it this way.
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