The movie is bound to be there in any true Bollywood fans’ top ten list. Action, drama and emotion all run high in the film and any mention of it is usually met with an impromptu dialogue from the movie. During its release, the movie didn’t do very well but now has garnered a cult status.
As we celebrate the 18 years of its release, Mithun Chakraborty starrer Gunda certainly left an everlasting impression on me. The film’s dialogues are lyrical and anyone who has tried their hand at poetry would attest to the fact that stringing together words to make them rhyme is extremely difficult. Yet, Bashir Babar, the film’s writer, seems to weave magic with dialogues like, ‘Dikhne mein toh hai tu nata, magar tohar naam hai Lambu Aata.’
I came to know of the film during a very peaceful time of my life – after my Class XII boards and before my undergrad college began. A friend suggested the movie and I had a choice between watching The Hurt Locker or Gunda. The rest as they say is history.
The first four minutes of the movie might put you off but we have always been taught never to judge a book by its cover. As at precisely 4 minutes and 11 seconds into the movie, you come across probably one of the most staggering dialogues of Indian cinema, a line so monumental that it has been etched into minds young and old – ‘Mera naam hai Bulla, rakhta hoon Khulla’. Mukhesh Rishi might have been a known face by 1998 but this moment gained him superstardom.
I could go on about every single scene from the film, be it Mithun’s somersaulting emergence from a hole in the ground to Shakti Kapoor’s death by castration but I won’t destroy it for next-generation viewers.
Like the movie’s action packed progression, its following also increases by the minute. Every 90’s kid claims to be the first to watch it but it never was about when you watched the movie; it was about the experience that millions of its fans have shared.
Gunda can and will never be remade; its place in history lies unblemished.
