Ghayal , in my book , is one of the most amazing revenge mainstream movie ever written and presented in India . Story of a cornered underdog , a wronged happy-go-lucky-man who transforms into a brooding vengeful man .
The movie opens with Ajay Mehra (Sunny Deol) walking into prison and a voice over telling us that he is convicted for his elder brother's murder . He is introduced as a loner who does not mix with anyone in the prison.That there is something else which is the truth is brought out by one of the three inmates who is observing him and says - "iski khamoshi bahut kuch boltee hai" . One night ,tormented by memories of a painful past he wakes up and proceeds to tell his story to the three inmates. He comes from a typical happy upper middle class family where elder brother Ashok takes care of everything and a Bhabhi who dotes on him , he has only two objectives one to be a national boxing champion and then marry his lady love. Life is a bunch of roses and sweets , till one fine day his brother goes missing. Ajay then discovers that his brother had problems in business and was trapped into a vortex of crime by the well connected and ruthless Balwant Rai ( played with great menace by amrish puri) .Balwant Rai not only kills Ashok but has Ajay framed for it. Ashok's widow also commits suicide post her own uncle testifying on her character in the court ,at the behest of Balwant Rai. The cops and judiciary are also manipulated by Rai. Cornered and with nothing to lose Ajay plans escape from jail and revenge on Rai. The three convicts persuade him and join him. One fine day the four escape and then within a span of 24 hours Balwant Rai and all those who brought terror and havoc on Ajay's family get killed. In the process all three convicts die too . Though one of them Varda is not exactly shown as killed - have always wondered did he survive?
To use a clich , there is not too much novelty in the story idea. Only Ghayal was driven by a passionate debutant director called Raj Kumar Santoshi . Little did anyone realise that this duo would belt out two more classics Damini and Ghatak , and put together these three movies more or less defined whatever little that was great about hindi cinema of 1990s. Raj Kumar Santoshi brought raw emotions and absolute hard hitting dialogues to each and every scene of the movie. If there ever was a movie which had hard hitting lines and one high voltage scene after other it was Ghayal . The scene where Ajay first goes to file a missing report for his brother and has his first run in with the crooked inspector Sharma where he tells another wrong student who after being slapped by Cop Sharma stands helplessly crying -" kal yahi ansoon kranti ka sailab banker iss mulk ki saari gandgi ko baha le jayenge!" .The scene where on a rainy night Ajay is invited to a venue where the dead body of his brother is thrown on the road and no one comes to their aid. The scene where after jailbreak a burning with cold and determined rage ajay calls up Balwant Rai ,after killing his first rookie, Captain Deka and telling him that he has only 24 hours to live . My personal favourite scene is the confrontation between Ompuri's Joe Dsouza and Commissioner played by Kulbhushan Kharbanda - Joe Dsouza till then has been doggedly protecting Balwant Rai from the four escaped convicts till he discovers that actually the man who he is protecting is a vicious demon and those who are after him are the victims , he telling delivers this line to the commissioner - "Doshi Ajay Mehra nahi , Doshi hain hum aur hamare ye sada hua system, Ajay mehra nateeja hai kanoon se jude hum jaisey napunsak logon ka". My other favourite scene from the movie is actually also when Ajay Mehra breaks down after reading his sister-in-law's suicide note and then in an instance he looks up into the camera with burning red vengeful eyes. There are no dialogues in the scene but you realise at that moment that Balwant Rai should be a worried man then. And the scene where Balwant Rai is attacked by the four in a market area till Ajay , as his bad luck would have it , fires at him with an empty pistol which allows Balwant Rai to escape.
The best part of Ghayal , which I realise today was that actually Director builds a soft love filled family that gets sucked into a vortex of deceit and crime so skilfully that anyone who watches Ghayal for the first time would personally feel the pain of Ajay Mehra and connect with it.Each time Ajay Mehra killed a baddie in the movie , the audience of the 1990s smelled and felt a personal victory. That is the beauty of Ghayal's screenplay.
Ghayal brought out the frustration of the then helpless Indian remarkably well , within one hour of the movie entire audience is a fellow traveller with Sunny Deol's Ajay trying deparately to get his brother out from clutches of Balwant Rai ,probably show after show across India. Ghayal was ably supported by the background score of Bappi Lahiri , who probably then had a point to prove to the world that he still had some fire left in him. Though the background score was heavily inspired by Black Rain , it delivered and added to the atmosphere of Ghayal. For the not so informed about Hollywood Indian audience of the 1990s ,Ghayal had smashing background score.
But what very few people realise is the historic trend setting contribution of Ghayal to the "violent film makers" of Indian cinema. 1990 was a depressing year for those who made and watched cinema of violence and action. Amitabh was delivering duds after duds at Box office and his last super effort Agneepath despite winning good reviews bombed at the box office. With king of violence failing miserably and movies like Chandni , Qayamat se Qayamat Tak and Maine Pyar Kiya setting the Box office on fire ,many were busy writing and believing in the fact that cinema of badla and blood was over. Why , in fact the other movie released on the same day DIL was also a romantic comedy.
Ghayal bucked that trend and how . The movie smashed one box office record after other in small centers , very few would note that in Nizam circuit the movie actually broke records of Sholay , till Karan Arjun happened. Point was Ghayal brought hope to my kind of action movie lovers . It told other directors too that not all audiences were willing to fall for boy and girl exchanging love letters via kabootar or doggie.
In fact in that sense 1990 , very few would know brought two "violent geniuses" to the fore one was Santoshi another was this bloke from south with his college violence movie called Shiva, we know him as RGV today.
A write up of Ghayal can also not be complete without mentioning one of the strongest points of Ghayal . Its deep characters. Probably there is no other movie in 1990s which had such strong characters who leave a mark. The bumbling loving brother played by Raj Babbar. The sharp Bhabhi who dotes on her brother in law and protects him all the time from a strict husband . The slimy chameleon relative Barrister Gupta played by Shafi Inamdar. The crooked inspector Sharma . Of course Balwant Rai . Ajay's Lady love who decides to fight for him despi
te all odds played by Meenakshi Sheshadri. The three heart of gold convicts who sacrifice their lives so that Ajay gets his revenge. But the two most remarkable characters of Ghayal were the scared as hell secretary of Balwant Rai called Mohile , his character who is busy trying to close windows all the time as he is scared for his life brings the only comic relief in an otherwise a very heavy movie. And the drunkard who meets Ajay at a betting-boxing-bar area and tells ajay that something sinister has happened to his brother - in one scene Annu Kapoor leaves impact - any one who saw Ghayal would remember Annu Kapoor's role in it ,and here is the beauty it is a nameless character . A stranger who claims to be Ajay's brother's friend. That is the depth of characters in Ghayal for you.
If you have not yet seen Ghayal. You have not seen the cinema of 1990s.You have not seen one of India's best revenge classic.
Indian Mythology
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