by: Sushama

The history of Indian cinema can't be complete without the mention of Sippys and Sholay  in golden letters. How Sholay  happened is quite an interesting story. During the making of Brahmachari  with Shammi Kapoor and Rajshri, the Sippys went through hell, to put it mildly. In those days, director Bhappie Soni had given a couple of hits and was floating in the air. There was an ego-clash and Bhappie couldn't get along either with his hero or with the producer, G.P. Sippy. In fact, he almost created a rift which resulted in sky-rocketing the budget and the blood-pressure too. The sets erected at Kardar Studio (now defunct) were dismantled, without canning a single shot time and again. Sometimes wrong shooting dates were intimidated to Shammi and at times, Bhappie would not report for the shoot on the pretext of having cold or indigestion. The Sippys were in major trouble. As if that weren't enough, the Sippys had one more film on the floors - Bandhan , a quickie with the new team of Rajesh Khanna and Mumtaz, with Narinder Bedi as director. But this quickie got stuck as Brahmachari  had put them in a financial fix.

The Sippys were so disgusted and disillusioned that they vowed to quit film production as soon as they got rid of their two under-production films. They decided they would rather concentrate on film-distribution and their hotel in London than buy tension. They somehow managed to complete both the films and as luck would have it both these films turned out to be runaway successes. And Sippys had a change of mind, heart and plans. Once bitten twice shy, they decided to take a precautionary measure. Ramesh Sippy decided to step in the shoes of the director...and the rest as they say is his-story!!

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