Sachin Pilgaonkar spills the beans on his contribution to cult films – Sholay and Anand – on India’s Best Dancer

Sony Entertainment Television’s popular show India’s Best Dancer is setting the standards quite high with its phenomenal content each week. The top 10 contestants are delivering outstanding performances to impress the judges’ trio – Geeta Kapur, Malaika Arora, and Terence Lewis. This weekend, India’s Best Dancer will celebrate Ganesh Mahotsav, with the special guests – veteran actors Sachin Pilgaonkar and Supriya Pilgaonkar on this auspicious occasion. The multi-talented husband-wife duo thoroughly enjoyed all the acts and even gave insights into their careers and personal journey.

One such unknown fact about Sachin Pilgaonkar was revealed by Paritosh Tripathi, popularly known as TRP Mamaji. Mamaji shared that Sachin has not only acted in the movie Sholay (1975) but he has also directed the movie partially. When everyone on the show wanted to know further details about the same, Sachin elucidated, “I was 17 years old when Sholay was being made, but the work for the movie had started when I was 16. Before the film Sholay happened, I was learning editing under the guidance of one of my gurus, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, a very renowned editor at that time, and we all know he went on to become one of the renowned director’s. So, during the shoot for Sholay I would sit behind Ramesh Sippy Sir’s chair and notice the way he directed, took each shot, cut, edited them, etc. Meanwhile, Sippy Sir observed me for a few days and finally asked me if I was interested in editing. I told him that I’d trained and worked for Hrishikesh Sir for two years. I believe that it has been my sheer good luck that I had the chance to work with Hrishikesh da for Anand (1971), the movie that I had cut the negatives for. Hishikesh sir used to say, ‘Negatives Sachu baba katega’, he used to call me Sachu baba.”

Adding further, the veteran actor shared, “Coming back to Sholay, Rameshji asked me whether I could be one of the two people that he could trust for a certain action sequence of the film, as he could not be there for that part and wanted two representatives. I was overwhelmed listening to him, and said, ‘How can I take such a big responsibility I am just 17 years old’. He said, ‘age doesn’t matter and I see no relevance, you have been in this industry since you were four and half years old, I don’t look at you as 17 but as a 27-year-old professional’. The second representative was Amjad Khan, who had won multiple awards in his college days for acting, directing, etc. He was very talented, and I used to call him ‘Manju Bhai’. So, the sequence where Sanjeev Kumar, Dharamji and Amitji are in the train handcuffed, only that part was shot by Rameshji and the rest of the action sequence was shot by Amjad and I. I remember, there was an action sequence where I felt that a bunch of logs exploding would really look good and have an impact on the screen. Rameshji really liked the sequence and patted my back. He has been so genuine and large-hearted.”

Sachin Pilgaonkar further shared that stalwarts such as Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Meena Kumari, Balraj Sahni, Ramesh Sippy, Guru Dutt would give many opportunities to youngsters and always guided them. Listening to these anecdotes by Sachin Pilgaonkar, everyone on the set got nostalgic about the blockbuster film Sholay, which remains one of the biggest cult films in Hindi cinema.

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