New Delhi, Jan. 24 -- Atul Sabharwal has a distinct childhood memory from growing up in Agra. As a four- or five-year-old in the early 1980s, Sabharwal would wake up every morning to his father playing the dialogues of Deewaar, Yash Chopra's 1975 film, on his tape recorder while doing the accounts of his shop. "Day after day," recalls the writer-director, "on loop, he would listen to the album of Deewaar, and I would wake up every day to 'Mere paas maa hai'."

Deewaar was a film of its time. It released 50 years ago, on 24 January 1975, a few months before the Emergency. Salim-Javed's script touched on a host of evils plaguing society: greedy capitalism, worker exploitation, smuggling, black-marketing, hoarding, unemployment and hunger. F...