New Delhi, Aug. 8 -- Is it possible for the most iconic and mythologised film in your life-the one that is most thoroughly familiar-to also feel like a jigsaw puzzle that took a long time to put together?

Sholay is widely acknowledged as the most polished and fully realised Hindi film of its era, the most flawless technically, the one with the best action scenes and sound design, the fewest loose ends or awkward cutting. The sort of mainstream film that even Satyajit Ray could (grudgingly?) admire. But however complete it may be, I still think of it as a series of moments that are so embedded in one's consciousness (and so easily accessed from the mind's old filing cabinet) that it almost doesn't matter which order those fragments come i...