Salim langde pe mat ro (Don't cry for lame Salim)

Year : 1989
Language : Hindi
Country : India
Director : Saeed Akhtar Mirza

Very sensitive and well directed movie touching some difficult subjects from Saeed Mirza, of the fame of Teleserial Nukkad. Salim is a small time criminal living in a poor neighborhood of Bombay largely inhabited by muslims with his family consisting of an unemployed father, younger sister and mother. Due to his father's inability to earn enough, Salim never had any education and has been fending for himself by indulging in small crimes with local gangs controlled by some powerful smugglers, thugs and police.



Even while being part of the local thug gangs he is frustrated with the society's attitude towards people like him (poor and muslim) which leaves no option other than to indulge in crime to make his ends meet. The passing thought of the scope to live an honest and clean life gets stronger once he meets a local urdu-newspaper's proofreader who wishes to marry Salim's sister. There had been communal riots in the neighborhood in which both hindus and muslims have died. One day a rotten body of someone dead in the riot is found in a gutter of the streets, its too mutilated to be even recognized at which the street sweeper says "Mandir Masjid ke liye ladta hai, aur marta hai gutter mein (fights for temple and mosque, but dies in the gutter)".
In an ironic situation Salim is watching his cronies Abdul(Ashutosh Gowrikar) and Peera (Makrand Deshpande) dancing with some little kids from the slum at the song sung by Johnny(Tom Alter) on the tunes of "Mera juta hai japani, patloon englishtani, sar pe laal topi rusi, phir bhi dil hai hindustani (my shoe is japanese, pant english, the hat russian but the heart is indian)". Salim's conviction to leave the mean life of crime gets stronger and he gets a job in a car repair garage, where he agrees to work for a meagre salary. He feels happy and proud at having started that life. But as it turns out his destiny has something else in store for him.

The movie not only portrays the helpless situation the underdog in the society lives through but also it makes one question the value of a human life. In the beginning of the movie in one scene Johnny tells Salim and his friends about Hiroshima, "Ek sahar hai, wahan ek chota sa bomb phoota aur paanch laakh log dhuen mein udd gaye (its a city, there one small bomb exploded and half a million people flew away in the smoke)" at which Salim laughingly asks him why today he is remembering it suddenly, the seriousness of the historical tragedy disappearing in the thin smoke of the pot they were smoking. At another point the three friends sitting besides the sea decided to live an honest life, though without a clue of how to achieve that, the mere thought made them burst into joy of the moment which seemed inaccessible to them before.

The movie won the National award for Cinematography that year. Pawan Malhotra as Salim acted amazingly and so was the direction of Saeed Mirza.