Gabbar Singh: You have a lot of strength left in your arms, don’t you? Remember what you said to me that day? ‘These aren’t arms, they’re your noose’. Look at you now, the noose has opened! You still have alot of strength in your arms, don’t you? Give me your arms, Thakur.

Gabbar Singh: How do you plan to fight me Thakur? I’ve long cut off, and discarded, your arms.
Thakur Baldev Singh: One uses their feet to crush a snake Gabbar, not the hands. [imdb]

The highest grossing Bollywood film ever, and still one of the best, is the 1975 film Sholay. [Film synopsis.]

As a boy, my favorite part of the film was the (original) ending, where Thakur Baldev Singh confronts his nemesis, the dacoit Gabbar Singh. The Thakur has no arms, Gabbar Singh having cut them earlier, but he still manages to fight and kill Gabbar Singh using just his feet.

It’s perfect bolly. The scene rings true emotionally, but makes little sense as a fight. I mean, who could believe a man with no arms could defeat somebody who was built like Amjad Khan? Clearly I was overly skeptical:

Snelville, Georgia police are investigating whether William Russell Redfern, who has no arms, may have caused the death of his neighbor after head-butting and kicking him in a fight.

… Elliot said the armless man attacked her brother. “They got into a big confrontation, a verbal confrontation and a fist fight and he came after my brother, he came with full force, and head butted him as hard as he could,” said Elliot. [Link, via 3V]

OK, head butting somebody until they have a heart attack lacks the potent symbolism of killing them by “trampling him with spike-soled shoes” but it seems that the movie was more “realistic” than I had thought.

Film clips of the fight on the other side of the fold.

p.s. sadly, that fight scene doesn’t seem to have been posted on youtube, although there are plenty of other Sholay clips. Maybe I’m the only one who thought it was cool.

Update: big penn found the clip! Shivers down my spine. The second clip has the original, bloodier, ending. ANNA, no watching the ending before you see the rest of the movie.