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Nuggets of Sholay: Five - Zamindar Ki Bekari

I'm now breaking tradition and for the first time, not talking about a muhavra, but an interesting phrase used in the movie Sholay. By the way, if you've reached this page directly, check out the other nuggets that I've painstakingly unearthed from the movie hitherto:

Phrase: Zamindar ki bekaari (ज़मींदार की बेकारी)
First the facts, this occurs at the top half of the movie, (42m.25s) to be precise. The scene is that Jai and Veeru have landed at the station (which station? - trivia question for later) and Basanti is outside with her tanga.  She starts her non-stop spiel and instead of simply asking where they want to go, she gives a mighty bhashan. 

Basanti saying 'kisi jameendar ki bekaari thodi hai, ke marji na marji karna hi pade'


To make the point that she is not forcing them to board the tanga, she says this, "...ab koi jabardasti ka sauda to hain nahin. baithe baithe, nahin baithe nahin bathe. arre yeh to basanti ka tanga hai. kisi jameendar ki bekaari thodi hai, ke marji na marji karna hi pade." The use of 'zamindaar ki bekaari' is interesting here, and more specifically 'bekaari'. The word instantly brings to mind unemployment, laziness or  worthlessness. But then, with that meaning, it won't fit into the sentence. I mean, why will you want to do the unemployment of the landlord?

So I asked around, especially people in the know of the language spoken in UP and MP. It seems that in this context, the 'bekaari' here is 'beqaari', spoken from the epiglottis (like qasam or qayamat or qeemat...somebody stop me :)), which is a colloquial word meaning 'forced to do something'.  So bekaari is unemployment and beqaari is force. I'm sure in Urdu, you would use a nukta-cheen below the ka. Therefore the right meaning of the sentence 'kisi jameendar ki bekaari thodi hai, ke marji na marji karna hi pade' is 'this is not the landlord's force, which you have to do anyway'.

That was the nugget. Samjhe ke nahin? Agar achha laga to comment kijiye. Agar achha nahin laga to lament kijiye.

Goodbye, aadab and namaste.



Comments

Unknown said…
Force to work is the correct meaning I feel so
April 10, 2020 at 5:25 PM
Sachit Murthy said…
By the way, the railway station shown Sholay is NOT Ramanagaram, as many people have pointed out to me. The name of the station is 'Chandanpur'. In fact, if you zoom into the video, you can see 'npur'. But this Chandanpur is again fictional. The real Chandanpur railway station is in West Bengal!
April 24, 2020 at 7:12 PM
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