Eh kya ho raha hai? That’s Dhritarashtra in the rib-ticking climax of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro with a rotund sari-clad corpse as Draupadi/Anarkali.   

A songless NDFC film by first-time director Kundan Shah, JBDY released in August 1983, 35 years ago, but has refused to age. Shah, who died last year, never made a better film.

Like any debutant of a certain sensibility, the young director who wrote the story and screenplay got his talented friends together — co-writer Sudhir Mishra, dialogue writers Ranjit Kapoor and Satish Kaushik, actors Naseeruddin Shah, Ravi Baswani, Om Puri and more, editor Renu Saluja, production manager Vidhu Vinod Chopra (who acted in a cameo to save the director some bucks) — to get his film made on a shoestring budget. What emerged was a madcap satire about two down-and-out yet honest photographers Vinod Chopra (an endearing Naseer) and Sudhir Mishra (arguably Baswani’s career-best) caught in Bombay’s murky builder-bureaucrat-media nexus.

The duo get an assignment in a scandal sheet run by hard-as-nails editor (a sassy Bhakti Barve) and accidentally photograph a murder (a nod to Antonioni’s Blowup). Countless capers with the corpse of commissioner D’Mello (a hilariously deadpan Satish Shah) — shot by corrupt builder Tarneja (a creepy, menacing Pankaj Kapoor) for double-crossing him over a deal with rival builder Ahuja (Om Puri, uniformly good as the drunk contractor) — follow. In the end, the good guys finish last contrary to their hum honge kamyaab anthem.

Dark but not desolate. Gag follows goofy gag, each twisting the knife a little deeper. Kapoor and Kaushik wrote some of the most blistering one-liners in Bollywood history. 

“Thoda khao, thoda phenko”, “Shaant gadadhari Bheem, shaant” are cult. And this: “Draupadi tere akele ki nahi hai. Hum sab shareholder hain.” Imagine how the troll army would have reacted in 2018.