Mac Mohan

Mumbai, May 10: Mac Mohan, who with just three words as Sambha in Sholay immortalised the role of Gabbar Singh’s sidekick, passed away today after a long battle with cancer.

He was 71. “He had been suffering from a tumour in the right lung and breathed his last at Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital this evening,” said Manjiri, one of the actor’s two daughters.

Born as Mohan Makhijaney, Mac Mohan is survived by his wife, daughters and a son. He was the maternal uncle of actress Raveena Tandon, whose father Ravi Tandon was a film director in the seventies and eighties. Mac Mohan was a classmate of actor Sunil Dutt in Lucknow from where he hailed.

Mac Mohan starred in close to 200 films in a career spanning 46 years, but has always been known for his role of Sambha in Sholay, Ramesh Sippy’s 1975 blockbuster.

Mac Mohan’s only line in the film was: “Poorey pachaas hajaar,” but Sholay’s unprecedented success ensured instant recognition wherever the actor went.

He soon became a regular fixture along with the main villains in Bollywood lost-and-found and revenge dramas.

Besides Sambha, he acted in over 30 films as Mac.

Mac Mohan began his career as a stage artiste in the fifties, honing his skills at the Filmalaya School of Acting, then the only one of its kind in Asia. He joined the Indian People’s Theatre Association in the sixties through poet Kaifi Azmi.

Kaifi’s wife Shaukat Azmi played Mac Mohan’s mother in his first play and soon the actor became a regular in the theatre circuit, which was not well paying then.

After a few years of struggle, Mac Mohan, again with the help of Kaifi Azmi, got to know producer-director Chetan Anand and joined him as an assistant. In 1964, Mac Mohan made his screen debut in Chetan Anand’s anti-war epic Haqeeqat.

The scene in Sholay in which Mac Mohan speaks the only time has Gabbar (played by Amjad Khan) pacing up and down in the rocky hide-out, and shouting: “Arrey Sambha, kitna inaam rakkhe hai sarkaar ham par?”

Mac Mohan replies: “Poorey pachaas hajaar.”

The three words were also the last he uttered in his last Hindi film — Luck by Chance by Zoya Akhtar. Mac Mohan played himself in a scene in which he was asked to cut a ribbon and asked to mouth a line from a film. “Poorey pachaas hajaar,” is what he said.