'Ardh Satya wasn't conceived to showcase Om's talent'

'The ending Vijay Tendulkar had written was different.' According to him, the film ended with Anant Welankar's suicide.'

Almost every cop film that followed Govind Nihalani's hard-hitting drama Ardh Satya owes an allegiance to it, one way or another.

The stunning film was released in 1983, during the year when Jeetendra's southern remakes like Himmatwala, Mawaali and Justice Chowdhary ruled the box office.

It was also the year when Rajesh Khanna had his last spate of hits as a leading man in films like Avtaar, Agar Tum Na Hote and Souten.

As far as cops dramas in commercial cinema were concerned, there was Andha Kanoon where Hema Malini played a cop.

This was certainly no year for a brutal, unrelentingly intense study of crime, punishment, the law and its subversion by powerful goons and politicians.

Eminent playwright Vijay Tendulkar, whose speciality were works on socio-political oppression, had earlier penned the screenplay for Nihalani's directorial debut Aakrosh, where Om Puri -- in one of Indian cinema's most striking performances -- ended his unlettered mute tribal character's self-imposed silence with a bloodcurdling scream of protest.

In Ardh Satya, Om's character of the conflicted compromised cop Anant Welankar protests far more violently.

At the end, he jumps out of his chair and heads straight for the villain Rama Shetty's (Sadashiv Amrapurkar) throat, choking him to death and walking out of the goon's den, riding his motorcycle back to his police station to surrender for the 'crime'.

And why not?

If our socio-political system stifles the straight-thinking, upright civil servant, why should he not smother the living daylights out of a goon, who sits scoffing at Anant's entire career of honest professionalism?

The relevance of Ardh Satya in this day and age of growing compromises remains.