Sunny side up: Revisiting Sunny Deol’s evergreen ‘tareekh pe tareekh’ scene on his birthday

“Tareekh pe tareekh, tareekh pe tareekh milti gayi My Lord, par insaaf nahi mila!”

The above dialogue has been a part of many memes and spoofs. However they were what fetched Sunny Deol aka Bollywood’s ‘iron man’ a National Film Award.

Decades before the Amitabh Bachchan’s Deepak Sehgal wowed the audience with his impassioned speech about consent, and gained a permanent place in the pop culture with the iconic “ ‘Na’ sirf ek shabd nahi… apne aap mein pura vakya hai. Ise kisi tark, spashtikaran,explanation ya vyakhya ki jaroorat nahi hoti’ dialogue, Sunny Deol’s no-holds barrier bhashan about sluggish court-room procedures was causing halls to erupt with applauses and crowds breaking into loud claps and whistles. Deol who was well known for dramatic dialogues like ‘dhai kilo ka haath’ and high-voltage, gravity-defying action scenes was no stranger to the aam -janta going berserk for his on-screen antics. But this was the first time a court-room scene evoked such an enthusiastic response. Usually court-room dramas are relegated to the ‘snooze-fest’ category in India . But this was a rare exception.


The 1993 film ‘Damini’ broke many milestones. Among the testosterone-driven flicks of the early ‘90s, it was one of the few mainstream films that centered around a female lead. The movie had many strengths - Rajkumar Santoshi (then the go-to director for hard-hitting films) at the helm, an ethereally beautiful Meenakshi Seshadri at the frontline, nuanced performances from the cast … however the highlight of the film remains a red-faced yet earnest Sunny Deol, standing tall in the court, berating the adjournment culture of the Indian legal system, calling out the pointless case-postponements which just leads to delay of justice.

With just that one scene, Deol stole the show (and the thunder from the rest of the cast). Even today, the 1993 blockbuster is mostly known as ‘that tareekh pe tareekh film’.

Deol also made lawyers look ‘cool’. Despite being one of the most lucrative professions out there, the public perception of lawyers is far from positive. Many people would think of lawyers as drab, dull and pretentious, trailing senior advocates or corporate sharks spending their days buried in enormous tomes.

However, Deol made lawyers look debonair and dashing. On-screen portrayals of lawyers in Bollywood have ranged from no-nonsense to comical but this was the first time a lawyer had charisma and swag.

Deol’s character advocate Govind Srivastava was a mere supporting character. But Deol owned every inch of the screen every time he appeared. From his dramatic entry at a critical point of the story to his fervent court-room speech, Deol was in his element, channelising Srivastava’s suppressed anger against the system and barely-checked aggression to the tee. Just like Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow made the entire cast of ‘The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’ including the lead characters -Keira Knightley's Elizabeth Swann and Orlando Bloom's Will Turner play the second fiddle with his impish charm, corny lines (that he somehow managed to sound meaningful) and devil-may-care swag, Deol’s ‘angry young lawyer’ almost makes you believe that he is the protagonist of Damini.

But that’s the power of ‘dhai kilo ka haath’!