For fifty years, audiences across India have cheered for Basanti and her loyal horse in Sholay, shouting Bhaag Dhanno bhaag. Yet the person risking her neck beneath the careening carriage was not Hema Malini, but a fourteen-year-old girl named Reshma Pathan.
Growing up in the cramped lanes of Pydhonie in Mumbai as the eldest of seven siblings, Reshma stepped up as her family’s sole provider after her father fell ill and her mother faced legal trouble. Spotted doing somersaults in her neighborhood, she entered an all-male stunt profession, breaking barriers to become Bollywood’s first official woman stunt double.
She became Bollywood’s first woman stunt double. Men dressed as women had done the actresses’ stunts before her. She was paid Rs 175 a day and took home Rs 100.
In the 1975 film Sholay she doubled for Hema Malini in the famous Basanti tonga chase near Ramanagara.
Sadly, in the midst of the filming of the 1975 blockbuster Sholay near Ramanagara, a mechanical oversight left an extra real wheel on the tonga. The carriage crashed into a rock, launching Reshma into the air before the heavy cart came down near her, leaving her with a leg wound requiring more than sixteen stitches. Rejecting a hospital stay because she needed the daily pay to fund her sister’s wedding, she wrapped the wound and marched right back onto the set.
That single, high-risk moment launched a career spanning over 400 films, making her the pioneering female member of the Movie Stunt Artistes’ Association. Though mainstream recognition arrived decades later including a 2019 biopic celebratinh her life—Reshma Pathan remains the true, unsung steel bŕeneath the
of Indian cinema history.
News Edit KV Raman
