Hrishikesh Mukherjee

Hrishikesh Mukherjee passed away this week. He was the filmmaker who made us laugh and cry. Long before the current crop of ShahRukh vehicles that ooze emotion out of every pore and coat the floor three inches thick, there was something called good taste. Hrishikesh epitomized just that. Anyone who has ever heard the lines ‘zindagi aur maut to ek khel hai Babumoshai’ knows what I am talking about. The amazing combination of Rajesh Khanna’s acting, Salil Choudhury’s music and Hrishikesh’s direction gave us that absolute gem, Anand. I remember that Anand was one of those movies which became so popular that cassettes were released which had the songs as well as dialogues from the film. Imagine some lazy Sunday afternoon with the umpteenth cup of tea making its way down, and from the neighbouring house, ‘Main huun Isabhai Suratwala’, and ‘Babumoshai, yeh wahi hain, na, jiske saath tumhari continuity hai?’ Imagine also, half a decade later the action hero of the decade, Dharmindra turned into a ‘pure’ Hindi speaking driver who sometimes turned crosseyed. And last of all, imagine a decade after Anand, Amol Palekar and the absolutely incomparable Utpal Dutta in Golmaal. ‘Vaise to Kabir padhne padhane ke liye ek jeevan kam hai, parantu main saath baje tak samapt karne ka prayatna karunga’. I always get confused whether the Sachin Bhowmick screenplay was derived from the Bengali play ‘Tulkalam’ by Deboki Bandopadhyay or vice versa. But I don’t think it matters. What matters is that Hrishikesh Mukherjee is gone, and movies will never be the same again.