ayese bhee baate hotee hain....

'dil kee tasalli ke liye, zoothhee chamak zoothhaa nikhaar
jeewan to sunaa hee rahaa, sab samaze aayee hain bahaar
kaliyon se koee poochhe to, hasatee hain yaa ke rotee hain
ayese bhee baate hotee hain.. ..'

lines from my favorite song from Anupama (one of my all time favorite movies).I don't know why I had carried this DVD with me and whether it was a strange coincidence that I was watching it last night and today's news announces that Hrishida is no more with us.

I suddenly travel back in time when we used to sing 'Humko man ki Sakhti dena' in school. I never realized that it was from the movie Guddi until I watched it one Saturday evening on Doordarshan. I immensely liked it - not because I was also a school girl that time and was nursing a crush on some film hero (no,no I had completely skipped that phase in life) but because I used to love Kusum's babhi who seemed to mouth the same dialogues as my mom and other neighborhood aunties. At 12, I never really bothered about who the director was. It was while watching ‘Bawarchi’ that mom mentioned to me that this was directed by Hrishikesh Mukerjee. Many more Saturday movie watching followed - sitting in our old sofa with Mom and sis in tow – where I savored the initial dose of Hrishida’s movies –Anand, Mili, Abhimaan, Chupke Chupke, Golmaal and Khoobsurat .

While 'Chupke Chupke' and 'Golmaal' take the cake for the best comedies ever portrayed on the Indian cinema, the wonderful portrayal of the fine nuances of the human emotions like in 'Anupama' and 'Mili' are definite examples of this great filmmaker.
It is amazing that one man could portray a gamut of different emotions without including any sort of fights or the then popular Helen numbers.

Couple of years back I made a conscious effort to watch them all once again and this time I noticed those finer details which I had missed earlier. The character of Amitab in 'Mili' is more complex than the Sekhar of ‘Abhimaan’ , the demure Renuji of ‘Anand’ was the same actress who played babhi in ‘Guddi’ , the Sharmila Tagore of ‘Anupama’ was so different from the one in ‘Aradhana’ and so on…

Ah, and don’t get me started on those wonderful songs -
‘Na ji ya lage na’ from 'Anand', ‘badi sooni sooni hai’ from 'Mili' and ofcourse ‘Kuch Dil Ne Kaha’ from 'Anupama' , which seemed such an integral part of his movies.

Agreed that liberalization/globalization in India has brought designer labels and the 'Inside-Outside' type of houses but still there a million houses similar to the ones portrayed in Hrishida’s movies and of course a lot of babhis out there waiting to be portrayed – why don’t movie directors of today take the hint ??