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Gulzar remembers Hrishi-da: mentor, father and friend
By Subhash K. Jha, Indo-Asian News Service

Mumbai, Sep 1 (IANS) Together they worked to bring to life some of Bollywood's most loved movies. "Anand", "Guddi", "Khubsoorat" and "Namak Haraam" are only some of the gems that Hrishikesh Mukherjee directed and Gulzar wrote the dialogues and the screenplay for.

Today, just a few days after Mukherjee's death, Gulzar remembers the late director and describes himself as his mentor's best pupil.

"Hrishi-da was the masterjee and I was one of his better students. Some of his most major works as director featured with me as his writer," Gulzar told IANS.

"Our first film together was 'Biwi Aur Makaan' for which Hemant Kumar sent me to Hrishi-da. It was the first film where even the dialogues were in song form.

"Hrishi-da was always playing around, kicking the ball around. He knew the medium so well. He started his directorial career with the experimental 'Musafir'. It had three separate stories in one film. He was so much ahead of his times."

Gulzar says Mukherjee pioneered the concept of parallel cinema. .
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"He started the trend of parallel cinema much before it actually started. His early films like 'Anari', 'Anuradha', 'Musafir' and 'Mem Didi' were not boy-girl stories.

"He often gave me literary short stories to adopt. He made 'Mem Didi', which has Jayant in the lead. 'Ashirwaad' had Ashok Kumar in the lead. And in 'Bawarchi' he cast Rajesh Khanna without a heroine. Jaya Bhaduri played his sister!"

He discloses that Kishore Kumar was Mukherjee's first choice for the main lead in "Anand", which turned out to be a landmark film in Rajesh Khanna's career.

"In 'Anand' Kishore was supposed to play the lead but he opted out at the last minute. I asked Rajesh if he'd be interested. He jumped at it. 'You take me to Hrishi-da.' Later Hrishi-da and I designed 'Mili' as the female version of 'Anand'."

Gulzar says that the 1970s were the golden period of his life as he ended up writing all of Mukherjee's movies.

"In the 1970s I virtually wrote all of Hrishi-da's films. It was the golden period of my life. We'd often argue about our scenes. But I always listened to what he said.

"I remember we had argued about a scene in 'Guddi'. Hrishi-da had wanted a dialogue, which I didn't. He was right. The audience broke into applause during that dialogue. I think I bloomed as a writer with Hrishi-da. Most of the time I wrote the screenplay and dialogues.

"In 'Guddi' I wrote the story as well. Among my lesser-known films for Hrishi-da were 'Alaap', 'Arjun Pandit' and 'Sabse Bada Sukh', which was a very innocent film about two young men who wanted to experience sex. It was not successful. In 'Namak Haraam' we had to change the end because Hrishi-da had promised Rajesh the death scene."

Gulzar says the maverick director had a good sense of humour and it was fun working with him.

"He had so many jokes to tell. Shooting with him was like a picnic. A few months back I met him. He had grown his beard. And he started telling his jokes.

"Nobody could make light-hearted film like Hrishi-da. 'Chupke Chupke', 'Golmaal', 'Khubsoorat' were all written by me. He made humorous films -- I won't demean them by calling them comedies-consistently. He was like my father. I'd run to him with my problems."