Gulzar's tribute to Hrishida
By:
Subhash
K.
Jha,
IndiaFM
Friday,
September
01,
2006
"Hrishida
was
the
Masterjee
and
I
was
one
of
his
better
students.
Some
of
his
most
major
work
as
a
director
featured
with
me
as
his
writer.
Our
first
film
together
was
Biwi
Aur
Makaan
for
which
(singer)
Hemant
Kumar
sent
me
to
Hrishida.
It
was
the
first
film
where
even
the
dialogues
were
in
song-
form.
Hrishida
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. 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. Hrishida was the pioneer of the parallel cinema . He's often give me literary short stories to adopt. He made Mem Didi which had 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! In Anand, Kishore Kumar was supposed to play the lead but he opted out at the last minute. I asked Rajesh Khanna if he'd be interested and he jumped at it. 'You take me to Hrishida.' Hrishida and I designed Mili as the male version of Anand.'
'In the 1970s I virtually wrote all of Hrishida'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. Hrishida 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 Hrishida. Most of the time I wrote the screenplay and dialogues . In Guddi I wrote the story as well. Among my lesser know films for Hrishida were Alaap, Arjun Pandit and Sabsa Bada Sukh which was a very innocent film about two young men who wanted to experience sex. Yeh chali nahin. In Namak Haraam we had to change the end because Hrishida had promised Rajesh Khanna the death scene....'
'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 Hrishida. Chupke Chupke, Gol Maal and 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."
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