Hrishida: The man and the legend

On August 27, he would have been 90. And if he were alive, spending long days and evenings on his bed, he would have been surprised but I suspect, amused as well, by the retread of his Gol Maal. The refined 1979 comedy of dual identities was lately dumbed down by Rohit Shetty for Bol Bachchan. Earlier, Shetty also hacked out a triptych of Gol Maal crowd-pleasers, no questions asked.

More: Amol Palekar, hero of the original Gol Maal, has announced that he is ready to roll with a Marathi version of the laugh-raiser, combined with elements from the late director’s Naram Garam. To grab an iota of respectability, David Dhawan has occasionally claimed that his later bunch of comedies owe a debt to the late director’s oeuvre. Very debatable, that.
And to top the cloudburst of “salutes” — a polite term for plot pilfering — word is out that Sunny Deol’s characterisation in one of his films in the works, is modelled on the incorruptible government employee once portrayed brilliantly by his father, Dharmendra, in Satyakam (1969). Not so long ago, the buzz was on that Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra would make a sequel to Abhimaan (1973), in which the son of the singers played by Amitabh Bachchan-Jaya Bhaduri, would take centrestage. The project remained at the incubation stage. Ditto the proposal of Chennai’s Rajiv Menon to revisit the Abhimaan route.
Clearly, a Hrishikesh Mukherjee revival is on. During his lifetime — he passed away after a prolonged illness six years ago — Hrishida could have never dreamt of attaining the blockbuster hit-status of Bol Bachchan (reportedly, its earnings are in the hallowed Rs 100-plus crore bracket). Having known Hrishida for decades during his prime days, I’m sure he would have been annoyed by the mangled, high-cost version of his medium-budget film but wouldn’t have shown it. After all, an almost-Gandhian approach to the Bollywood-style of functioning was his credo. If he was ever slapped verbally on the face by the Young Turks of the New Wave cinema of the 1970s, he would offer his other cheek.
When purists criticised his films as being “middle-of-the-road” and “compromised”, he would accept such charges graciously. “Beta,” I remember him telling a fiercely independent director. “I admire your films, you are spelling out a new grammar for cinema. But I’m from the old school. I don’t know any other language.” Hrishida’s storytelling style was simple, solid and linear. It was also avuncular, displaying a regard for the people he created; unredeemable villainy was conspicuous by its absence.
An attempt to stray off mainstream with Musafir (1957, his first film as a director), was nixed commercially. It was Anari (1959), showcasing Raj Kapoor as a simpleton, which gave the director, who had moved from Kolkata, a toehold in the market, besides earning him a bungalow on the Bandra seafront where he lived for most of his life. Incidentally, Anand (1971) was conceived with Raj Kapoor, when the fast-rising Rajesh Khanna made his pitch for the role, and got it too. Recently, every obituary of the 1970s star phenomenon recalled Anand as one of his most-accomplished performances. Actors would slash their fees for Hrishida, be it Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna or Amitabh Bachchan. When Alaap (1977) flopped, the director believed that he was guilty of miscalcuation, stating, “I made an error by giving Amitabh Bachchan a sitar in his hand instead of a gun!”
On the downside, whenever Hrishikesh Mukherjee opted for fancy flights into fantasy, the results were disappointing. Popping romantic corn, as in Pyar Ka Sapna (1969) and Phir Kab Milogi (1974), he was out of his element. On the other hand, intermittently he could pull off memorable women-centric films like Anuradha (1960), Anupama (1966), Guddi (1971), Mili (1975) and Khubsoorat (1980) in a business governed by either ultra-moralistic or angst-spewing heroes.
An ace editor, he would not stretch a plot beyond an endurable limit. In an interview with me, he had confessed that he used slow fade-outs between scenes to extend a film’s running time. Neither did he justify the fact that a canned background score, functional set decor and just about serviceable cinematography were endemic, since the budgets he worked on didn’t permit the luxury of orchestral flourishes, grand studio villas or intricately designed visuals.
After interview sessions, at his house overrun by cats and dogs, Hrishida would unfailingly gift me a book. I’ve preserved the copies of Edmund Wilson’s Memoirs of Hecate County, D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Unerringly, there would always be a proviso: “Bachche, do ask the elders at home if it’s okay for you to read the book.” That was so typical of Hrishida. Every actor, upcoming director, writer or journalist he encountered was treated like his own child. Today those filmmakers inspired by him could do with an iota of his clean-cut, warm and wholesome brand of entertainment. Super-hit directors wallowing in that Rs 100 crore bracket certainly don’t.

The writer is a journalist, film critic and film director