Chhoti-badi baatein about Basu Chatterjee, champion of middle class cinema who passed away on Thursday
Khalid Mohamed (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 5, 2020)

Bustling into his airy study room, on the first storey of Violet Villa, Santacruz, he nonchalantly pulled out a file titled “The Window.”

“That’s my last script,” Basu Chatterjee, often attired in a grey safari suit, darted his boyish grin. “You make it. I’m tired of flogging it around to producers.”

The story revolved around a Muslim girl in love with a police officer who proposes marriage. It turns out to be a ruse to arrest her brother, a suspected terrorist, at the wedding. Heartbroken, the girl never opens her home’s window again.

“But Basu da, who’ll finance a film with Muslim characters?” I asked.

He countered, “Just get one or two big stars. I’m not charging you a rupee anyway. Now, what’ll you have —scotch and soda or with water?”

Scotch evenings with the puckish writer-director, who was surmised to be 90-93 and passed away on Thursday of age-related ailments, were enlivened with conversations about his early days in Ajmer and his move to Mumbai, where he became a cartoonist-cum-illustrator with the Blitz tabloid.

Backbone of the cineaste club, Film Forum, and a constant presence at its pokey office overlooking the Dadar railway station over-bridge, he was working on the script of Sara Akash (1969), and could no longer edit the Forum’s quarterly magazine Close-Up. He asked a college friend, Abbas, and me, to take over. We didn’t know the ‘e’ of editing. “Neither do I,” he had chortled. In return, we could attend the film society screenings for free.

After the uncompromised Sara Akash and the slice-of-life Piya Ka Ghar, he became a champion of the middle-class ethos with the sleeper success Rajnigandha (1974).

In 1975-’76, Chitchor and Chhoti Si Baat once again sided with Simple Simon over cool man-about-town.

Intermittently, Basu da took on more than he could chew, resulting in the disappointing Us Paar, Tumhare Liye and Do Ladke Dono Kadke. Yet, the writer-director bounced back with Khatta Meetha, Baton Baton Mein, Swami, Apne Paraye and Shaukeen.

He did work with the top heroes — Rajesh Khanna (Chakravyuha), Amitabh Bachchan (Manzil), Dharmendra (Dillagi), Jeetendra (Priyatama) and Anil Kapoor (Chameli Ki Shaadi) — but sought to avoid the star system, preferring intimate to showy cinema.

The film Jeena Yahan (1979), featuring Shabana Azmi and Shekhar Kapur, remained closest to his heart. “It was quite easily my best,” he would say about the barely-remembered reflection on a young couple’s adjustment to daily commutes and housing issues. Not Ek Ruka Hua Faisla? “Naah,” he’d say. “You know that was taken from 12 Angry Men.”

Not the sort to whine, he was okay with his light-hearted Prateeksha (Jimmy Sheirgill-Dia Mirza) being dumped on Sahara TV channel. From what I could glean, he at least hoped to travel to Kolkata where he’d be received with open arms, thanks to the success of his two Bengali films (Hochheta Ki, Trishanku).

When he retired (not out of choice), he’d spend time surfing the net and emailing. Worried about his huge collection of cinema books, he’d wonder, “What’ll happen to them? You take them.” “Basu da, stop it, you’re going nowhere”, I’d retort.

By the time I gathered a team to work on a documentary on Basu da, some three years ago, he had started to fade. He walked by taking support of the wall, would recognise his wife and TV filmmaker-daughter Rupali Guha, but drew a blank on seeing me. Alzheimer’s was setting in.

During the first and only shoot, he tried to be amiable, but answered only with “Yes” or “No”. Questions about his firebrand TV series Rajni or the sleuthing Byomkesh Bakshi made him restless. Maybe, he didn’t wish to delve into the past or he had erased them subconsciously.

Once, he told me he had started writing his biography in Hindi but quit midway because “it meant writing lies on every page, I would have cheated myself”. And if he had done that, he wouldn’t have been able to open his study room’s window again.
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Amol Palekar: He never attempted a typical masala movie, yet top heroes worked with him

Basu da was a simple person. It reflected in all his films and his humour. He was a man of few words. When we met for a narration of Rajnigandha, he started off saying, “Ek ladka hota hai, maan lo tum ho, ek ladki hoti hai, Vidya Sinha…” Then, he stopped, handing me the story, screenplay and dialogue. “It’s better if you read this.” Looking back, I’m amazed by his inability to narrate a simple story. However, he could do it on screen beautifully, without the cliched melodrama.

It took us almost two years to release Rajnigandha because no one wanted to distribute it. They would ask “Hero kaun hai?”, and wonder how a new boy with a Marathi name could be the hero? Then, they would learn that the heroine was a debutante, too, and that the film had no villain. Quickly losing interest, they’d ask Basu da, “Toh phir film kyun bana rahe ho?” Later, these memories made him laugh but at the time, I could see the trouble he was going through and marveled that he stuck to his vision.

He never attempted a typical masala movie, yet all the top heroes, from Dharmendra and Hema Malini to Amitabh (Bachchan), Vinod Mehra and Moushumi (Chatterjee), worked with him. Basu da was probably the first major link between parallel and commercial cinema, thanks to the subtle humour that lit up his films and the strength of his characters. Hailing from the film society movement, he was aware of world cinema, took its strength and carved his own niche. I’m privileged to have had such a long association with him.

—As told to Hiren Kotwani
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Zarina Wahab: He could crack a joke with a straight face

This year has been very bad so far and Basu da’s demise is very upsetting because I was really close to him and his family. His daughter was our neighbour till she moved away. Around two years ago, Amol Palekar, Deepti Naval, Vidya Sinha, Bindya Goswami and I all met at Basu da’s place. He was fine then, a really sweet man. After that, I passed by his house a couple of times and today, wonder why I didn’t drop by.

I played the main lead in his film, Chitchor, for the first time. Once, during the shoot, I was sitting around with Master Raju (the child artiste then) and a few others. Raju was showing us how a mute man would ask for water. Basu da watched for 10 minutes, then, incorporated it in the sequence where we go to Amol’s house.

After Chitchor, I did Hua Savera, which never released. He told me that he couldn’t pay me but would get the producer to give me a car. Back then, you could get a car for Rs 25,000-Rs 30,000. He was one of the best directors I worked with, a genuinely wonderful person who could crack a joke with a straight face.

— As told to Hiren Kotwani