Filmmaker Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s breezy comedy of errors, Chupke Chupke (1975), which completes 50 years today, is nothing less than a cult classic. A Hindi adaptation of the Bengali film Chhadmabeshi (1971) is timeless for its simplicity, witty dialogues, situational comedy, and evergreen songs. Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Sharmila Tagore, Asrani, Jaya Bachchan and Om Prakash make up the ensemble cast.

The plot follows a botany professor, Parimal Tripathi (Dharmendra), whose wife Sulekha (Sharmila Tagore) is in awe of her brother-in-law Raghav’s intellect (Om Prakash). A jealous Parimal takes it upon himself to break this aura, by fooling Raghav. He poses as a driver, Pyaare Mohan, who is obsessed with the purity of the Hindi language. Amitabh plays Parimal’s friend, an English professor named Sukumar.

Amitabh once shared that the song Chupke Chupke Chal Re Purbaiya and a few other scenes were shot at his current Mumbai residence, Jalsa. The bungalow was previously under the ownership of producer N C Sippy.

Hrishikesh was quite a taskmaster on set. For the song Sa Re Ga Ma, music composer S D Burman had recorded three antaras (verses). But the director snipped the second antara because he was furious with Dharmendra reporting late for the song’s shoot. In another case of Dharmendra’s tardiness, Hrishikesh chose to retain a shot of the actor adjusting his trousers after exiting the washroom as “punishment.”

Much to Jijaji’s exasperation (Om Prakash), Dharmendra’s Pyaaremohan is fluent in pure Hindi. However, in the latter half of the story, Pyaare stammers and ends up speaking in Urdu instead. To this Jijaji observed, “Gusse mein naacheez haklata hai aur Urdu bolta hai.” This dialogue was spontaneously added by Dharmendra.

In 2013, there were reports about filmmaker Umesh Shukla working on an adaptation with writer Sajid and Farhad Samji. Paresh Rawal was set to star. Then, in 2019, it was reported that producers Bhushan Kumar and Luv Ranjan had acquired the rights to the original title and would remake it with actor Rajkummar Rao in the lead. There were also rumours of filmmaker Farah Khan returning to direction with actor Varun Dhawan playing Pyaare. But none of these movies have materialized.

The director had originally imagined having new faces playing Sukumar and Vasudha. But when Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan heard about the film, they insisted on being cast and even chose to forgo payment. Hrishikesh said the roles were too small, but they didn’t mind it.