Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 24, 2017)

You just have to mention the name Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Dharmendra turns emotional as memories come flooding in. “He was like family, I’d often drop by his place and he’d come home to visit my parents,” says the actor, flashbacking to the Satyakam shoot at Mehboob Studio when, despite his repeated requests, Hrishida insisted on filming him from a certain angle which he was convinced was not his ‘good side’. “One day, Dada wasn’t feeling well and decided to go home early, leaving me to complete the scene with the DoP Jaywant Pathare. Grabbing the opportunity, I immediately told Pathare to turn the camera, but just as we were about to roll, dada popped up behind us, laughing over my guilty expression, and with a hug, letting me take the shot the way I wanted,” Dharamji reminisces.

He describes Hrishida as an indulgent older brother who, despite being careful about not taking any unnecessary shots, once succumbed to his pleas for a retake, taking as many as seven takes, before asking for the first which he’d approved of to be printed. “I slyly asked for the second take to be taken but being an eagle-eyed editor, dada spotted it immediately as I’d known he would, but once again gave in,” he smiles, quick to add that Hrishida could also be a strict disciplinarian who, while they were shooting for Chupke Chupke, snipped out an entire antara from the song, “Sa Re Ga Ma”, when he turned up late for the shoot.

On another occasion, when he reported late again, for the climax at Aarey Milk Colony because he was juggling double shifts, an exasperated Hrishida ordered him to go to the bathroom and come out pulling up his zip. “I thought he was joking, but he was serious, and looking at his watch told me not to waste any more time but do as instructed. I complied and he actually took the shot and incorporated it in the scene,” Dharamji laughs at his ‘punishment’, adding that his Chupke Chupke co-star Amitabh Bachchan and he agreed on the former’s game show, KBC, that the director they were most scared of was undoubtedly Hrishda, who commanded respect and won their hearts.

Dharamji had met the Bengali babu for the first time at Mohan Studio. A fresh-faced Filmfare discovery, he’d been signed for Bimal Roy’s Bandini and Hrishida was the film’s editor. Later, when he was shooting for Guddi at Mohan Studio with debutante Jaya Bhaduri, who, like her character, hero-worshipped him, Hrishida’s eyes fell on a light lying on a burnt set, and he used it to give Guddi and the viewers a lesson in cinema and stardom and how ephemeral both can be. “He pointed out that the light, which had once lit up and made so many faces look beautiful on screen, was now lying forgotten in a corner of a studio which could itself metamorphose into a factory one day, such was life in wonderland. I still remember that shot and those lines, that light and the studio, which was like my gurukul,” says Dharamji.

Hrishida, who directed over 40 films in a career spanning four decades, passed away on August 27, 2006. “It’s been 11 years and I still miss him every day,” Dharamji says, mistyeyed.