My Encounters With Hrishikesh Mukherjee

Ali Peter John

I was in school and was living in a village which was very close to the Mohan Studios where I could see some of the best directors and actors at work. Bimol Roy and his chief assistant, Hrishikesh Mukherjee were two of them. I could only see and listen to stories about Bimol Roy, but little did I know them that I would be very close to Hrishida as everyone in the industry called him.

He was one of the many illustrious names I was lucky and privileged to be attracted to the feeling was mutual....

Since the nineties, I grew very close to him and he made it a point to invite me to most of his shootings held at Mohan Studios,Ruia Park in Juhu and other places in Bombay which he said was far better than the most beautiful locations in the world and also one of the most throbbing with life cities anywhere in the world. His films were so very simple yet so very sensitive and intense that I often felt that he was one director who could shoot in the hearts and eyes of his characters.

If there was one challenge he revelled in was his taking on some of the biggest stars and make them really act and that was why almost every star wanted to work with him at any cost. There is a whole list of stars and even non stars who worked with him during his forty year old career during which he made films that were very much in keeping with the times.

He did not have a very good command over the Hindi and Urdu languages and yet he worked with the best of writers and lyricists in both the languages. I once asked him how he could understand what his favourite writer, Rajinder Singh Bedi told him and he said, “I don't have to understand his language, I have to only understand the emotions and feelings he gives expression to and I can find out from the tone of his speech, from the way he scratches his beard and the desperate way in which he puffs at his India Kings cigarettes which I think gives him more inspiration than the Scotch he drinks at night". Hrishida was a master of understanding emotions. He once saw me looking very lost and asked me if something was worrying me. I didn't know how he could know that I had just lost my younger brother five days ago. He somehow became much more affectionate towards me....

We had several meetings at Mohan Studios, his bungalow in Union Park and then his Annapurna Apartments on Carter road, a few minutes away from the house of Rajesh Khanna.

I knew he was under treatment for his kidneys which had failed, but as was my habit, I walked to the floor he lived on. I kept bringing the bell of the door but there was no response. Finally, a woman came up to the door and said Hrishida was sleeping and would not be able to meet me.

I was quite upset for the whole day because I knew Hrishida was at home, then why did he stop me from meeting him even though we were such good friends in spite of the huge age gap?

I had hardly settled down in my chair in office when my man, Pramod told me that there was a call for me from “some Hrishida". I rushed to the table where the phone was lying like a half death fowl. It was Hrishida and he apologised for treating me“badly"the previous morning. He then told me about how he had to go for his dialysis every two days and how it was unbearably painful and that's why he didn't want to meet me in that condition as we had always met in a very jovial mood. He asked me to meet him the same evening, but I told him about the traffic and we settled to meet the next morning which was a morning full of stories about “Yusuf"(Dilip Kumar) and how he had worked with him and how he wanted to work with him again, now when he was in his sixties....

His condition kept worsening and it was during this time that the directors association had organised a felicitation function for him. He was not in the best of health, but seeing all his old friends together brought Hrishikesh Mukherjee alive. The biggest surprise of the evening was the Governor of Maharashtra, Dr P.C Alexander who turned out to be a very big fan of Hrishida and reeled out facts about him and his films without referring to any notes. The other big surprise was the presence of both Amitabh and Jaya who presented him with a blank sheet of paper with their signatures on it. It was like an agreement letter which Hrishida could use to get them signed for any film without consulting them.....

Sunil Dutt who was a very old friend of Hrishida wanted to see him one afternoon and we were very pained to see him in the weak condition he was in, but he was full of stories about Dutt Saahab and Nargis and before we could leave, he said something that still shakes me up. He said, “if you wish to see me again, because I don't have much time".

To add to his misery, his director-son Sandeep Mukherjee who was an asthmatic had collapsed and died, I think it was at the Bangalore station. His only son's death had made him lose all interest in life.

He sent for me one morning and he looked very pale, but he said he had a request to make to me. He said Sandeep had left a sum of forty thousand rupees and he wanted to give the money to me to use it in any way I wanted. I had always disliked spoiling friendships and relationships because of money and so I told Hrishida that I would arrange for the money to be taken by some nuns who ran an orphanage. He was very happy and asked me to come back soon.....

But my“soon"did not come as soon as he wanted it to be. Two days later, I got the news. Hrishida was dead. But he had not forgotten to leave instructions to hand over the forty thousand rupees to me. I called the nuns and handed over the money to them and they prayed for him to find a place in heaven. He didn't need to have any good to create a heaven for him. He was a “god"who created his own heavens every time he made a film.

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