What drew you to the cinema of Nasir Husain? As a child, I watched Husain’s Yaadon Ki Baaraat (1973) and Hum Kisise Kum Naheen (1977) several times over. Then there was Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (1992) for which he wrote the dialogues. I was enamoured by this filmmaker who had achieved so much, yet precious little had been written about his legacy. I wanted to correct that. I consciously stayed away from writing Husain’s biography. I wanted to celebrate Husain as a filmmaker, as a master technician. I wanted to contextualise his place among the many great filmmakers of Hindi cinema by examining the dominant themes and tropes in his cinema. Any other approach would have diluted Husain’s significance as an auteur. What makes him a modern filmmaker? The Husain film universe has a very modern, cosmopolitan feel. There was a celebration of a certain Anglophone-club culture in his films. Mobility, holidaying, setting out on a journey, all gave his films such as Jab Pyar Kisise Hota Hai (1961) and Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon (1961) a picnic-like feel. Unlike many filmmakers of his time, he didn’t have a problem with Western cultural influences. The youth in his films went to clubs, hotels and had a good time. The characters took part in youth festivals, beauty contests and dance competitions. His hero was flamboyant, urbane, sophisticated and unshackled from the weight of the world, which was a definite breakaway from the earlier Hindi film hero. For instance, Shammi Kapoor in Tumsa Nehin Dekha (1957) and Rishi Kapoor in Hum Kisise Kum Naheen (1977). How do you think Husain managed to successfully rehash the same formula time and again? Husain was a master at updating himself according to new trends. The formula involved a musician protagonist, the lead pair setting out on a journey as well as the popular lost and found element - all these playing out mostly in a hill station setting. So if the musical hero that he first presented in the Shammi Kapoor-starrer Dil Deke Dekho (1959) is very much modelled on Elvis Presley, then his musical heroes in later films like Yaadon Ki Baaraat and Hum Kisise Kum Naheen are influenced by the Woodstock generation, the coming of disco and films like Saturday Night Fever. The music in his films was consistently good. Much of Husain’s musical sensibilities were instinctive. Both Mansoor Khan (his son) and Aamir Khan (his nephew) repeatedly told me that he had a knack for picking the right tune. Even in his choice of music composers — whether it was OP Nayyar for Tumsa Nehin Dekha and Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon, or RD Burman in later years for Yaadon Ki Baaraat, Caravan (1971), Baharon Ke Sapne (1967), Zamane Ko Dikhana Hai (1981) — he struck collaborations with the best and then managed to get the best out of these composers. Many of Husain’s films have moments where a Western song is being played. It showed his love for Western music. He adapted that love to Hindi cinema by introducing a Western-styled musician character in Dil Deke Dekho. Before that film, musician characters in Hindi cinema were Urdu poets, ghazal singers, historical figures such as Tansen and Baiju Bawra and therefore rooted in a certain Indian tradition. What are the perceptible influences of Husain’s brand of cinema on other filmmakers? With Husain, you had a filmmaker in whose narrative, courtship between the hero and the heroine played a very strong part. There was a celebration of songs and the songs themselves were woven very tightly into the narrative. A lot of mainstream commercial filmmakers today like Karan Johar, Ayan Mukerji or Imtiaz Ali use a lot of these aspects of Husain’s filmmaking. Even Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) where Raj and Simran fall in love while travelling through Europe, is a repetition of what happened in Nasir Husain’s films. Which five films of his would you recommend? Dil Deke Dekho, his second directorial venture, which sets the framework for what Husain does in his later films. Teesri Manzil, which was written by him and directed by Vijay Anand, which merges the sensibilities of two very good filmmakers. Baharon Ke Sapne, a film with which Husain broke the mould and made explicit his politics. Yaadon Ki Baaraat, which is his best film just for the manner in which he integrates the Salim-Javed world with his own. Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, which was directed by his son Mansoor Khan, but for which Husain wrote such crisp, funny and youthful dialogues at the age of 66.
