Working class hero

Nagesh Kukunoor on how Hirishikesh Mukherjees Bawarchi captured the spirit of the middle-class family
One film-maker who never got his due was Hrishikesh Mukherjee. When we speak of films by Guru Dutt,Raj Kapoor and Bimal Roy in the same breath we miss out on Hrishidas cinema. But he was no less insightful,intelligent and understood the middle-class sentiment comfortably. Perhaps the simplicity with which his stories were told was mostly mistaken as not being great cinema. For me,his most magical film was Bawarchi,apart from the other classics rolled out by him,like Anupama and Anand.

Bawarchi captured the essence of the Indian family system. It focused on spreading family values through good morals in a clean manner. While growing up in Hyderabad as a nine-year-old I would see the film often,but it truly inspired me while studying in Osmania College,Hyderabad.
Not so much that it propelled me into filmmaking,but it made me observe the middle-class family set-up more closely. Another quality which I inherited from his movies was that nobody was actually a villain or a bad person,it was just circumstances that forced a person to behave in a particular manner. In different situations people reacted differently.

When in college,there was a particular phase in which I stopped watching Hindi films,but Hrishidas films were different. My parents are still big fans of his cinema. I had the privilege of spending time with him in his last few years. When I was working with Juhi Chawla on 3 Deewarein,I got a chance to meet Hrishida.
That was a magical moment and nobody else from the industry could fill that space in my head. He related anecdotes from the film and in my conversations I saw the similarities between us. Even he was an engineer before becoming a film-maker. He taught me the meaning of humility and how it is an important trait to have if you are talented.