Opinion Chhoti Si Baat
Basu Chatterjee’s films starred the aam aadmi and aam aurat. They made middle-class India visible on the big screen.
The government has rightly handed over the case to central agencies, and suspended Sivasankar, pending investigation. 
Along with Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Bhattacharya, Chatterjee created a road map to celebrate ordinariness, humaneness, empathy.
The arrival of Basu Chatterjee on the Hindi film firmament, with the 1969 Sara Aakash upended the elements popular cinema was packed with: Loud dialogue, high-pitched melodrama, and characters who lived in la-la land. His films were rooted in the here and now, and were about people like you and me.
Along with Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Bhattacharya, Chatterjee created a road map to celebrate ordinariness, humaneness, empathy. And he invested his middle-of-the-road cinema with such zest and joy that it spilled over. There were sombre moments, too, but his films never drowned in faux sentiment, they made their point with a lingering lightness of touch. Some of his best loved films ( the ’74 Rajnigandha,’76 Chhoti Si Baat’,’79 Baaton Baaton Mein) dealt with issues impacting a middle-class India which had never been visible on the big screen before. Tongue-tied, shy lovers, the sparkle of newly-independent working women, the rough and tumble of office politics, buses and trains that ran late — all was gently-observed grist to Chatterjee’s mill, and the bustling ’70s was as much marked by his cinema, wonderfully fronted by an actor who exuded a special man-next-door ordinariness, as it was by the films of a lanky, towering volcano.
If Amitabh Bachchan’s angry heroes railed against the system, and used their fists in retaliation, Amol Palekar’s self-effacing gents spoke up for the men who wore their thin, tentative moustaches and large collared bush-shirts with growing confidence, and for the ladies they loved. Some of Chatterjee’s not so well-remembered titles like Chameli Ki Shaadi, Kamla Ki Maut, and Swami, touched upon class and caste, pre-marital sex and suicide, marital discord and other tricky subjects. But it was all done in the distinctive style of a man who celebrated life in all its hues, layered with the songs still hummed. That’s what’s called timeless.
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