Hrishikesh Mukherjee

Hrishikesh Mukherjee is one of the most famous Indian film directors. He worked with Bimal Roy in Calcutta as an editor. Later on, as a director, he created many immortal films like Anand (film), Abhimaan, Guddi, Golmal, Ashirvad, Bawarchi, Satyakam, Namakharam and many more. His films have melodious songs and the music was often created by Sachin Dev Burman. The films are realistic and unlike the other Bollywood films do not have crime, violence, and vulgarity. The stories are apparently simple but on analysis one can find the depth of meaning. He was honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award by the Government of India, in 1999, for his contribution to Indian cinema. He also holds the distinction of working with almost all the top Indian stars since independence of India in 1947.

Without being aggressively experimental or ostentatiously avant garde in form, theme or treatment, many of Mukherjee's 40-plus films have charmed audiences and critics alike because of their middle-of-the-road accessibility, heart-warming irony and literate sensibilities.

Hrishikesh Mukherjee's cinema could make you cry. You sniffle when Sharmila Tagore's emotionally withdrawn father surmounts his long-festering resentment towards his daughter and comes to the railway station to secretly rejoice in her eloping with her lover in Anupama or when Ashok Kumar opens his heart, overcomes his distaste and makes his daughter-in-law's son, the product of rape, light his son's pyre in Satyakam.

Mukherjee's movies could make you laugh. You chuckle in the Wodehousian comedy of inconsequentialities, Chupke Chupke when Amitabh, posing as a professor of botany, grapples with the word 'corolla' or in Golmaal when a truant moustache leads to many merry muddles.

Sometimes, his films could make you laugh even while you were blinking hard to part the film of tears covering your eyes. Like in Anand, where Rajesh Khanna greets even death with a well-turned bon mot.

Most of his captivating characters inhabit a middle-class, urban, educated milieu and lightly wear an air of high morality and intrinsic geniality.

His last film was Jhoot Bole Kauua Katen. Since his original hero Amol Palekar has grown old he had to take Anil Kapoor. . He has also directed TV serials like Talash. Another director akin to him is Basu Chatterjee.

Hrishikesh Mukherjee was admitted to Leelavati Hospital in Mumbai early on Tuesday, 6th June 2006 after after he complained of uneasiness. He has been put on ventilator and is under observation.