Basu Chatterji

Basu Chatterji was something of a puzzle. His films lacked the ingredients that made distributors rush to back a picture, yet they were not art house cinema that demanded long discussion either. He became the quintessential middle-of-the-road film-maker, a category he helped create in Bollywood. Films such as Chhoti Si Baat, Rajnigandha and Chitchor dealt with ordinary people and everyday worries like finding work, falling in love, social and economic inequality, and quarrels in joint families. Like the cartoonist R.K. Laxman and his common man, Chatterji portrayed that figure's journey with charm, gentle warmth and humour.

Personally he resembled the characters he filmed: mild, unassuming and shy of the press. He did not chase stars and mostly worked with newcomers, lending them standing as artists. Amol Palekar, Vidya Sinha, Pearl Padamsee, Zarina Wahab, Nandita Thakur, Girish Karnad, Rakesh Pandey, Bindiya Goswami and Ranjit Chowdhry are now part of Indian cinema history, thanks in large part to him.

Anirudha Bhattacharjee tells the story through anecdotes from behind the scenes of Chatterji's films. He sets the director's cinema and television work against the shifting times, including the rise of Rajesh Khanna, Kishore Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan, the Emergency, the revival of Sarat Chandra's stories, the arrival of disco and the weak phase of Hindi cinema in the 1980s. The book celebrates one of the most underrated yet successful film-makers in Hindi film.