The Good Guy lives on

(If you stand on a balcony and look down,you see a dirty drain below,and stars above. Maybe it’s one-sided. But I want to see the stars and that is why I show good people in my films.)”

One of the most loved of those “good people” that Hrishida created was Anand Sehgal. A few years ago,I was lucky to watch Anand on the big screen as part of a Hrishikesh Mukherjee retrospective at IFFI,Goa. Rajesh Khanna,who played the fast-talking,full-of-life character,was also present. It was a packed auditorium,and the audience sat in the aisles,repeating the film’s dialogues word for word. Forty years after its release,Anand still touches hearts.

We know the story by heart. Anand is dying of lymphosarcoma of the intestine,a disease he mocks as “kisi Viceroy ka naam lagta hai. Aadmi Vividh Bharati par announce kar sakta hai”. Anand meets his babumoshai Dr Bhaskar Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan),who is struck by Anand’s life philosophy,“Zindagi badi honi chahiye,lambi nahin”,and is inspired to write a book on him after his death.

Anand’s character was based on filmmaker Raj Kapoor,a close friend of Mukherjee who had taken seriously ill. The film is dedicated to Kapoor and the city of Bombay. “Raj used to affectionately call me babumoshai. When he fell ill,I got scared ki agar isko kuch ho jaayega toh main kya karunga. Personal mamla tha… bas aise ban gaya,” Mukherjee said in an interview.

Mukherjee wanted to cast Kapoor in the title role but he could not bear to see him die on screen. He thought of casting Kapoor’s younger brother,Shashi,who refused the role. Mukherjee even debated the prospect of casting Kishore Kumar as Anand and Mehmood as Bhaskar. Eventually,Khanna got the title role and the little-known Bachchan played the doctor friend. Bachchan,who went on to do seven films with Mukherjee,remembers meeting him for the first time at the behest of Saat Hindustani director Khwaja Ahmed Abbas. “I was looking for work and Abbassaab took me to meet Hrishida at his Carter Road bungalow. I was overwhelmed to get the role and to work with Rajesh Khanna who was and remains one of the greatest superstars of all times. Those days,we lived in reflected glory,” says Bachchan.

Mukherjee etched his characters so beautifully that both Khanna and Bachchan got their due. Bachchan rubbishes stories of their rivalry as “built up by the media”. Work on the sets was full of banter. In the famous last scene,where an inconsolable Bhaskar cries over Anand’s body,both actors were in splits. “My chin was tickling his stomach so he was laughing hard and seeing his reaction,I could not stop myself. Thankfully,the physicality of laughing and crying is similar so we got by,” says Bachchan. That was also one of Bachchan’s most difficult acting assignment. “Hrishida had told me a month in advance about the scene. I was keen to give my best but I didn’t know how to go about it. I remember Mehmoodsaab telling me,‘Socho ki Rajesh Khanna marne waala hai,emotion apne aap nikal aayega.’ Rajesh was such a big star that it was unthinkable,” he says.

The appeal of Anand lies in the way the characters speak. Mukherjee briefed Gulzar to write the film so that the audience knew from the first frame that Anand was dead. Amongst some of the best lines in the film are these spoken by Anand: “Jab tak zinda hoon,tab tak mara nahin. Jab mar gaya,saala main hi nahin. Toh phir darr kiss baat ka.”

And who can forget the last scene when the tape begins to play the unforgettable “Zindagi aur maut uparwale ke haat mein hai” speech in Khanna’s voice. You can watch the scene in loop and still cry.

Anand is also loved for Salil Chowdhury’s compositions. Gulzar wrote two songs but Chowdhury got Yogesh to pen Kahin door jab din dhal jaaye,which had been recorded for a film that got shelved. Anand’s theme song,Zindagi kaisi hai paheli (also written by Yogesh),was originally not even a part of the film. Hrishida wanted to keep it as a background song with the opening titles. Khanna heard the song and requested Mukherjee to create a situation for it. The signature shot of Anand on the beach with balloons soaring in the sky as the song plays in the background is a nod to the spirit of the film. In the words of Murari Lal nee Issa bhai Suratwaale,a character played by Johnny Walker in the film,“Marte marte chela guru ko jeena sikha gaya. Dukh apne liye rakh,anand sab ke liye.”

harneet.singh@expressindia.com