Filmlore has it that when Shabana Azmi was playing a mentally disturbed woman in Hum Paanch, the method actor that she is, she wanted to know just what kind of a disease she was suffering from. No one knows for sure just what reply she got but the film’s director Bapu definitely had more on his mind than just method. To begin with, he was handling a huge star cast featuring stalwarts like Sanjeev Kumar, Mithun Chakraborty, Naseeruddin Shah, Raj Babbar, Amrish Puri and more from an unfamiliar industry.
Secondly, it was an unusual film which mixed up a bit of Ved Vyasa’s brand of mythology with the realities of rural India. It was not stark like Benegal’s Nishant though it addressed the same issues. Nor was it mindless like typical potboilers. But then Bapu was the student and master of his own institution of film making. And like his name, his diminutive persona was beguiling too for Satthiraju Lakshmi Narayana was not just a richly awarded Telugu film-maker, he was also an acclaimed painter, illustrator,cartoonist and designer.
So Hum Paanch reflected his understanding of how to create an engaging visual palette and tell a gripping story. He would go on to make Woh Saat Din in 1980, where he launched Anil Kapoor as a lead actor in Hindi films, in an unusual role completely devoid of the swagger Kapoor would later come to be known for. He was Prem Pratap Patiale Wale in the film, a struggling musician who loses his love to a richer man. The film would later inspire Sanjay Leela Bhansali’ s Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.
Not all his Hindi films though were of the same gravitas. Bezubaan, a 1982 film spoke of a woman’s past in sympathetic but patronising tones. Pyari Behna was a weepy about an overprotective brother. Diljala was a tepid revenge drama and Mohobbat, though a hit, was a bit crude. In Prem Pratigya, you saw bits of Bapu. His instinctive understanding of human characters and of human issues. The love story of a dibbawali and a local goonda was as heartwarming as it was astute though even here there was a crude comedy track.
The performances by Madhuri Dixit and Mithun Chakraborty showed why Bapu was a legend. He was someone who could coax a great performance effortlessly out of a star and turn an ordinary moment into a memory.
Though widely acclaimed across the world for his magic realism in films where mythology segued seamlessly with mundane realities, for his art and his multiple talents, Bapu essentially remained a humanist. With his passing on August 31, another chapter of the cinema of innocence closes forever.
with Reema Moudgil works for The New Indian Express, Bangalore, is the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, an artist, a former RJ and a mother. She dreams of a cottage of her own that opens to a garden and where she can write more books, paint, listen to music and just be.