Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s funeral today
Kingsley calls Aishwarya ‘outstanding’ actor
The funeral of veteran film-maker Hrishikesh Mukherjee will take place today, who died on August 27 after a prolong illness in a Mumbai Hospital. He was 84.
Mukherjee’s body was kept at the Leelavati hospital for people to pay their last respects before the funeral.
He was admitted to Leelavati Hospital on June 6, after he complained of uneasiness and was put on ventilator.
During his 45 years of filmmaking career, Mukherjee directed 44 films that included the classics like Anand, Abhimaan, Guddi, Golmal, Ashirvad, Bawarchi, Satyakam, Namakharam and many more.
Honoured with Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1999, Hrisikesh Mukherjee had earlier won National Film Award (Golden Lotus Award) for Best Film in 1961 for Anuradha, a story of a talented artistic wife who leaves her idealistic doctor husband and return to her rich father’s house to pursue her career as a singer and dancer.
His films, which were also synonym to the melodious music of Sachin Dev Burman, covered a wide variety of genre ranging from comedy to complex man-woman relationship. But each of his movies had a unique “Hrishida touch”.
Noted actor Amol Palekar, who had acted in his comedy “Golmaal”, said that in his death he lost his guardian.
Legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar, paying her tribute to the director, said, “I do not have any words to describe him. He was a great human being who never shot a single scene in his film that would make the people feel embarrassed.”
His last film was “Jhooth Bole Kauwa Kaate” which was released in 1998, a ‘clean’ comical movie that did not had the trappings of the contemporary slapstick comedies.
Mukherjee began his career as an assistant director of the film “Do Bigha Zamin” under veteran director Bimal Roy in 1953.
Born in September 30, 1922 in Kolkata, Mukherjee was never fluent with Hindi but gave Hindi cinema one of its memorable screenplays. He wrote screenplay for the films like Namak Haraam, Abhimaan, Bawarchi, Guddi, Anand.
He worked in multiple capacities and used to also do the work of film editing and sound editing.
His immortal dialogue in the film Anand said by Rajesh Khanna: “Life is a stage where we all are puppets whose strings are in the God’s hand” will always reverberate in the minds of millions. — ANI

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