Hrishi-da in a house full of bitches

From the Hrishikesh Mukherjee files: screen grabs of two pages from a nice magazine piece about the director (this is from the September 1977 Cine Blitz), written from the perspective of a nervous journalist visiting Hrishi-da’s Carter Road house and being introduced to all his dogs and given their back-stories.

A Hrishi-da quote from the story: “They have lesbian tendencies,” he says of two girls who are inordinately fond of each other. And here’s an excerpt from another page:

The pup had a very filmi story attached to her. This owner (a lady) had a 14-year-old daughter who had a tremendous crush on Rajesh Khanna. Having got the pup on the day that Rajesh married Dimple, she named the bitch Dimple and would give vent to her anger by calling to the pup and then mercilessly kicking it away. The mother of the girl, unable to bear this, handed the pup into Hrishida’s care and he changed her name to Sweetie.

Interesting thing about this anecdote – no indication is given that the girl’s mother was an acquaintance of Hrishi-da; she is simply presented as “a strange visitor” who walked into his house one day and asked him to take the pup. Maybe it was generally felt that Rajesh Khanna’s favourite directors should get to atone for the consequences of all his actions.

[Earlier posts about the HM book: a photo from the Satyakam set; Biswajit and a five-year-old movie star]