/> "Hrishida was the Masterjee and I was one of his better students. Some of his most major work as a director featured with me as his writer. Our first film together was Biwi Aur Makaan for which (singer) Hemant Kumar sent me to Hrishida. It was the first film where even the dialogues were in song- form.

Hrishida was always playing around, kicking the ball around. He knew the medium so well. He started his directorial career with the experimental Musafir It had three separate stories in one film...He was so much ahead of his times. He started the trend of parallel cinema much before it actually started.

His early films like Anari, Anuradha, Musafir and Mem Didi were not boy-girl stories. Hrishida was the pioneer of the parallel cinema. He's often give me literary short stories to adopt.

He made Mem Didi which has Jayant in the lead. Ashirwaad had Ashok Kumar in the lead. And in Bawarchi he cast Rajesh Khanna without a heroine. Jaya Bhaduri played his sister!

In Anand Kishore Kumar was supposed to play the lead. Kishore opted out at the last minute. I asked Rajesh Khanna if he'd be interested. He jumped at it. 'You take me to Hrishida.' Hrishida and I designed Mili as the male version of Anand. In the 1970s I virtually wrote all of Hrishida's films. It was the golden period of my life.

We'd often argue about our scenes. But I always listened to what he said. I remember we had argued about a scene in Guddi. Hrishida had wanted a dialogue which I didn't. He was right.

The audience broke into applause during that dialogue. I think I bloomed as a writer with Hrishida. Most of the time I wrote the screenplay and dialogues. In Guddi I wrote the story as well. Among my lesser know films for Hrishida were Alaap, Arjun Pandit and Sabsa Bada Sukh which was a very innocent film about two young men who wanted to experience sex.

Yeh chali nahin. In Namak Haraam we had to change the end because Hrishida had promised Rajesh Khanna the death scene....He had so many jokes to tell. Shooting with him was like a picnic. A few months back I met him. He had grown his beard. And he started telling his jokes.

Nobody could make light-hearted film like Hrishida. Chupke Chupke, Gol Maal, Khubsoorat were all written by me...He made humorous films ---I won't demean them by calling them comedies—consistently. ...He was like my father. I'd run to him with my problems."