Shaan Remembers Fond Memories Of His Childhood With Basu Chatterjee In This Heartfelt Note

(Playback singer Shaan’s father Manas Mukherjee was a music director who collaborated with the late filmmaker Basu Chatterjee on the 1984 film “Lakhon Ki Baat”, starring Sanjeev Kumar, Farooq Shaikh and Anita Raj. Shaan, then around 12, recalls his boyhood memories of the “man with white hair”)

BY SHAAN

My first visual memory is of a man with full-grown white hair — such thick hair, and all white, as I had never seen before! As a child that was fascinating. He came across as a man of few words. He was a listener than a speaker. I think he expressed everything — his sense of humour, social observation, everything — in his films.

He created his space in the eighties with slice-of-life films that showed reality in a lighter vein. Some of our finest actors like Farooq Sheikh and Amol Palekar worked with him. Those stories were realistic and his comedy was realistic. I know that ‘Lakhon Ki Baat’ wasn’t one of his top five films, but it was a good film. It was an intelligent comedy. All those characters were etched out beautifully.