Basu Chatterjee’s Chotisi Baat came in the most audacious year in the history of Hindi cinema. 1975 has gone down in the history of Indian cinema as the year of Sholay. It was also the year of Jai Santoshi Maa. The meager-budgeted mythological not only gave Sholay a run for its money — even outdoing the box-office collections of Ramesh Sippy’s film in many centers — it gave to the masses a new God to worship. And that God was far more pervasive than Gabbar Singh.
1975 was also the year of a number of other blockbusters, mainly Dulal Guha’s Pratiggya (Dharmendra and Hema Malini had two back-to-back hits in 1975), Yash Chopra’s Deewaar, Brij Sadanah’s Chori Mera Kaam, Sohanlal Kanwar’s Sanyasi, and K.S. Sethumadhavan’s Julie. Each of these created a box-office record of its own.
And if Basu Chatterjee thought he was safe in the sweet-and-tender Uthey Sabke Kadam Dekho rom-com-com zone, in came his closest competitor Hrishikesh Mukherjee in the kingdom of courtship comedies with Chupke Chupke, softly nibbling away at Basu-da’s fan base.
Fighting against all odds, Chotisi Baat created a remarkable impact. The idea was to cash in on the success of Basu-da’s earlier rom-com Rajniganda. The same formula of the underdog stealing away the wholesome, giggly, office-going girl — who keeps confiding in her colleague (played by Nandita Thakur; hats off to the actress for just being cast as a good listener) — from under the nose of his cocky competitor in the courtship. Big-time producer B.R. Chopra invited Basu Chatterjee to make “another naughtier Rajniganda.”
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The chase is interesting, mainly because it’s shot in crowded areas where, in those days, one couldn’t shoot with Dharmendra and Hema Malini anywhere in Mumbai except in the handful of studios. I mention this pair because they make a guest appearance in a movie-within-movie song sequence, singing the Yesudas-Asha Bhosle chartbuster Jaan-e-man Jaan-e-man Tere Do Nayan.
Amol’s character watches the glamorous screen pair in muted ecstasy, celebrating the kind of swaggering courtship in a movie theater that he seems incapable of. At one point, Hema is removed from the screen in Amol’s imagination from Dharmendra’s arms and replaced by Vidya Sinha. Then, carrying his make-believe further, he removes Dharmendra too and puts himself on screen with Vidya.
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The sequence defines Basu Chatterjee’s aspirational heroes. Amol Palekar is the man on the street who pays for a movie ticket and watches stars romance one another in style. He cannot be one of them. He is one of us. He holds a clerical job in an office, travels by bus, eats at low-end restaurants, dreams of love, and chases the first girl whom he fancies. This is not what filmy heroes are made of. This is the other end of Anurag Kashyap’s Wasseypur, where, in the bustle of everyday life, salvation is not obtained through the nozzle of a gun but the darkness of a movie hall. Heroism lies in dreaming about love and romance in the shower and in the anonymity of the movie theater.
Basu-da displays that typical awkwardness with film songs that became so discernible in the middle-of-the-road directors of his time. The two evocative Salil Chowdhury compositions Na Jaane Kyon Hota Hai Yun Zindagi Ke Saath by Lataji and the equally evocative Yeh Din Kya Aaye by Mukesh are thrust randomly in the background and have no direct bearing on the on-screen proceedings.
Basu Chatterjee
Enter the underrated Asrani as Prabha’s swashbuckling suitor. Asrani’s Nagesh rides around on a yellow scooter (on which he often whisks away Prabha from the bus stand), knows the chef at restaurants, and pretends to be cool in an era when the word only referred to room temperature.
This is where Basu-da’s film gets a little broader than a rom-com to embrace the mood of the burlesque. Arun takes the help of a love guru, Julius Nagendranath Wilfred Singh, played with an army-man’s bravado by Ashok Kumar. Frankly, the love guru’s love tips to Palekar are absurd to the point of being laughable for all the wrong reasons. The love guru has a couple of female assistants (one of them being the brief bombshell Komila Wirk) to demonstrate to the open-mouthed Arun how the ‘waist’ is won.
While the blustering love guru talks about finding and embracing true love, he gives live demonstrations to Arun on how to get a girl out of her saree and into bed. No wonder the excessively confident Arun returns to Mumbai confused. In an anti-climactic climax that seems to have been written as a sex encounter turned into a mushy moment of romantic confession, Arun finally “gets” Prabha.
The film’s message on courtship is so jumbled it makes you wonder where the film’s love thesis got waylaid. Also, Nagesh’s comeuppance in the hands of the suddenly smartened Arun smacks of instant gratification, manufactured to give the audience a few laughs at the expense of the Other Man.
It is to Asrani’s credit that Nagesh doesn’t come across as a spurned buffoon, although every effort is made to present him in a ludicrous light. Asrani’s is the best performance in this uneven comedy. Amol repeats most, if not all, his tricks of ingenuity from Rajnigandha. In fact, the effort to recreate the Rajnigandha magic seems somewhat strained in Chotisi Baat.
If the work still preserves a native charm, it’s because Amol pursues Vidya Sinha with a sincerity of purpose where a ‘no’ is clearly a no-no for the girl being chased at bus stops, in buses, and anywhere that a bus can take the lonely commuter of Mumbai.
Love was harder to find in those days, and therefore far more genuine and durable when found. I am sure Arun and Prabha are happily married with two children — a boy and a girl — living outside Mumbai, maybe in Pune, since Mumbai is now too polluted for their delicate sensibilities.
As for Nagesh, he too must be married, running an internet site for lonely people called ‘JuliusWilfredSingh.com.’
Dharmendra and Hema appeared for the first time in a Basu Chatterjee film. It was just a song here. They went on to pair in Basu-da’s Dillagi. Hema’s mother produced Basu-da’s Swami and Ratnadeep. The latter starred Hema. Amitabh Bachchan was shooting for B.R. Chopra’s Zameer when Chotisi Baat was being made. Not only is a big hoarding of Zameer prominently displayed at the bus stop where Palekar and Vidya meet every morning, but the Big B also shows up for a scene. We aren’t told anything about Amol or Vidya’s background. No parents, relatives, kith, or kin show up.
The film was inspired by Robert Hamer’s British comedy School for Scoundrels.
In an interview with me Basu Chatterjee recalled the film fondly. “When the dubbing for Chotisi Baat was going on ,Mr and Mrs Chopra saw the film in their own theatre.They were thoroughly disheartened.Mr Chopra said he couldn’t afford a flop. He advised me to add the character of the love guru played by Ashok Kumar. It was inspired by the film School For Scoundrels. After the film released Mr Chopra sent me a telegram admitting he was wrong in his misgivings about the film. That was rather magnanimous of him….I worked with Ashok Kumar for the first time in Chotisi Baat.We then went on to work together in many films. He was a very intelligent actor, and a closet-director. He used to tell me, ‘You’re one of the best directors I’ve came across.’ That was some compliment.”
