Not only has Hrishida (as he is universally called) lived on Carter Road, Bandra, for almost fifty years now, but he must be the one person whose house (former house, now) 'Anupama' (opposite Otter's Club) has featured the most in Indian cinema. He had moved into the house in 1960, soon after Anuradha, the successful remake of Madam Bovary, with Leela Naidu and Balraj Sahni. The shoestring budgets on which he made his films on the one hand, and the debilitating Gout condition which used to frequently immobilize him since the late 1970s resulted in his making a series of 'home-bound' films like Golmaal and Khubsoorat in which the main set was his own house. There was a period when, for some five years at a stretch, every time you visited the house you could lose your way as major portions of it would have been remodeled for a set.

Hrishida said it was cheaper than hiring studios. I remember rushing in through a door where I was sure a toilet existed and stopping petrified at the sight of Utpal Dutt sitting in an easy chair rehearsing his lines for a shot. He looked up, understood the situation in a jiffy, and returned to his reading with a bemused shrug. The toilet had been 'redesigned' to look like an office room. It was an oblong, barrack-like, one-storied house whose best feature was the front portico with its swing and coconut palm and its room-size balcony upstairs, from where you could sit and gaze at the sea and the tides and sunsets over Danda beach for hours on end.

This is the house where on any given day you would bump into Sachin Dev Burman coming in with his starched white Banglaa dhoti or a young Amitabh and Jaya in deep conversation or a Ritwick Ghatak sprawled on a bed or a Salil Choudhury and Utpal Dutt exchanging notes or a Rekha giggling as she demonstrated some aerobic exercise or a Rahi Masoom Raza and Rajinder Singh Bedi sharing Urdu shairs or a Deena Pathak re-living her lines (on dancer Chandralekha's request) from the famous IPTA play Jasma Odhan or Usha Kiron carrying armloads of Maharashtrian mustard-chilli pickles, while Hrishida would have found a little time between two takes to make a lethal move on the chess board against long-time chess foe Rajnibhai (the diamond jeweler and philanthropist Rajnikant Mehta from Madras) and soulfully sing dost dost naa raha, as Rajnibhai tried to wriggle out of the 'check'. Ashok Kumar, David and Gulzaar were like members of the household. Being at 'Anupama' was like being in the warmth of a creative community. Tea, food and conviviality were constant. Other friends of mine Darryl D'Monte and Zarine were a stone's throw away to the right and Basu Bhattacharya and Abdullah Kandwani a stone's throw away to the left.

The house also doubled as Chandralekha's pad whenever she was in Bombay and there would also be a crowd of her friends in the picture – from Kumar Shahani and K.K.Mahajan on one side to Indira Jaisingh, Achala Rao and Zahida Ranjan on the other.

On occasion, there would be Harindranath Chattopadhyaya walking in from 'Kismet Apartments' across the road with harmonium slung on his shoulder and an impromptu mehfil would begin. Harinda (Baba to all of us) had the most extraordinary repertoire of the classical, the frivolous and the political/revolutionary songs. I still remember my goose-pimples one evening in Hrishida's balcony, when Baba first rendered Nishi they jaiyyo phoolo bane, o bhanwara (the Banglaa song which Sachin Dev Burman made famous in Hindi as Dheere se jaana bagiyan mein, o bhanwara) in the exquisite classical style of the Kirana Gharana (he was a shaagird of Ustad Abdul Kareem Khan himself), and then suddenly just switched the pace of the same Raga and belted out the famous song of the 1942 'Quit India Movement' he had written and sung Aa gaya din Swadhinta ka, aage chalo aage chalo, bhayi. He later gave us an unforgettable lecture-demonstration on how it was possible to take 'soft' Ragas and infuse them with radical potential by merely changing the beat and tempo of the Raga.

Interestingly, the popular songs Rail gaadi and Nani ki naav chali which Ashok Kumar has sung in Hrishida's 1968 film Ashirwad was originally sung impromptu, in the 1950s, by Harindranath Chattopadhyaya to humour Chandralekha, when they used to live together on Krishna Iyer Street, Madras. Chandra had written them down (as she wrote every nonsense rhyme Baba composed for her merriment) and had later presented him the diary in Bombay. It is ironic that Baba played an important role in Hrishida's Ashirwad, but it was Ashok Kumar who rendered the songs after being coached by Baba.

When I first visited 'Anupama' in 1977 along with Chandralekha, Hrishida was living there with his two sons Babu and Tutu, his faithful driver-cum-cook Gopal and his thirteen dogs. His own Studebaker car he had loaned to artist and friend Dashrath Patel, an important member of the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad. So Chandra had driven her Fiat car over from Madras and left it at 'Anupama' for Hrishi's use. Like the house itself, this Fiat car too, with its Madras number plate 2205, was destined to become an important prop in Hrishikesh Mukherjee films – not to speak of several objects like a copper vessel or a 'mata-ni-pachedi' textile hanging, etc. besides playful references to Chandra's quotations from ayurvedic texts or her dance guru Kanjeevaram Ellappa Pillai or her Gujarati origins.

From the mid-seventies to mid-eighties, Hrishida had onerous commitments as Director of the NFDC or Chairman of the Film Censor Board. Every time the car left the compound, the thirteen dogs would rush to the gate to see him off. But the amazing thing was to see them (Bhombhol in particular) dash to the gate a good five minutes before he returned (perhaps, almost as the car would be turning into Turner Road) and wait in anticipation. And then all hell would break loose as Hrishida alighted from the car. And he would have time for each one of them and a different thing to eat for each one. And woe betide you if you got bitten by one of them (as dance critic Sunil Kothari once did). As far as Hrishida was concerned, it could only have been your fault.

A little over ten years ago, Hrishida sold 'Anupama' and moved into a fourth floor flat in the adjoining 'Rock Cliff' apartments. Hrishida, almost immobilized now, has lived confined to the northern bedroom of his flat. Babu works in Boston. Tutu died of an asthmatic attack on his way to Delhi some years ago. All the dogs have died one by one, save the lovely Bhuti, grown old and weak. She is permanently sprawled on Hrishida's bed. It is from the windows of this room that he befriended two crows, which became regulars at feed time. Hrishida used to feed them Britannia Marie biscuits with his own hands. These were the crows who lent voice to his last film Jhooth Bole Kawwa Kaate, which was as much a tribute to the crows as to his 'jigri dost' the late Raj Kapoor. The only other time he moved out of this room other than to make JBKK, was once to rush all the way to Sakshi Gallery (then at Kemp's Corner) to check on my condition as I lay breathless on the gallery floor, prior to the opening of a Dahsrath Patel exhibition, with a serious attack of Bronchitis; the other time was when Amitabh Bachan very sweetly personally supervised all arrangements and accompanied him to Delhi when Hrishida received his Dadasaheb Phalke award.

For the past two years we have been watching as 'Anupama' was demolished and an eight-storied flat has come up there completely blocking Hrishida's northern and western view and eliminating all possibility of a return of the crows to those windows. From the time the demolition began and earthmovers rolled in excavating the site for the foundation of the flat, I have been photographing the process once every four or five months that I make it to Mumbai from Chennai. It has been like an entombing of memories. Eventually even Hrishida, frail and in agony that he is, could not take it any more and has now moved to the south-side bedroom, which is like a return to breeze and light. His greatest excitement is to have someone stopping by to discuss national politics. His favorite subjects with me are the 'failures' of the 'Left' and the shenanigans of Chief Minister Jayalalitha. But mostly he is alone. "All my friends are gone. No one comes to meet me now," he says with a tinge of uncharacteristic bitterness.

He also makes it a point in the evenings to get himself carried out on to his balcony from where he looks out on to the bustling Joggers' Park below and, beyond it, the flaming sun as it settles soundlessly into the Arabian Sea. And, somewhere in the distance, from someone's Sony-Max channel, you can hear the strains of that song from the 1970 hit Anand, Kahin door jab din dhal jaye…

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The piece first appeared in a souvenir for the festival, Celebrate Bandra, dated 30 November 2003. It was later also reproduced in Man's World, January 2004 issue