January 9 marked 50 years of Basu Chatterjee's Chhoti Si Baat.
Basu da’s characters offered relief during the era of the Angry Young Man.
Chatterjee was an artist who portrayed the life of the common man and chose to tell intimate stories.
We live in an age when spectacle sells. But spectacle is not something new. Even the 1970s had their own spectacle—that of a young man in the making. In the 1970s and 1980s, that spectacle dominated cinema. Challenging that very idea was a filmmaker’s task and Basu Chatterjee did exactly that.
If you think of Mumbai in the 1970s, one name that you cannot miss is Basu Chatterjee. He was a filmmaker who captured the real essence of the city. His films became the only way to create an impression of Bombay, especially when we had never visited the city. The 1970s were, in many ways, a fascinating decade. The country was grappling with political and economic crises. Amitabh Bachchan’s Angry Young Man persona was taking the big screen by storm. The Angry Young Man was violent, but like Robin Hood, he was also a friend of the poor and an enemy of the rich. His image was fundamentally anti-establishment and stood for the welfare of the underprivileged.
Prakash Mehra’s film Zanjeer (1973) shaped this image as portrayed by Amitabh Bachchan. The 1970s were among the most turbulent and challenging periods in Indian history, marked by rising unemployment, poverty, and political violence. It was also a time when, on the one hand, the Indian Armed Forces achieved victory against Pakistan in the Bangladesh Liberation War, and on the other hand, Indira Gandhi, the daughter of independent India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was presiding over the country. One of the most provocative slogans of the decade was “Indira Lao, Garibi Hatao.”
The devastating droughts that struck eastern India in the mid-1960s had already hindered the country’s development and intensified poverty, forcing India to become increasingly dependent on Western powers for aid. By the 1970s, the hollow reality of the government’s “Garibi Hatao” slogan was laid bare, as everyday life was shaped by harsh realities like rising prices, growing unemployment and widespread political and financial corruption. The neglect of student movements emerging across the country further fuelled a sense of helplessness.
Ordinary people had grown disillusioned with and angry at the system, and it was in this context that the figure of Inspector Vijay Khanna, played by Bachchan, emerged on screen. This film paved the way for a new kind of hero, a serious, angry, disenchanted Bachchan, in contrast to the romantic and charming personas of Rajesh Khanna or Dev Anand. This Angry Man image laid the foundation for a major shift in cinema, reshaping notions of masculinity, stardom and political discourse on screen.
Alongside this Angry Young Man, the 1970s also saw another young character, created by Chatterjee, a pioneer of middle-of-the-road cinema. This character was Arun Pradeep, played by Amol Palekar in Chhoti Si Baat. Unlike the Angry Young Man, this character was not angry with the system. He was absorbed in his own world, sometimes detached from reality. Basu da’s characters offered relief during the era of the Angry Young Man. Shy and lacking self-confidence, Arun Pradeep often failed to stand up for his beliefs, which allowed others to take advantage of him and push him down.
Released on January 9, 1976, Chhoti Si Baat by Chatterjee is a film that has become a milestone in the history of Hindi cinema. It is a story of a shy person meeting the girl he falls in love with and it works as a coming-of-age story against the background of 1970s Bombay, presenting a very romantic idea of the city.
This was Chatterjee’s fifth film, released after Sara Akash (1969), Piya Ka Ghar (1972), Rajnigandha (1974) and Us Paar (1974). It is also the film that established Amol Palekar and Vidya Sinha as household names.
I consciously watched Chhoti Si Baat when I was in Baroda doing my graduation. What surprised me most when I watched it for the first time was the simplicity with which Chatterjee crafted the film. The film talks about a person who is logically, almost pathologically shy when it comes to speaking to women. He falls in love with a girl who is a modern, office-going, independent woman living in Bombay.
The film tries to deal with many things, but what we cannot say is that it has dated. It comes back very often in discussion and still feels contemporary. However, the city that Chatterjee showed in Chhoti Si Baat, and in other films like Rajnigandha, Khatta Meetha (1978), and Kamla Ki Maut (1989), does not exist anymore. Even the spirit of that city feels absent today. You only find bits and pieces of it here and there.
Historically, Bombay was a city that welcomed differences. Different kinds of people, migrants, merchants and working professionals came to the city and shaped its culture. This diversity created the cultural capital of the city. Chatterjee paid tribute to all of them through his films.
The legend goes that when B. R. Chopra approached Chatterjee to make a film inspired by School for Scoundrels (1960), Chatterjee took artistic liberty and added his own ideas, while borrowing from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947). He made a rough cut of the film, which B. R. Chopra did not like. He also did not put any songs in the film. The story department of B. R. Films believed that you really cannot run a film without music and that songs had to be added.
What came out of this was interesting. The songs in Chhoti Si Baat work almost like a satirical take on Hindi film music. In the song “Jaaneman Jaaneman Tere Do Naina,” you have guest appearances by Dharmendra and Hema Malini. Very soon, Dharmendra is replaced by Palekar and Sinha takes the place of Malini. The song continues with the familiar grammar of running behind trees, lip-syncing and romance, while the story is taken forward.
Chopra was not very happy or enthusiastic about the film and asked Chatterjee to rework it. Eventually, Chopra had to go to Shimla for some reason. While he was away, Chatterjee completed the post-production of the film. When the film finally reached Chopra, he sent a telegram to Chatterjee that read, “Happy preview. Wrong.”
The second half of the film is problematic in many ways. The character of Colonel Julius Nagendra Nath Pratap Singh, played by Ashok Kumar, raises many questions today. Arun following Prabha and being coached on how to woo her is uncomfortable to watch. But at the same time, you see Sinha’s character playing along and often dominating the sequence, rather than being reduced to a passive figure.
There is also this small but fascinating detail from the film. The dish called “Chicken aloo” was created on set. The name was suggested by Ashok Kumar during the café sequence where Asrani’s character, Nagesh, orders dahi vada, chawal, roti, and chicken aloo. Over the years, many people who were around in 1975 have said that audiences would go to cafés after watching the film and ask for chicken aloo, which never existed.
Chatterjee was not a native Bombay wallah. He was born in Ajmer, grew up in Mathura, studied in Agra and then came to Bombay in search of work and opportunity. His cinema reflects the lives of outsiders, migrants and strivers who come to the city and try to find roots.
Cities play an important role in cinema. Often, cities become characters in films. Cinema and the city are deeply connected and nobody has done justice to the city of Bombay the way Chatterjee has done in his films.
There is a particular sequence in Chhoti Si Baat where Arun meets Prabha over a cup of coffee in a dream sequence, set in front of the Gateway of India. Chatterjee could have chosen well-known cafés like Gaylord, but he chose an unnamed café. For an outsider, being at the Gateway of India marks the moment of having arrived in Bombay, the city of dreams. This scene makes that statement very clearly.
All of this was happening at a time when many things were unfolding in Bombay. This was the period when labour unions were active, when the Dalit Panthers were coming together and when regional movements within Maharashtra were gaining strength. Political and social churn surrounded the making of films like Rajnigandha and Chhoti Si Baat, yet Chatterjee chose to tell intimate stories.
Chatterjee was an artist who portrayed the life of the common man. In one of his interviews, he said that he had seen the journey, pain and struggle of the common man, and that this was what he always tried to capture. He spoke about the duality in the lives of ordinary people, their struggles and their attempts to survive in a metropolis. His characters are often outsiders who leave their homes, come to big cities in search of work and try to find their place.
Every character in Chhoti Si Baat, which completes 50 years in 2026, is a relatable migrant. The film reflects this in its opening, showing people from various communities working in the Tularam Company Private Limited, where Arun is also employed. Most of the characters are known only by their first names, which creates a sense of relatability across communities.
In the age of binge-watching, Chhoti Si Baat remains a comfort watch. According to today’s standards, it might be considered a slow film, but that slowness is the beauty of Chhoti Si Baat.
