I shared a long association with Kamleshwar, the person and the writer. The common link between us was literature. I recollect many conversations where we both shared our thoughts and creativity. Too many evenings were spent reading poems and discussing stories. I’ve always been a great admirer of his work. In my opinion, Kamleshwar and Mohan Rakesh were the young Turks of Hindi literature, especially short stories.

Kamleshwar was a very generous and broad-minded person. He had opinions but he was also a good listener. He gave himself whole-heartedly to his work. He was quite a pioneer in that regard. He was the editor of the magazine Sarika and I distinctly remember that when I started the form of Triveni, he was the first one to publish it. So in a way, Triveni started with Kamleshwar. He also anchored the television programme Parikrama on Doordarshan.

I was lucky to have him on board when I was filming Aandhi and Mausam. I recollect many entertaining and engrossing brainstorming sessions with him. I used to joke, “Ki main toh shayari karta hoon, asli storywriter toh tum ho”. I had the privilege of giving name to his novel, Aagam-e-Ateet, which was based on my movie Mausam. He also wrote a novel on Aandhi titled Kaali Aandhi.

Kamleshwar’s scenes and descriptions were so visual that many a times, I was compelled to make an entire film merely after reading one line. I remember when I was reading one of his most recent and beautiful works, Kitne Pakistan, I had underlined so many sentences that were potential short stories or film material. There is a description where a handkerchief falls off the bridge; I always used to tell him that I could write a complete short story on this one line only.

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