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Futility of purity

Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Chupke Chupke ridicules the desire for speaking a pure tongue

Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Chupke Chupke
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Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Chupke Chupke

Uttaran Das Gupta
Engaged in a game of one-upmanship, botany professor Dr Parimal Tripathi (Dharmendra), the protagonist of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Chupke Chupke (1975), turns up at the Mumbai home of his brother-in-law Raghav Sharma (Om Prakash) as a driver from Allahabad. His qualifications include not only good driving but also mastery over chaste Hindi and Urdu.

The reason for this practical joke is to prove to his wife Sulekha (Sharmila Tagore), who hero-worships Raghav, that the brother-in-law is not as sharp as she imagines him to be. Parimal, however, has misgivings about the practical joke; in a call to Sulekha’s brother Haripad Chaturvedi