This is the enigma of Basu Chatterji. His films did not have the box-office ingredients that could make them a distributor’s hot pick, nor were they art house cinema that needed unravelling over many cups of tea. He was the quintessential ’middle-of-the-road’ film-maker, a genre that he founded in Bollywood. His films, whether it be Chhoti Si Baat or Rajnigandha or Chitchor, were about common people and common problems, such as employment and love, social and economic inequalities, and joint family conflicts.