Veteran actor Biswajit Chatterjee remembers his late friend Manoj Kumar

Mumbai, April 4 (IANS) Veteran actor Biswajit Chatterjee remembered his late friend, Manoj Kumar as he left for a heavenly abode on Friday at the age of 87.

Talking about the legendary actor and director, Biswajit said, “The work that he has done has not been done by any other actor or director of the country. It is even difficult to try and do the work done by him.

The ‘Night in London’ actor added, “All the movies made by him are on the subject of patriotism. The first film by Manoj Kumar that I watched was ‘Shaheed’- in which he played the role of Bhagat Singh. He used to inspire us. I joined Bollywood at the same time as Manoj Kumar and Dharmendra and hence we ended up becoming friends – a friendship that stood the test of time.”

He revealed that he was totally unaware that Manoj Kumar had been suffering from health issues.

“Shashi Bhabhi (Manoj Kumar’s wife) told me that he was in the hospital for a long time- this left me shocked as he was in touch with me through WhatsApp- sending me images, songs, and poetry. I used to get texts from him saying ‘How are you Bishu’ – so I was under the impression that he was fine. However, now I learned that he was suffering for a long time,” Biswajit shared.

Biswajit also spilled the beans on his equation with his counterpart. Recalling a particular incident, he shared, “Once I came to meet him and he told Kunal (Manoj Kumar’s son) to bring me upstairs. We watched television together in his bedroom and had a heart-to-heart. He used to praise me saying- your song ‘Kahin Deep Jale Kahin Dil’ is the best song. I used to counter him saying that his song ‘Naina Barse’ is the best- this was the kind of conversation we used to have.”

–IANS

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