My granddad made movies. In the ‘70s, Dulal Guha was among Hindi cinema’s most prominent filmmakers - smashing it out of the park in successive years with films like ‘Dharti Kahe Pukar Ke’, ‘Dushmun’, ‘Pratiggya’, ‘Dost’ and ‘Do Anjaane’. There’s enough magic in there than most filmmakers can conjure up in an entire career. . And yet, growing up, I had no understanding of his filmography, or craft. He retired from the movie business when I was 4, and I never saw the filmmaker version of him. To me, he was just “Babuji”, who I spent summer vacations with every year at our farm house in Nashik, where my granny and he spoilt me silly. . Ironically, a ritual from that time was the midday story session. Right after a delicious fish curry lunch, and before he snoozed for about an hour, Babuji would narrate a quick tale. These were simple yarns, not lasting more than 10-15 minutes, and there was almost always an underlying moral lesson (which was, admittedly, lost on me at that time). Vividly descriptive, engaging short stories that kept me zapped on quaint, lazy afternoons. . Many years later, I rediscovered his movies. All of them gloriously mainstream, but never bereft of subtle, underlying social messaging, strong character arcs, and sharp, nuanced storytelling. Only now - exactly 20 years after he passed away - can I fully fathom the talent of a filmmaker who I spent a lot of time with until the age of 15, but only ever thought of as my “granddad”. . Having taken the career path I eventually did - first as film critic, and now as screenwriter - I imagine all the conversations we would’ve had but never did: the mise-en-scène of his movies, his take on other great directors, discussions around themes and tropes that drove his filmmaking, how his scripts evolved, etc. . And yet, I wonder now: Were those afternoon sessions some sort of secret transference; a subconscious passing of the baton - the planting of the seeds for who I would become later in life? I never got acquainted with the “film director”, but I’m glad