As many of us romanced the rain from our windows on Thursday morning, listening to Rimjhim gire saawan, the filmmaker who gave us the classic bid adieu to the world. Basu Chatterjee, with his stories that were sprinkled with love and the everyday truths, has inspired an entire generation of artistes. Of the current lot, Shoojit Sircar has retained the beauty of Chatterjee's works, bringing a similar affable quality to his films.

After all, his first brush with movies was through Chatterjee's lens — in the late '80s, Sircar began his career as an assistant on the set of a Bengali series, Jodi Emon Hoto, the auteur was helming. "Theatre actor Ruma Ghosh had got me the gig. For the first few days, I didn't know I was on a Basu Chatterjee set. When I finally saw him on the set, I told them I am ready to work for free," says Sircar on phone. The director, then a wide-eyed boy just out of college, remembers his first interaction with the filmmaker. "We were shooting in Delhi's CR Park. I was watching the scene, and he kept shouting, 'Field e achho; bero eikhan theke' [You are in the frame, step out of it]. I didn't even know what a field was."