General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Parichay (परिचय)

Parichay (परिचय; "introduction" or "acquaintance") is a 1972 Hindi family musical directed by Gulzar, in which an unemployed young man, Ravi, takes a job tutoring the five unruly grandchildren of a wealthy disciplinarian and gradually restores warmth to a broken household. It stars Jeetendra, Jaya Bhaduri, and Pran, with music by Rahul Dev Burman, and it was the first collaboration between Gulzar and Burman.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	18 October 1972, India; Hindi language³
Director / producer	Gulzar; V.K. Sobti for Tirupati Pictures¹
Lead cast	Jeetendra (Ravi), Jaya Bhaduri (Rama), Pran (Rai Saheb), Sanjeev Kumar, Asrani, Vinod Khanna⁴
Source	Credited as based on the Bengali novel Rangeen Uttarain by Raj Kumar Maitra; inspired by The Sound of Music (1965)¹
Music	Rahul Dev Burman; lyrics by Gulzar; playback by Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar, Asha Bhosle, and Bhupendra Singh¹^•⁴
Runtime / rating	145 minutes; Indian censor rating U (certificate 70974-Mumbai, dated 18/10/1972)⁵
IMDb rating	7.6/10 from about 1.1K user ratings⁶

Spoilers

Story

Ravi (Jeetendra), desperate for work, visits his maternal uncle (A.K. Hangal) and aunt (Leela Mishra) in their village. The uncle decides he can serve as teacher for the five obstinate, spoiled grandchildren of the wealthy Rai Saheb (Pran), and Ravi accepts. He soon learns that his employment depends not on him but on the children, who have never tolerated any tutor beyond a few days.³

The household is a dysfunctional family in which love is conspicuously absent. Rai Saheb, a strict disciplinarian, took in the five children after the death of his son Nilesh and daughter-in-law Sujata, and runs the house with rules that ban laughter and music. The children, led by their eldest sister Rama (Jaya Bhaduri), present a united front against every tutor he hires.⁵^•²

Ravi wins the children over with unconventional methods, using music, storytelling, and humor, and in doing so opens a dialogue between Rai Saheb and the grandchildren. In the climax, when Rai Saheb realizes that Ravi had come to see Rama and left without meeting her, he rushes Rama to the railway platform, and the two are united.⁵^•⁷

Origins and adaptation

The film is credited as based on the Bengali novel Rangeen Uttarain by Raj Kumar Maitra, but it bears distinct similarities to the Hollywood classic The Sound of Music (1965), starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer: a tutor for a large fatherless brood, songs that teach, and a stern patriarch softened by love.¹ The Indian Express has described the plot as inspired by that film.⁸

The screenplay was written by Gulzar and D.N. Mukherjee from a story by R.K. Mitra; Gulzar also wrote the dialogues and lyrics and supplied the introductory voice-over.⁴^•⁹ It was Gulzar's second film as director, following Mere Apne (1971), and he released Koshish the same year.¹⁰

Music

Rahul Dev Burman's score is regarded as one of the film's major highlights, and Parichay was the first collaboration between Burman and Gulzar, a partnership that went on to produce Aandhi, Khushboo, Kitaab, Kinara, and Ijaazat among others.¹^•²

Three songs stand out in the sources:

Beeti Na Bitai Raina, sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Bhupendra, won Mangeshkar the National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer.¹
Kishore Kumar's Musafir Hoon Yaaron placed 25th on the Binaca Geetmala's yearly chart for 1973 and continues to be counted among Hindi film music's most cherished numbers.¹
Sa Re Ke Sa Re, sung by Asha Bhosle and Kishore Kumar, playfully references the solfège scale popularized by Rodgers and Hammerstein in The Sound of Music, teaching Hindustani classical sargam to rebellious students as a game.¹

The film also gave the singer Bhupendra a career turning point: he sang "Mitwa Bole Meethe" and "Na Bivai Aisa" under Burman's direction alongside Lata Mangeshkar, and the Gulzar–Bhupendra pairing went on to produce many remembered songs.¹¹

Reception and legacy

At the ticket window the film achieved average success, but the cast's performances, Gulzar's controlled screenplay, and the music made it a favorite of critics and of a lasting following.¹ On IMDb it holds 7.6/10 from about 1.1K ratings, with an unweighted mean of 7.7.⁶

Indian commentators return to the film on Teachers' Day as a portrait of how children respond to love rather than authority and excessive discipline, and of the role music can play in healing and inspiring them.⁷^•¹² A 2023 Indian Express retrospective reads it as a study of a dysfunctional family, in which the grandfather's conditional love drove his son away and only an outsider's patience repairs the household.¹³

The film remains available in India on Amazon Prime Video, including with ads, and on the Ultraplaybox Amazon channel.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Indian films (individual works) › Hindi films of the 1970s › Released 1970 to 1975

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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