Firstpost at IFFI 2025 | Rajkumar Hirani opens up on ‘Lage Raho Munna Bhai’: ‘People said they don’t see Mahatma Gandhi in the second half and…’ – Firstpost

Rajkumar Hirani is one of the most successful filmmaker in Indian cinema. In the last 22 years since he has been working as a director, he has not given a single flop. And most of the movies that he has made continue to stand the test of time. And one of the movies happens to be the 2006 blockbuster Lage Raho Munna Bhai.

The filmmaker was at the 56th International Film Festival of India in Goa where he spoke about one particular scene where a man continuously spits a pan outside someone’s door. He spoke about where the inspiration of the scene came from.

Hirani revealed, “A lady was on the ground floor. On the first floor, there was some other lady. The kitchen was there. And from the kitchen, she would throw the eggshells, cut vegetables. All the garbage would come down into a little patch of garden she had. And that would happen every day. So my mother-in-law’s maid would yell at that person. Nothing happened.

The filmmaker added, “So one day, she went to her little patch of garden. She picked up all the eggshells. She picked up all the vegetables, put it in a plastic packet, went up to the first floor, rang the bell, the lady of that house opened the door, and she says, “Aapka kuch saamaan roz gir jaata hai aap Chinta mat Karo main aapko pahuncha diya karoongi.” And it stopped. The next day it stopped. So by yelling it didn’t stop but by goodness it stopped. So that scene got converted into the spitting scene. But these were all reflections from life which made us write those scenes and convert those scenes.”

On people’s reactions to
Lage Raho Munna Bhai

One another thing that came to my mind now actually while I was watching this since is that when we had finished the edit of the movie, one comment which was constantly coming from the reactions of people who were shown the film was that in the second half, we don’t see Gandhiji. It’s a film about Gandhiji and we don’t see him. I said “No, I can’t just bring him.” So what we did in the edit was… we created this song, Bande Mein Tha Dum. And whenever something happened, we played this song and Swanand Kirkire wrote the lyrics. And it keeps coming whenever any Gandhi deed happens, a good deed happens.