Mr. Arunkumar Deshmukh

A Very Knowledgeable Researcher of Hindi and other Films

I saw his name here and there around 2012 on RMIM, and later on memsaabstory blog and other places. He asked interesting questions and many times answered others' questions. His answers always showed the depth of his knowledge and study. He did not merely state the answer, but often went through a list of commonly accepted ones, detailing problems with them and then, finally, expressing his opinion with authority.

I found him most commonly on Atul's Song a Day blog and we became Facebook friends. He is very well read on the subject of Hindi and Marathi (I am sure a few more!) films and film people. I treat him as an authority on what he writes.

He was born in 1940. He got his Bachelor's in Agriculture, joined Glaxo in 1964 and retired as General Manager (Marketing) in 1998. He did consultancy until 2007 and is currently director in two Pharma companies.

He has been watching films since the early 50s, including the ones from the 30s and 40s. Evey body of his age did that, presumably. What he did different was to write detailed notes about every film he saw in notebooks. Their number has swelled to more than 100!.

The information in his notebooks combined with extensive reading of books he has collected and studying of others' articles has helped him write more that 800 reviews of films and more than 1000 articles on the subject. Links to some of these are provided below.