Raju Shresta - Son of Yusuf Ajani

Raju Shresta - Son of Yusuf Ajani, originally uploaded by firoze shakir photographerno1.

Master Raju, Raju Shresta the grieving son of Yusuf Bhaijan,or Yusuf Ajani too was at the Jashn, he later came home too see my posts on Flickr about his dad, and was extremely touched by the tributes to his dad by my Flickr friends and Syed Zaghamuddin of Facebook.

He added me as his friend on Facebook.

Raju Shresta was one of the finest child artiste of Bollywood than known as Master Raju, all the films he did with the actors of repute and each one is memorable.

www.imdb.com/name/nm0557625/

Kitab 1977
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitaab

Kitaab is a 1977 Hindi movie. Produced by Pranlal Mehta and Gulzar the film is directed by Gulzar. The film stars Uttam Kumar, Vidya Sinha, Shreeram Lagoo, Keshto Mukherjee and Asit Sen. Musical score is by R. D. Burman


Babla (played by Master Raju) is a kid who lives in a village with his mother (played by Dina Pathak). His mother sends him to his sister's (played by Vidya Sinha) place (in a city) so that he can go to a good school. Initially, Babla likes both school as well as sister's home very much and becomes a good friend with Pappu (played by Master Tito), his classmate. They roam around in streets, watch street magic show and wish they could do such tricks, look inquisitively at how sweets are made, make fun of teacher etc. They enjoy, as any kid will, all these things thoroughly. But Babla gets reminded of the harsh reality of life when his sister and brother-in-law starts scolding him for his disinterest in studies and complaints from the school regarding his so-called irresponsible behavior (like making fun of teachers, singing in the classroom etc). He gets to realize that nobody understands kids, their innocence, their view of life and he will have to grow up to enjoy life fully. One thing leads to another and one day Babla decides that he will be better off living with his mother in village. He runs off and get on a train. Since he does not have any ticket, ticket-master catches him and makes him get off on the next station. In the night he feels cold and look around for some shelter. He finds an old woman sleeping in a blanket and lie down besides her sharing the blanket. In the morning, finding the old beggar woman still sleeping, he picks up a coin from her container and goes off to drink water. While drinking water he sees that lots of people have gathered around the old lady. He goes there and finds out that the lady he had been sleeping with was dead. He gets scared to his core and realizes that life is, in fact, not that simple for those who are poor. He puts back the coin he had taken and run off to his mother's place. There he finds his mother, sister and brother-in-law worrying about him. They are overjoyed to see Babla back and Babla promises to everyone that he will study sincerely and never create troubles for anyone.

Though a box office debacle, Kitaab remains one of the favourite movies of Gulzar.[1]