Pandit Madhur
- Real Name: Buddhichandra Aggarwal
- Died: 8 June 1988 (Mumbai)
- Primary Cinema: Hindi
- Last film: Shiv Ganga (1988)
- Children: Shubhkaran Agarwal
An acclaimed playwright of Parsi theatre, Pandit Madhur was welcomed into the film industry with open arms. While his interest lay in writing stories and plays, and he established both his own theatre company as well as a film production house, Pandit Madhur made his name in films primarily as a lyricist.
Hailing from Sardarshahar in the Churu district of Rajasthan, Pandit Madhur was named Buddhichandra Aggarwal at birth. His father was a lawyer by profession who was deeply interested in the literary arts. An aspiring writer himself, Madhur’s father preferred to dictate his stories, while it was Madhur who would put them down on paper. Gradually, the young Buddhichandra also developed a passion for literature.
When his father passed away in 1929, Buddhichandra travelled to Calcutta in search of employment. While there, he met a fellow Rajasthani, Rangkarmi Manik Lal Dangi, who encouraged him to write scripts for plays. He wrote his first play Amar Balidaan around this time, under the pseudonym Pandit Madhur, which was to accompany him throughout his career.
Praise of Pandit Madhur’s skills reached G.N. Ghose, a gramophone company owner and he invited Madhur to write gramophone plays, which circulated widely. Soon, he started composing plays regularly for Salona and H.M.V., and the popularity of his plays convinced theatre owners of Parsi companies to reach out to him. He was commissioned to write for Alfred Theatre and Corinthian Theatre company, and wrote nearly 55 plays in this stretch.
In 1940, the director P.C. Barua reached out to Pandit Madhur and requested him to write the lyrics for the music in his upcoming film Jawab. Starring the acclaimed actress Kanan Devi, Jawab was a success across the country, and brought in offers for Madhur from Mumbai. By this time, Madhur had also established his own theatre company. Giving precedence to staging his plays, he moved to Delhi with his company instead.
The times were changing, however, and theatres were losing their audiences to the new, glittering world of cinema. Pandit Madhur’s theatre company was not meeting his expectations, and he was beginning to sustain severe losses. When the producer-director A.R. Kardar reached out to Madhur and asked him to be the lyricist for his films, Madhur returned to Mumbai, where he wrote the lyrics for the film Sanyasi (1945). Following this, he remained active in his career as a film lyricist as well as a dialogue and screenplay writer. In 1963, he produced the film Parasmani along with Bachubhai Mistry and Babubhai Mistry.
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