You cannot ignore this familiar presence in the wood-panelled office. A small, yet significant statuette of 'Bapu' - in his distinctive posture at the charkha - is, in fact, the first thing that catches my eye, when I walk into the room, taking the attention away from the many film awards that are lined up on the mantelpiece a few feet above…. And naturally so, for the office belongs to Rajkumar Hirani, the director who made Lage Raho Munna Bhai - the film that catapulted the 'Gandhigiri' mantra back into the vocabulary of a populace which had put the leader's principles on a back-burner and right into the dictionary of a young generation which has discovered his relevance.

Hirani walks in a few minutes after the appointed hour and admits with a smile, "After Lage Raho… everyone has started giving me gifts connected with Gandhiji"! Not that he minds though, for the award-winning film editor-director says that he has been influenced by 'the Father of the Nation' right from his youth. "Like all students I studied about Gandhiji in my history books," he states. "And when I watched Richard Attenborough's film, I was all the more impressed by what he stood for. His philosophy, much more than turning your other cheek, embraces a whole way of thinking...."

A way of thinking that propelled a nation to fight for independence…yet, a surprising choice for a masala movie in the high-tech state age…. "When I spoke about my subject," he states, "many film-makers told me that I had lost my mind. There were no stunts, no item numbers, no semi-clad women. But luckily, I did not have to make a movie only for pots of money. I wanted to make a film that was unique and fascinating."

Continuing in the same vein, the 40-plus director - who has already won awards for Lage Raho…- confesses to a penchant for "human stories that are treated in a light-hearted manner", something like his first offering on celluloid, Munna Bhai MBBS. Having grown up on a diet of emotional movies made by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Gulzar and Basu Chatterjee, Hirani would love to create "human, slice of life stories. I cannot do a thriller," he confesses. "To me content is more important than form. I must evoke some emotion - either tears or laughter. There are two ways of making a film - take a DVD and copy it. Or explore your life and put inputs from there into your film. Ultimately, I would like to make the cinema that I want to see. My benchmark is: 'Am I laughing or crying?' If it works for me, I assume it will work for everyone."

The director points out that Lage Raho… was derived from another story that he had written. "This narrative had been with me for quite some time," he says. "In it, the Father of the Nation influences a 16-year-old boy when when he visits his village. Later, due to an accident, the boy slips into a coma. Fifty years later he comes out of it. The country is independent but his hero, Gandhiji, is dead. He starts hallucinating."

Feeling that the plot was unique but the story was not going anywhere, Hirani began to work around it. And with Munna Bhai… already in his cinematic repertoire, it was but natural to think of transposing the central character of that film into this narrative in some way or the other. "I thought that I would forget the boy," he reveals. "What if Munnabhai were to meet Gandhiji? The idea would be entertaining."

What reinforced his conviction in his 'original' idea was when he discovered how little the masses remembered a leader who had helped humble an empire. "We had begun work on the film and were recording the first song in a studio," he flashbacks. "At that time the working title was Munna Bhai Meets Gandhiji. A chaiwallah came up and asked someone in my unit, 'I know who Munnabhai is, but who is Gandhiji?' I was stunned. When I reached home and asked the same question to my bai (domestic help), she too was blank. And then I realised that the freedom struggle was just a part of history now. Anyone who was born much after independence and had not gone to school, may not be aware of Bapu...."