Chitralaya Gopu goes on a rewind mode

Popular screenplay writer Chitralaya Gopu, who turned 90 recently, talks about his funny bone

A casual mention of a mutual friend’s name makes Chitralaya Gopu sit up, as he rummages through memory, which is impressively intact for someone in his 90s. “Can you believe it? I am talking about something that happened in the late 1940s,” he says with childlike enthusiasm, when we catch up at his Thiruvanmiyur residence. Dressed in a crisp grey kurta and veshti, Gopu reads out the highlights of his career that he has meticulously noted on a sheet of paper soon after the interview was set up.