Did you know that the outspoken pretty-faced Moushumi Chatterjee, who turned 78 on April 26, was the first choice for Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s ‘Guddi’ and Gulzar’s ‘Koshish’?Moushumi’s career began with Tarun Majumdar’s superhit Bengali film ‘Balika Badhu’. She was 19 at the time, but in this lovely story based on Rabindranath Tagore’s short work Samapti, she played a much younger child-bride. Later, Jaya Bhaduri played the same role in Uphaar. In fact, Moushumi’s fate seems inextricably linked to Jaya’s.Moushumi told me that she was signed on to do Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Guddi, the 1970 film with which Jaya became an immediate and endurable cine icon. According to Moushumi, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, a family friend of her father-in-law singer-composer Hemant Mukherjee, saw her and immediately offered her Guddi. Thereafter, Moushumi had no idea what happened. Without her knowledge, the project was passed on to Jaya.Guddi was not the only film Moushumi lost to Jaya. In 1972, Gulzar began shooting Koshish with Sanjeev Kumar and Moushumi. Then overnight, as it were, Moushumi was replaced by Jaya. No explanations were provided by any one of the parties involved in the talent exchange programme.When I asked Moushumi about Koshish, she turned uncharacteristically diplomatic, “I would never compromise with my dignity for a role. Koshish is a chapter best forgotten and buried. Many years later Gulzar signed me for Angoor with the same co-star as Koshish, Haribhai (Sanjeev Kumar). There is something called justice in this world.”