Jagmohan Mundhra
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The Times of India, Sep 5, 2011
Bharti Dubey and Pratibha Masand TNN
IIT grad-turned-filmmaker Jagmohan Mundhra dead
Sixty-four-yearold filmmaker Jagmohan Mundhra passed away in Bombay Hospital on Sunday morning after suffering a gastrointestinal hemorrhage for about two days before he had a multiple organ failure.
Mundhra was brought to Bombay Hospital early on Friday morning with chest pain, sweating and a blood pressure as low as 50. His symptoms were that of a cardiac attack and he was admitted in the critical care unit immediately. The doctors soon realized that the director was not suffering from a heart attack.
“His ECG showed everything in his heart was normal. He had a history of angioplasty four months ago in Los Angeles, which gave us a greater reason to suspect it was a heart problem,” said Dr B K Goyal, cardiologist from Bombay Hospital, who was called as soon as the film-maker was brought to the hospital. “But it turned out that there was heavy bleeding in his gastrointestinal tract,” Dr Goyal said.
The hemorrhage caused pneumonia and multiple organ failure, which ultimately was the cause of death.
Mundhra was born in a conservative Marwari family, which did not allow children to watch too many films. Mundhra continued to dream of becoming a filmmaker and at the same time finished his graduation in electrical engineering from IIT Bombay. After graduation, Jag Mundhra went to the United States in 1968 for the MBA programme at Michigan State University. He stayed on to do his MA in advertising and a Ph.D in marketing from the same university. In 1973, he wrote his doctoral thesis on “Marketing of Motion Pictures.”
He even taught at several universities in California before he decided to take a plunge into filmmaking. He got noticed with his film Kamala, a socially-relevant film. He then went on to make horror and erotic thrillers. Some of his films are The Jigsaw Murders (1988), Halloween Night (1988), Night Eyes (1990), L.A. Goddess (1993), Sexual Malice (1994) and Monsoon (1998).
He became more of an NRI director, who worked with international stars and made films in English. Director Shekhar Kapur tweeted ‘Jagmohan Mundhra and his wife Chandra selflessly looked after people from Indian films in LA. Looked after me for months when I first landed.’
Beginning with Bawandar (2000), Mundhra was back to issue-oriented films. He also directed Aishwarya Rai in Provoked, a film based on the real life story of Kiranjit Alhuwalia, a victim of domestic violence. His last film, Naughty at 40, was with Govinda.
