Professor Parimal Tripathi [Dharmendra] is a botany professor who falls in love with Sulekha Chaturvedi [Sharmila Tagore] during a womens college botany excursion. Prof. Parimal Tripathi helps the bungalow watchman to get to his village downhill to enable him to see his grandson whos fallen ill. Meanwhile he disguises as the bungalow watchman to protect the old mans job. Sulekha finds out one day about the cover-up and is charmed on seeing Parimals real personality. They both get married. Parimal loves playing pranks and is the antithesis of regular professors. Sulekha, on the other hand is in awe by her jijaji [brother-in-law] Raghavendra [Om Prakash]. She considers her jijaji to be highly intellectual and looks upon him as her idol. Parimal develops an inferiority complex thanks to Sulekhas excessive praise of her jijaji and decides to prove that he is in no way a lesser mortal. Sulekha is angry over Parimals friends who, in their desire to entertain them, unknowingly cause Parimal to get bad stomach. Jijaji, meanwhile, has written a letter to Haripat bhaiyya [David Abraham Cheulkar] pressing him to send a driver who can speak quality Hindi because his present driver James Dcosta [Keshto Mukherjee] has bad grammar and usage. This provides the perfect opportunity for Parimal to get to see and interact with jijaji. Parimal becomes Pyaremohan Ilahabadi, a motor-mouth driver who pretends to hate the English language and so speaks only Hindi. So begins the comedy of errors, as Parimal and Sulekha play prank after prank on the unsuspecting jijaji. First they pretend that Sulekha is not happy with her new marriage, then they put across the impression that Sulekha is having an affair with Pyaremohan, and, if that was not enough, they get Parimal''s long time friend Sukumar Sinha [Amitabh Bachchan], who is also a Professor, but of English literature, to temporarily act as Parimal and portray him as a serious and boring lecturer, the complete opposite of Parimals character. Pyaremohans excessively refined Hindi, his habit of correcting jijajis usage of the language and his persistence in getting jijaji to teach him English all serve to irk jijaji to no end and provide for many laughs. Parimals long-time friend P K Srivastava [Asrani] is also party to the prank. His sister-in-law Vasudha [Jaya Bachchan] suspects fake Parimal - Sukumar Sinha - of infidelity to his wife Sulekha when he tries to get close to her. Sukumar falls in love with Vasudha who at first believed he was Parimal, but Sukumar reveals to her the real drama behind all this mix-up of situations. Lata Srivastava [Lily Chakravarty], P K Srivastavas wife, is also angered over the latest extra marital love affair. But toward the end, Sukumar and Vasudha end up marrying in a temple where Haripat bhaiyya coerces Pyaremohan to kill himself so that Parimal could surface. Thus jijaji comes to comprehend the whole enactment, finally admitting that he was truly fooled. The film revolves around the resolution of these funny mishaps.

Trivia

* Jaya Bhaduri was pregnant during the making of the film. Most of her shots have been taken very carefully, as to avoid her profile view. * Mohd. Rafi has one stanza less in the the song Sa re ga ma, as he was not present during the dubbing session. Kishore Kumar, who was the other singer, sang the additional stanza. * Hrishikesh Mukherjee wanted newcomers for the parts played by Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri.

Degrees of separation

This film is one of two released in 1975 to cast Dharmendra and Amitabh together, the other being Sholay. Apart from these, Ram Balram was the only other film that the two starred in together, if one does not count Dharmendras guest appearances in Andha Kanoon and Naseeb, and Amitabhs cameo in Guddi and Dost.