Arun Bhatt was born on 26 September 1934 in Mumbai. He was the eldest son of the legendary movie producer and director Vijay Bhatt, founder of Prakash Pictures.

Arun Bhatt was a person with a mixture of several qualities. He was well conversant with History, Geography, Indian and English movies, theatre and literature and could speak on these subjects for hours together. He possessed an infectious sense of humour.

Bhatt was a voracious reader and took deep interest in literature, music and art. From K.M. Munshi to Ishwar Petlikar, Tagore to Premchand he read books by them all. He was extremely well versed with international authors such as Alexander Dumas, Somerset Maugham, John Steinbeck, Dostovksy and Mopasa. In the early 60s while reading a book on Albert Schweitzer he was inspired to write a script for a film that later became the basis for Himalay Ki Godmein directed by Vijay Bhatt.

Arun Bhatt also had a keen ear for music and was proficient in playing a flute. He He could talk in detail on each of the ragas and would also follow Western classical music with equal ease. As a youngster, he had dreams of becoming a music composer but the filmmaking desires became stronger once he started assisting his father as a director. Arun Bhatt’s interest in music did not take a back seat as he involved himself completely in matters of lyrics and music in all the films that he was a part of. Some of the songs of his films are immensely popular even today. Not many people know that since Bhatt could play the flute well, Vijay Bhatt filmed his fingers on the Shehnai instead of Rajendra Kumar’s throughout the film, Goonjh Uthi Shehnai.

Arun Bhatt displayed his skills as a painter too. He indulged in water colour paintings in his free time. He followed the works of impressionists such as Van Gogh, Renoir, Paul Gaughin and loved the landscape artist Whistler and the way Rembrandt painted light and shade. Find some of his landscape paintings here.