In Bombay, he won acclaim as a composer of several film scores, including Chetan Anand's "Aandhiyan" (1952). Lata Mangeshkar sang the title song, "Har Kahin Pe Shaadmani" and as a token of her respect to sarod maestro, did not charge any fee. This was followed by Satyajit Ray's "Devi" (1960), Merchant-Ivory's "The Householder", and Tapan Sinha's "Khudito Pashan" ("Hungry Stones", 1960), for which he won the "Best Musician of the Year" award. He also played Sarod for a song in 1955 film "Seema" which had the music composed by Shankar Jaikishan. Later in 1993, he would score some of the music for Bernardo Bertolucci's "Little Buddha".