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Guru Dutt in black and white

The hugely talented filmmaker's life was punctuated by personal and professional setbacks - at times, the personal segueing into the professional. Guru Dutt's (suspected) suicide and posthumous fame followed, making him possibly Bollywood's biggest real-life tragic hero

Come July 9 this year, he would have been 91 years old. One of the most canonised auteurs of Hindi cinema, Guru Dutt passed away in October 1964 - suspected suicide - in the prime of his career, at the age of 39. It is believed he had attempted to take his life on two earlier occasions. When he died, he was in the midst of monitoring the making of Baharen Phir Bhi Aayengi, starring Dharmendra, Mala Sinha and Tanuja, in the capacity of its producer. At home alone in Mumbai's upscale Peddar Road, he was reported to have taken an overdose of alcohol and sleeping tablets.
Discerning film lovers of vintage cinema still cannot come to terms with how he went away so prematurely. For sure, there were many more masterpieces to come from the creator of a wide range of movies including noir crime thrillers (Baazi, 1951), goofy comedies (Mr & Mrs 55, 1955), the classic Muslim social drama (Chaudhavin Ka Chand, 1960) and dramas of human relationships steeped in melancholia (Pyaasa, 1957; Kaagaz Ke Phool, 1959).
Guru Dutt, whose birth name was Vasanth Kumar Shivashankar Padukone, at the outset of his career worked as a telephone operator in Calcutta, eventually landing up in Bombay to find employment at the film studios. He struck up a lifelong friendship with Dev Anand and character actor Rehman.
Debuting as a director with the successful Baazi, top-lining Dev Anand and Geeta Bali, he directed eight films, acted occasionally and seemed to be irrevocably restless - a hallmark perhaps of an auteur who wished to fit into the hyper-commercial market, yet with a difference.
Which was true as well, in an entirely different context, of the great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who had attempted to end his life, mercifully in vain. Closer home to Bollywood, Manmohan Desai, the wizard of grand entertainers, chose to, allegedly, extinguish himself when his back ailment didn't abate despite years of medical attention (though the suicide has not been officially confirmed). The once-cheerful Desai, during his last years, had sunk into a state of depression.
Getting back to Guru Dutt, his sister, eminent artist Lalitha Lajmi, recounted, "My brother was extremely introverted and had his lapses of manic depression. In fact, the sense of despair evident in his best films appeared to have stemmed from his own personality. One can only assume that, inwardly, his wounds just wouldn't heal."
According to most accounts in film magazines of the time, Guru Dutt was estranged from his wife, singer Geeta Dutt. Lore has it, too, that the filmmaker's relationship with his muse Waheeda Rehman, whom he had mentored, had become a talking point. The ever-cherished actress has chosen to maintain a dignified silence on the subject.
Stalwart director Shyam Benegal, who was related to Guru Dutt, recalls, "He asked me to work on a script based on an epic Urdu poem by Sahir. I did, but the project never took off. In any case, I had already written the script of Ankur and was more interested in getting that off the ground. I'd meet Guru Dutt's family often and even stayed in his mother's home for a while."
Benegal adds, "What I remember most of all is the preview screening of Kaagaz Ke Phool, India's first cinemascope film. Bimal Roy and other leading lights of the film industry were present. At the end of the screening, there was pin-drop silence. No one said a word. Guru Dutt was absolutely crestfallen."
Ironically, Kaagaz Ke Phool - whose plot had a strong resemblance to George Cukor's A Star Is Born, starring James Mason and Judy Garland - went on to be acknowledged as a masterpiece. It is the centre-point of a triptych, which started with Pyaasa (1957) and rounded off with Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962). All photographed brilliantly in chiaroscuro black-and-white by the late VK Murthy, these films are threaded by the theme of unrequited love.
Moreover, the triptych assigns woman characters a status of equality and an independent identity - be it the supportive, poetry-loving Gulabo of Pyaasa, or Shanti, the actress who outshines her mentor in Kaagaz Ke Phool (both roles were impactfully portrayed by Waheeda Rehman), or the aristocratic chhoti bahu of Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, unforgettably enacted by Meena Kumari.
It would be gratuitous to say that they don't make cinema like these any more. As it happened, the director's credit for Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam was given to the filmmaker's regular writer Abrar Alvi. Yet, the signature (or let's say, inputs) of Guru Dutt cannot be ignored.
It is conjectured that after the box-office failure of Kaagaz Ke Phool, Guru Dutt had chosen to subvert his name as director in the credits. A question mark persists.
Just as it does over his entire body of works: during his lifetime, he wasn't accorded his due status.
His genius has been celebrated posthumously. So what can be said? What apology can we tender? At the very least, on every July 9, film devotees can remember his birthday. Once more with feeling and gratitude.