This is the article which I wrote in 1999 for the same day.... I am just copying and pasting that article
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39 is definitely not an age to die and that too commit suicide? But, unfortunately for a person like Guru Dutt, there was no other alternative.
Guru dutt Shiv Shankar Padukone, born in Karnataka, began his career as a choreographer in Calcutta. From Calcutta, he came to Bombay and in 1946, he choreographed for a movie called Hum Ek Hain. He was also an assistant director for the film. At that time, he was employed at Prabhat Studios where Dev Anand was also working. Both of them became quite close and they decided that whoever gets a chance to become a director would give a chance to another as a hero of that film and vice versa.
1951, Dev Anand began his home production Navketan and became a hero for the film BAAZI. As committed, Guru Dutt was made to sit in the director’s chair. That’s it. The magical wonder was born. From there onwards, Guru (that’s how Dev Anand and Johny Walker used to address him) never looked back. Jaal (1952) Baaz (1953) Aaar Paar (1954) Mr. & Mrs. 55 (1955) Pyaasa (1957), Kagaz Ke Phool (1959), Choudvin Ka Chand (1960), Sahib Bibi Aur Gulam (1962), it was rain of hits. A total of 9 huge hits in a span of just 10 years!!!! Might be Guru Dutt was too tired to complete the other films which he committed that he will do it.
If this is the case of his professional career, destiny had something else in store for him for his personal life.
He got married to Geetha Roy (who later became Geetha Dutt), for whose voice, he fell flat. Things were going quite smoothly in his life. Varun and Tarun were born and he was leading a comfortable life. One fine day, a storm came into his life and it did not stop till it washed him out of this world. This storm was none other than Waheeda Rehman.
Waheeda was an absolutely talented artiste. She was a good dancer, good actor and more than anything, she was breathtakingly beautiful. She acted in CID (remember the song “Kahin pe nigahe kahin pe nishana?). From there onwards, Waheeda never looked back in her career. Gurudutt and Dev Anand exploited her talent to the maximum extent. When Gurudutt started his film Pyaasa, he decided to give more emphasis on Waheeda and thus they started getting closer to each other. This turned into an absolute romantic story. Mind it, it was not a gossip. It was a true story, which was going on.
Quite natural, Geetha Dutt ignored these things in the beginning. But how long? Things started getting worse and literally every day Geetha used shout at Guru Dutt. For an extremely sensitive person like Guru, he was helpless. Geetha dutt stormed out of his house along with two children. From there onwards, Guru Dutt’s life became so lonely and he started getting depressed. In that depression, he made Kagaz ke Phool, which was based on a Film Director’s story. Was he trying to portray himself? VK Murthy, who was a permanent cameraman for all the films of Guru Dutt, felt so in one of the interviews.
In each and every frame of his films, Guru Dutt’s sensitiveness towards life was clearly visible. In spite of this flop in his personal life, he never gave up Waheeda Rehman. After this, he did Choudvin Ka Chand and Sahib Bibi Aur Gulam with Waheeda in the major character.
Post these films, Guru Dutt became more depressed and one fine day, he felt that he had enough of this loneliness and decided to share his feelings with the people with whom he was very close. There were 4 people. Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor, Johny Walker whom Guru Dutt introduced and Abrar Alvi who used to write the story and screenplay for Guru Dutt’s films. He called up Dev Anand and said he is feeling alone. As usual, Dev took this in a joking sense, started laughing and kept down the phone. That was the beginning of Guru Dutt’s end. He called up Raj Kapoor but Raj said he would be able to meet him only next day morning as he was going to Pune for some work. He could not get Johny Walker and Abrar Alvi on the line. He immediately took a decision that there will be nobody for him and in that distress, he switched on his gramophone and put on the song “Waqt ne kiya kya hasin Sitam, Tum rahe na tum, Hum rahe na hum” (how the time made all of us. You were not you and I was not I) sung by Geetha Dutt. He consumed a bottle full of sleeping tablets and went to sleep forever. The song ended and almost at the same time, Guru Dutt’s physical presence in this world came to an end. This song sounded so much made to him. If you listen to each words of this song carefully, you can feel that pain and loneliness which Guru Dutt suffered in the end and it feels that this song bacame a swan song in his life. Even today the people, who said they were thick pals with him, fondly remember Guru Dutt. They were friends with him only when he was in thick of happiness.
Guru Dutt and his films
Most of his films were based on an existence of emotional bondage or ruthlessness of the society. These issues were depicted through every single character he portrayed in his films. Whether it was Pyasaa, which portrayed the main protagonist reminiscent of Devdas, or Aar Paar, where Driver Kalu (Guru Dutt played this character) thinks of eloping with the employer’s daughter made the viewers have a shock. Please remember that I am talking of the generation of 1953. His films had the audacity to take playful swipe at the bourgeois traditions of family conducts and social values[1].
Are you a communist? No, I am a cartoonist. So says his hero in Mr. & Mrs.55. Though Guru Dutt would be the last person to describe himself as a cartoonist, yet it is an equally interesting angle of vision on the man as the more conventional one of the sensitive, misunderstood romantic.[2]
As far as the aesthetics of his films were concerned, Guru Dutt can be termed as a pioneer in using the lights in the best possible way. One of his classics Kagaz ke Phool is a beautiful example for usage of light and shadows to depict brightness and darkness of life. And to your surprise, you will see the darkness more than light, which as I said earlier was an integral part of his life. His cameraman VK Murthy was one of the brain behind these classic shots and they set a standard. Guru Dutt also set the new trends for song picturization in his films.
Overall, with a very short span and less number of films, Guru Dutt is remembered among the line of classic filmmakers like Satyajit Ray, Akira Kourasowa, Felini, etal.
“In the formula-ridden film world of ours one who ventures to go out of the beaten track is condemned to the definition which Matthew Arnold used for Shelly, “….an angel beating his wings in a void”. I believe one who is out to go against the winds has to be prepared for bouquets as well as brickbats, for triumph as well as heartbreaks, whether or not one makes a classical or collects the cash. It is this baffling unpredictability that gives edge to the thrill of movie-making”
- Guru Dutt
[1] Shampa Bannerjee in her article on Guru Dutt. Shampa is one of the best film critics with specialisation of Satyajit Ray and Guru Dutt
[2] Shampa Bannerjee and Ref : Guru Dutt : A Life in Cinema by Nasreen Munni Kabir
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