Guru Dutt

by Yasser Usman

  The film was Baazi.

  ‘One evening, he returned home laden with gifts and the news that he was directing a film. He told my mother that Dev Anand remembered his promise. We have never seen him so happy,’ recalls Lalitha. The time had come for Guru Dutt.

  S.D. Burman was composing the music for Baazi and he brought on board Geeta Roy as the lead female playback singer.

  Geeta writes, ‘[S.D. Burman] sent word to me that morning to report for rehearsal at the Famous Cine Laboratory and Studios at Mahalaxmi. My father and I drove to the studio and parked the car in the compound. He got out, saying he would inquire where the rehearsals were being held, while I sat in the car. A few minutes later, a young man came up and said, “Come. I’ll take you to the rehearsal room.” He spoke Bengali, and I took him for one. Not knowing who he was, however, I was a little reluctant to go until his manner reassured me.’

  They went upstairs to where S.D. Burman was rehearsing, and at the first available opportunity, Geeta pointed out the young man and asked, ‘Who is the Bengali gentleman?’ S.D. Burman laughed. ‘He’s not a Bengali! But his name is Guru Dutt. He is the director of Baazi. Don’t you know him?’

  And so Geeta Roy and Guru Dutt were introduced to each other.

  A struggling film-maker and a star singer. This was a story straight out of a fairy tale.

  They met again at one of the regular weekend parties organised at Dev Anand’s house. These were lovely evenings with guests mingling, laughing, dancing, drinking and eating. During once such evening, Guru Dutt was sitting in a corner quietly enjoying the evening and observing… and then he saw her—the famous singer Geeta Roy. Geeta was talking to Dev Anand. Guru was completely bowled over by her presence.

  Guru’s eyes met her gaze. He had heard Geeta’s honeyed voice, but now he was struck by her beauty. ‘She was exquisite like an Ajanta fresco, dark and beautiful!’32 Lalitha remembered. They smiled, spoke to each other in Bengali. ‘My brother had a soft spot for Bengali songs…he would listen to one of Geeta’s songs over and over again. “Tumi jodi bolo bhalobasha dite janona” (“If you tell me I don’t know how to love”)…he was in love.’ It was an instant attraction between polar opposites. The extroverted Geeta had reciprocated the feelings of the brooding, introverted Guru Dutt.

  Guru Dutt was still about to begin the shooting of his first film, Geeta Roy was already a celebrated singer. Those days she travelled in a limousine. Guru Dutt in buses and local trains. Dev remembered, ‘Guru Dutt would travel by buses and trains to pick me up from my home in Pali Hill and take me to his place in Matunga. His mother would take us into her kitchen, make chapattis and serve us food.’33

  Geeta would also now often drop in at the Matunga house. She was a star but her humility impressed Guru and his family. She would help his mother in the kitchen and won their hearts by her charm and behaviour. Vasanthi became her ‘Mashima’ (aunt). Lalitha recalls, ‘We all loved her. Lovely, wonderful Bengali lady. She used to come in a big car but she was very humble, very good at heart. Whenever she didn’t have a song recording, she would come, help in the kitchen too. My mother became close to her. They used to converse in Bangla. Geeta and I used to talk in Hindi.’

  Geeta’s personality was so charming that the entire Padukone family took to her easily. Lalitha looked up to her as a sister. ‘My brother and Geeta were truly in love. One night, I was walking her home when Guru Dutt slipped a letter to me for her. All through their courtship days, I was their courier and chaperone,’ Lalitha remembers. They took the little Lalitha wherever they went. They’d exchange letters through Lalitha. Sometimes Geeta would get her car and they drove to Powai Lake, Lonavala and Khandala. Raj Khosla, who was an assistant to Guru Dutt would also often accompany them. There’s a smile on Lalitha’s face remembering those days, ‘It was a very small flat. There was no privacy for them so we would often go to Powai Lake for picnics. Geeta and Guru were very fond of fishing. They would sit silently, fishing for hours. Those visits and long drives I would never forget. Those were memorable and perhaps the happiest days in Guru’s life.’

  The shooting of Baazi commenced and Guru Dutt’s professional and personal lives began to take a great turn, but he had little inkling of the trajectory his life would take.

  17

  BADRUDDIN JAMALUDDIN KAZI

  ‘It was not that Johnny Walker and Guru Dutt spent several decades together. It was a close, intense association of just ten years. But it was like a lifetime. Us daur mein rishtey nibhaye jaate the.’

  —Nasir Kazi (Johnny Walker’s son)

  To create magic on reel, one needs a dream team in real. With Baazi, Guru Dutt got a chance to work with people who went on to become his A-team, who were an integral part of many of his memorable films in the next decade.

  Dev Anand’s elder brother, filmmaker Chetan Anand, wasn’t happy with the choice of Guru Dutt as the director of Baazi. But Dev Anand was adamant and to prove his point he made sure that each department of the film should boast of stellar talent. Chetan wasn’t directly associated with the film but the story of Baazi was written by his close friend, actor Balraj Sahni, who was also an active member of IPTA.34 Zohra Sehgal was asked to choreograph the dance sequences. S.D. Burman was the music composer while the brilliant poet, Sahir Ludhianvi, was writing the lyrics. A very young Raj Khosla, who later became one of the most successful filmmakers of the Hindi film industry, was the assistant director to Guru Dutt.

  And then there was Badruddin Jamaluddin Kazi, who we now know as the simple funnyman of Hindi cinema— Johnny Walker.

  Badruddin Jamaluddin Kazi was born in 1924 in Indore. His father was a mill worker. The mill closed down and the family moved to Bombay for a livelihood. With his parents and many siblings, Badruddin spent his childhood in utter penury. As a teenager, he sold ice cream, stationery and vegetables to support his family. He mingled with the poor and downtrodden and they formed the core of his golden-hearted, down-to-earth characters. Despite the struggle, life had given him a unique talent for making everyone around him smile. Finally he got a job as a bus conductor with BEST (The Bombay Electric Supply & Transport, its official name until 1995, a civic transport and electricity provider public body). But he wasn’t your usual serious bus conductor.

  Badruddin turned his profession into an art.

  While issuing the tickets and during the bus journey, he took it upon himself to entertain the passengers with funny anecdotes, jokes and calling out bus stops in a way that would make everyone laugh.

  One such evening, it was actor Balraj Sahni travelling in the bus when Badruddin’s ‘show’ was on. Balraj was amused at the conductor who had made the bus into his performance stage. He was hugely impressed with the young man. Sahni was writing Baazi and asked Badruddin to meet Guru Dutt for a ‘surprise’ audition. The surprise meant that Badruddin would perform without Guru Dutt being informed.

  And so it happened.

  Guru Dutt and Dev Anand were in the midst of discussing a scene on the sets of Baazi. Suddenly a ‘drunkard’ turned up tripping over every little thing. There was sudden chaos on the sets. All eyes were on the funny drunkard who was uttering strange gibberish. His antics amused Guru Dutt and Dev Anand and they started laughing. The unit members got hold of the man. But suddenly the man straightened up and said in a soft voice that he was not drunk. Guru Dutt was fascinated. The talent of Badruddin and his impromptu audition had definitely impressed him. He was now going to be a part of Baazi.

  Nasir recalled an interesting anecdote that his father shared with him from the early days. Guru Dutt asked. ‘What should be your name in the credit roll? Should we write Badruddin Qazi?’ The reply came, ‘Aisa lagega main nikah padhaane ja raha hoon kisi ka.35 Also, eveyone will come and tell my father, “Qazi sahab ka beta actor ban gaya.”36 Please think of some other name for me.’ Guru Dutt said, ‘You act phenomenally as a drunk man. My favourite whiskey is Johnny Walker. So Johnny Walker it would be.’

  The film credit
s him by his real name, Badruddin. But inspired by his act and based on Guru Dutt’s favourite whiskey brand, Badruddin Jamaluddin Kazi was rechristened as Johnny Walker. Ironically, he had never even touched alcohol in his life.

  If Guru Dutt placed his faith in an artist, he would give them a lot of room. Johnny Walker said, ‘He’d tell us, “Johnny, ye tumhaara scene hai, ye dialogue hai, ye shot hai. Isme tum jo behtar kar sakte ho to karo.”37 That’s what he would say, then off I’d go. In each rehearsal, I’d say some lines extempore. In every rehearsal, I would come up with something new. Guru Dutt used to love that. He used to look at everyone on the sets, and see if the light-boys, the cameraman, the assistants, were laughing at my dialogues. Guru Dutt had an assistant write down whatever I said in the rehearsals. That’s how we worked. The reason I did so well in all of Guru Dutt’s films was that I had found the man who knew how to draw out my talent, otherwise it would have stayed within me.’ Johnny Walker didn’t receive much formal education but was an eager student of life. While Guru was impulsive, Johnny, in real life, was a serious, wise man who never forgot Guru’s contribution and friendship. Guru Dutt too respected his talent and earthy wisdom.

  ‘Dono ki technically shuruaat to ek saath hi hui thi,’38 said Nasir. ‘Or we can say that their first success was together through Baazi. They became close friends. They helped each other professionally. Us daur mein rishtey nibhaye jaate the.39 That’s why the bond was so strong. There used to be fights, arguments between Guru and Johnny and the rest of the close-knit team for a scene, for a script…these arguments used to be phenomenal. Guru Dutt allowed such discussions. But the following day after the arguments everything was fine again,’ remembers Nasir.

  It was a friendship and an association that would indeed last for a lifetime.

  18

  RAJ KHOSLA

  ‘We would sit together, he wouldn’t speak for hours…but I could never touch the core of his heart.’

  —Raj Khosla on Guru Dutt40

  Born on 31 May 1925, Raj Khosla initially entered the film industry with hopes of making it as a playback singer. Struggling to make it as a singer, he joined Guru Dutt instead as an assistant director with Baazi (1951), thanks to the film’s producer/actor, Dev Anand. He went on to become one of the top directors, producers and screenwriters in Hindi films from the 1950s to the 1980s. He was also the man behind the success of Baazi which proved pivotal for the risk-taking appetite of Guru Dutt and ultimately gave birth to Pyaasa.

  Raj Khosla explained Guru Dutt’s approach, ‘Guru Dutt’s interest in detail was tremendous…what worried him was: “What is my artist thinking at the moment in the story?” I miss his quietness. We would sit together, he wouldn’t speak for hours…but I could never touch the core of his heart. He was deeply affectionate to everyone, to servants, and the humblest man. He was devoted but could not express his love. You see it’s one thing to love someone but it’s another to express love. So the whole thing came out in his films. That love he put through his movies.’

  The story of Baazi was about Madan (Dev Anand), an out-of-work taxi driver who falls for the proverbial ‘fallen woman’ with a golden heart, Neena (Geeta Bali), who reciprocates his love. There was also a ‘Hitchcockian appearance’ of Guru Dutt in the opening shots of Baazi where he plays the role of a poor man smoking—a precursor to his days as a full-fledged actor.

  Guru Dutt shared the story credit with Balraj Sahni in the film’s credits but during the making, Balraj was unhappy with Guru Dutt’s style of working. Their worldview and vision could not match. Balraj, a staunch leftist, was an active member of IPTA and for him films were meant to spread social ideas and messages about equality and justice. Guru Dutt belonged to the Gyan Mukherjee school of filmmaking and wanted to make commercial films. He was interested in dances, songs and mainstream elements to make a successful and entertaining film rather than ‘teach’ the audience something. In his autobiography,41 Sahni has written about how Guru Dutt’s sense of script was weak. While Sahni felt that screenplay was the most important element of a movie, Guru Dutt focused more on song sequences that were to become his signature in Hindi cinema.

  Dev Anand had to often play the peacemaker during heated arguments between the director and the scriptwriter. At Guru Dutt’s Matunga flat, they had many sessions discussing the screenplay. But when the shooting of Baazi began, Balraj Sahni was also shooting for a film called Hulchul. So he was not always physically present on the sets of Baazi. He was upset when he realised that the screenplay had been changed by Guru Dutt.

  They never worked together again.

  But the gamble paid off. Baazi was a smash hit with its high entertainment value. Guru Dutt, who till now was a hitherto unknown assistant director, overnight was catapulted into the big league. The success of Baazi had also ended Guru Dutt’s financial struggle. He bought the first ceiling-fan for the family flat and a radio, which the family kept as a memento for years. ‘There was a time when he couldn’t attend a shooting schedule because he had only two pairs of trousers: one was dirty and the other was at the laundry,’ Lalitha said. Guru also asked his mother to leave her job at the school as she had ‘toiled and sacrificed enough’ for the family and it was time for her to relax.

  Baazi had truly changed lives.

  Baazi was also a landmark film in Dev Anand’s career. Till then he had given some successful films that belonged to social, comedy or romantic genres but Baazi gave him a brand new screen persona with grey shades which was starkly different from his previous clean-cut, cute-looking roles. The cap, the cigarette and the styling did wonders for Dev’s projection as the rebellious romantic star. In his autobiography,42 Dev Anand wrote: ‘Baazi gave me an image that stayed in the minds of people, and made a genuine star out of me. For the first time I felt and saw what stardom was in terms of adulation and fan following. I became a phenomenon after the release of Baazi.’

  Guru and Dev Anand had fulfilled the old promise they had made to each other.

  19

  V.K. MURTHY

  ‘From the next film onwards you will be my cameraman, we will work together.’

  —Guru Dutt to assistant cameraman V.K. Murthy

  Baazi became a milestone in the short-lived genre that can be loosely called Bombay Noir. Though Guru Dutt is best known for his serious social ‘message’ films like Pyaasa, he was also an early pioneer of the Bombay Noir genre, with films like Jaal, Aar Paar and C.I.D. ‘The cinematography is dark but while much of the style is borrowed from Hollywood’s caper and crime films, Bombay Noir as practised in India also had songs, a comedy track and “Indian” emotions,’ says writer and film historian, Siddharth Bhatia.43

  Guru Dutt had discovered a template for urban crime thrillers. Baazi could also be seen as a precursor of his later films that had a similar emotional core. The central characters in his later films varied from a taxi driver, a poet, a film-maker to a servant, yet each one had similar world views dealing with melancholy and loneliness—goodhearted men/artists losing their innocence in the big bad modern world.

  But more than anything else, it was Guru Dutt’s innate talent of song picturisation that surprised everyone. Songs and dances have always been an integral part of Indian cinema but Guru Dutt gave them his own unique touch. It was really his phenomenal craft of song picturisation that has contributed the most to his greatness as an illustrious filmmaker.

  At a time when songs were used merely as ‘items’ or musical breaks to divert the attention from weak scripts, Guru Dutt began using them as an extension of the script rather than as random interval points. As a result, the songs did not appear as mere standalone musical pieces but deeply integrated into the plot and often took the story forward. The song ‘Suno gajar kya gaaye’ has the vamp warning the hero to be careful as there’s a danger to his life. Or the character of Geeta Bali seamlessly breaking into the song ‘Tadbeer se bigdi hui taqdeer bana le’ to console her lover Dev Anand who is going through emotional turmoil and nee
ds to take a critical decision.

  Guru Dutt’s signature style was also to begin a song without the introductory music. So a character would talk and then break into a song without a prelude or introductory music, making the song an extension of the dialogue.

  In Hindi cinema, the script is usually interspersed with songs that usually follow a similar language, irrespective of the tone and form of the script or the socio-economic background or language of the character singing the song in the movie. For example, a hero playing a criminal would suddenly break into a romantic song. Guru Dutt rejected that format. It was important for him to stick to the ‘vocabulary of his characters’ even in the songs. He even shot many songs on outdoor locations, at places that his characters were supposed to inhabit, against the norms of song picturisations on tacky indoor ‘sets’.

  Right from his first film Baazi, despite limited resources, his focus was on the brilliant picturisation of songs. His childhood passion of creating images with light and shadows remained an integral part of his film-making. Combined with his learnings of dance and drama at Uday Shankar’s dance centre in Almora, Guru Dutt was going to take the use of light and shadows to an almost poetic level in his cinema.

  Guru had realised a band needed more than a vocalist to create music. He wanted a team of artists as passionate as him who could understand his language of cinema. On the sets of Baazi, Guru Dutt recognised one such person with whom he was going to create unforgettable images and emotions on screen.

  His name was V.K. Murthy.