by Yasser Usman
Born in Mysore, Venkatarama Pandit Krishnamurthy or V.K. Murthy, learned music and trained as a violinist in school. An angry teenager, he was even jailed in 1943 for participating in a protest during the Indian freedom struggle. Later, he completed his diploma in cinematography and came to Mumbai to pursue a career in the visual medium. But neither music, nor his anger left him. Working with his closest associate, Guru Dutt, he was to create emotions through his camera—images that were lyrical, haunting, disturbing and unforgettable.
Guru Dutt was shooting for Baazi when he met Murthy, who was then assisting the cinematographer V. Ratra. Realising that the debutant director was open to creative suggestions, Murthy offered advice to shoot an important sequence in the song. In the film, the shot has the camera panning from a reflection in the mirror to Dev Anand and then on to the floor of a club where Geeta Bali and her chorus girls are dancing to ‘Suno gajar kya gaye’. Murthy had already thought about how the music could be complemented with camera movements. He told Guru Dutt, ‘If you don’t mind, I could suggest one thing; see there is a big mirror, we can use that to create a great sense of movement.’ Dutt asked, ‘How?’ Murthy said, ‘Put the camera on the mirror and make Dev Anand start here from his reflection. I will move the camera as he walks towards it to the dance. I will follow him until he goes and sits on the chair.’ The camera used to have a dolly. Murthy placed the camera according to the music and rehearsed the timings. By now he had also realised that Guru Dutt was a very short-tempered person on sets. So he said, ‘Look Guru Dutt, I will take three or four takes and I will tell you which is good, and you have to keep the take that I approve.’ He agreed to this. The second take was okayed.
Guru Dutt was delighted. That evening after the shooting had packed up, Guru Dutt walked up to Murthy and said, ‘From the next film onwards you will be my cameraman, we will work together.’
The process of building ‘Team Guru Dutt’ had begun.
20
LOVE AND LONGING IN BOMBAY
‘Apne pe bharosa hai to ek daanv laga le…’
—Geeta Dutt’s song in Baazi
The high point of Baazi was a superb musical score by S.D. Burman dominated by singer Geeta Roy who sang six solos out of the eight songs. While every song in the film created stir, it was ‘Tadbeer se bigdi hui taqdeer bana le’ that stood out for its innovativeness and effortless charm. Sahir had written a ghazal which was innovatively set to music in the western style by S.D. Burman. With Geeta, he had given a new expression to ‘seductive club songs’ which used to be very popular in those days.
The film media was writing extensively about how Geeta Roy’s voice has contributed tremendously to the thundering success of boyfriend Guru Dutt’s first film. She was flooded with offers of singing in big films, travelling and performing in Kolkata, Hyderabad, Madras and London.
Most of the reviews were cruel but Baazi’s high entertainment value made it a success at the box office. Baburao Patel in his negative review called the film ‘poorly directed’ with a ‘badly handled story’. Grapevine even hinted at the new director on the block riding on the success and status of the star singer Geeta Roy.
Geeta Roy’s family didn’t care much for Guru Dutt. For them, Guru Dutt was only a struggler and belonged to a different community. But Geeta was drawn towards Guru. Whenever she didn’t have a recording, she’d drop in at his house. She could play the harmonium with ease and often sang her songs steeped in emotions, reminiscent of Bengali culture, ‘Mera sunder sapna beet gaya’ (Do Bhai) and those from Jogan.
Guru Dutt’s family doted on her. Geeta became very close to Lalitha. ‘Those were such happy days. Raj and Geeta used to sing the song “Khayalon mein kisike” from Bawre Nain (1950). Geeta was close to me too and would even sing songs on the phone to me. She was a star. I remember one full moon night in the balcony of her bungalow at Amiya Kutir44 she confided, “I’m going to marry your brother!” I was elated,’ said Lalitha.
The family though, was very worried about Guru Dutt’s short temper and lack of communication skills. At times, it was difficult to figure out his moods. Guru Dutt mostly remained quiet. He would hardly show his emotions and usually stayed away from the glamour and glitz while the extroverted Geeta loved meeting people and partying.
But both loved their drink…and rain.
Bombay rains usually come without a warning. When it rains in Bombay, it pours. But whatever Guru and Geeta were doing, they couldn’t resist rain. They would leave evrything and simply head out on the road.
Guru would say, ‘Let’s go! It’s raining I can’t work now. Can’t stay at home in such beautiful weather.’
With Geeta by his side, he drove slowly on the highway with raindrops falling on the car. The drizzles, the liquid sunshine and Geeta singing Guru Dutt’s favourite songs. Truly blissful. ‘Raj Khosla and I would pile on and we’d go for long drives, usually to the wonderfully secluded Powai Lake. Raj and I made sure the couple in love had some time together,’ recalled Lalitha.
In those moments they truly felt ‘made for each other’.
But like Bombay rains, their clashes also came without a warning. The occasional fights between the couple used to make Vasanthi worry for their future together. She tried to seriously raise the issue with Guru Dutt. They had these conversations about the inherent differences in their personalities. But finally Guru Dutt replied, ‘Ma, you know I love Geeta. I am a person who never breaks my promise. I have given her the promise. No one can change me. After all, it is one’s destiny.’
21
THE WEDDING
‘Geeta-Guru event came to be portrayed as one of the most romantic weddings in filmdom. Made for each other looked the two.’
—Raju Bharatan
As soon as Geeta’s family got hint of her closeness to Guru and his family, they began objecting. She was the primary earning member of the family and a star. They didn’t want to lose her. Often her brothers would come to Guru Dutt’s home looking for her. Lalitha says, ‘If they found her she would say she had come to meet her friend Lalli (Lalitha). They had a close Bengali family friend who they had in mind for Geeta, and they hoped she would be engaged to him soon.’
Guru Dutt’s mother writes, ‘Guru was furious when he heard that Geeta had another friend, who was a Bengali… Guru and Geeta used to have misunderstandings and she would not visit us for days together. Guru Dutt would get upset. He would come home late at night, worried and mentally disturbed. He never spoke to anybody.’
Guru Dutt had earlier been in two relationships that hadn’t worked out and had left him heartbroken. He met her parents and tried to convince them but they just put off the matter. Lalitha reminisces, ‘Geeta could be moody…after one of her arguments with my brother she had disappeared for days. She went off to a friend’s place in Bhusawal without telling anyone. Guru Dutt was worried out of his mind.’
He now became insecure and wanted to get engaged to Geeta and put an end to their regular squabbles. Guru realised that her family favoured the Bengali boy for Geeta. This troubled him deeply. Perhaps thoughts of the previous broken relationships also troubled him. He wasn’t able to concentrate on work so he decided to have a final conversation with Geeta.
It was a rainy day when Guru Dutt took Geeta to the Haji Malang shrine. It’s the tomb of a saint on a high hill in Kalyan, thirty miles away from Bombay. Devotees believe if a person prays at the Haji Malang dargah, their wishes get fulfilled. Guru Dutt had deep faith for this place. Whenever he was dealing with crisis, he would visit the shrine. Vasanthi writes, ‘Guru Dutt asked Geeta to make up her mind, either to choose him or the Bengali boy and not play with his sentiments. She chose Guru Dutt.’
Together they persuaded Geeta’s family for the engagement. In 1952, the grand ceremony was finally held at Poddar College in Matunga. Guru Dutt and Geeta Roy were finally engaged to be married. Meanwhile, he had shifted to an apartment called Sunder Villa in the Bombay suburb of Khar with his mother, sister Lal
itha and brothers, Devi Dutt and Vijay. His father, Shivshankar Padukone, and brother, Atmaram, stayed on in the Matunga flat. The family was happy about the Guru-Geeta engagement and wanted them to marry soon.
It was the evening of 26 May 1953. After three years of being engaged, Guru Dutt and Geeta Roy decided to get married. The wedding ceremony was performed at Geeta’s mother’s home, Amiya Kutir, in Santa Cruz, Bombay. It was a traditional Bengali style wedding. That morning some of Geeta’s close friends went to Guru Dutt’s flat on 12th Road, Khar with chandan45 paste and garlands. He was dressed in a white silk kurta and dhoti worn in the Bengali style. Bridegroom Guru Dutt Padukone arrived in a tastefully decorated Hudson convertible.
Geeta looked ethereal as the young bride. ‘She was around twenty-one and made for a beautiful bride in a red Banarasi sari with a thin red veil and lots of gold jewellery.’
The wedding conducted according to Bengali rites was a glitzy affair. It was attended by many well-known personalities of the film industry, including Dev Anand and elder brother Chetan Anand, Nutan, Vyjayanthimala, Geeta Bali, Kalpana Kartik (set to wed Dev Anand), Nalini Jaywant, Ramanand Sagar, Kamini Kaushal and Sumitra Devi. Guru Dutt’s family had never seen such a grand wedding function in their family. His mother remembered, ‘With great pomp the wedding took place! It was the film industry’s sensation at the time.’
The singing icons were there in full force too: Lata Mangeshkar, Talat Mahmood, Mohd Rafi, Hemant Kumar and Kishore Kumar. The best part of the reception was Guru Dutt’s chief assistant director, Raj Khosla, had persuaded each one of the top singers there to render something— with the condition that the song had to be from a Guru Dutt movie. And such was their love for Geeta that they all obliged. The only orchestral support for the singers was the ‘recurring bow-wow-wow of Guru Dutt’s inseparable dog, Tony’.
Those days Talat Mahmood always sang last as the one billed to be a star performer. He crooned the freshly put out Majrooh Sultanpuri ghazal: ‘Mujhe dekho hasrat ki tasveer hoon main.’
‘I remember how this Geeta-Guru event came to be portrayed as one of the most romantic weddings in filmdom. Made for each other looked the two,’ wrote Raju Bharatan.
Late at night, with the music of shehnai and the sound of conch shells reverberating in the background, the couple took seven rounds around the holy fire—the Saptapadi ceremony.
Guru Dutt and Geeta Roy were finally man and wife.
‘I welcomed my first daughter-in-law by performing the “Bou-Bhaat” ceremony according to our customs…I prayed to god for their long life, prosperity, health and happiness,’ recalled Vasanthi.
Geeta was very close to Guru’s sister Lalitha Lajmi, ‘I didn’t call her Bhabhi. I used to address her as Geeta. She was very generous and loving. She used to tell me, “Open my cupboard and pull out whichever sari you want to wear. Once I told her I’d never travelled in a plane. She flew me to Delhi for a show, where we stayed at the Imperial hotel. It was through her that I got a chance to meet legends like O.P. Nayyar, Lata Mangeshkar, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Sahir.’
In Guru Dutt’s family, Geeta was the star.
At the time of the wedding, Geeta was more popular and making more money than Guru Dutt. The press, film industry gossip as well as the relatives were insinuating that Guru Dutt had married Geeta for her money and fame. These rumours reached Guru Dutt’s family. Though the sensitive Guru Dutt never reacted to it, his mother wrote, ‘The public as well as the relatives were saying that Guru Dutt married Geeta because of her wealth and her big name in the industry…Guru Dutt never had any yearning for wealth. I think he never even glanced at her jewellery. Inspite of his earlier hardships he never wanted to hoard money. He had already bought a two-seater sports car for himself. He would not interfere with Geeta’s earnings, nor would he ask how she spent her money.’ People who knew Guru Dutt closely were of the view that Guru truly wasn’t into money. For him money meant nothing more than a commodity to trade dreams with.
‘Between Geeta and Guru, it had been decided before marriage that his wife would be still actively singing after their wedding—something in which she was flourishing. As a career woman, Geeta was accustomed to making her decisions by herself, being a singer in recurring demand. Whatever the equations at home, the picture of cooperation was Geeta at the mike,’ wrote Raju Bharatan.
But despite these hurtful gossips Guru and Geeta were in the happiest phase of their life together. ‘We met for the first time during the making of Baazi and it was three years later, during the making of Baaz, that we were married. From Baazi to Baaz it was just a matter of dropping the “I”—and converting it into a “We”,’ wrote Geeta Dutt.
The star-singer Geeta Roy had now changed her surname and went by the name Geeta Dutt.
But as life unfolded, she realised it wasn’t just the name that had changed.
Section Six
DESTRUCTION OF A DREAM
1953–58: BOMBAY
‘Don’t make this film, it’s just your personal life.’
22
REEL VS REAL
‘Though I stop Geeta from singing, I still want her to be famous.’
—Guru Dutt
‘Somehow, I had an intuition that Guru and Geeta’s marriage would never be a happy one. Firstly, in those days, she earned in thousands whereas Guru’s income was limited compared to hers. Secondly, both were stubborn, would never yield to one another. Thirdly, Guru had a burden of responsibilities over his shoulders,’ said Guru Dutt’s mother, Vasanthi.
There was a strange paradox in Guru Dutt’s approach to his cinema and his personal life. In films, he talked about ‘working women’ and breaking of useless traditions, while in his personal life, he demanded adherence to ‘traditional’ values of marriage and motherhood. (This hypocrisy was also evident in his films like Baaz and Mr. & Mrs. ’55 where independent women gave up everything for their love.)
Perhaps a career-oriented and ambitious wife was not what he had imagined despite knowing that Geeta was the star when they got together. Guru Dutt’s mother wrote, ‘Guru Dutt could not tolerate women drinking heavily. In certain ways he was old fashioned. He disliked parties and the so-called women’s lib. He was Indian at heart. In this way, Guru Dutt and Geeta were losing each other. It was so pathetic to observe. But, no one had the boldness to bring them together.’
The equation between them had now completely changed.
In the book Binidra, writer Bimal Mitra recalls this conversation he had with Guru Dutt,
‘Why do you stop Geeta from singing?’ once asked close friend and writer Bimal Mitra46 to Guru Dutt.
Guru Dutt was startled. Then he composed himself and said, ‘Geeta has told you this?’ He paused, then after a thought resumed, ‘Bimal Da, when I married Geeta she was a star singer. But slowly, her career waned. Now, her name doesn’t carry the same glamour.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Mitra questioned.
‘Arrey! Does any one person’s glamour last forever?’ said Guru Dutt.
‘Ok, glamour is one thing but her singing is still respected. She has a lot of offers,’ weighed in Mitra.
‘I know there are offers but her fame is not like it used to be. When an artist is on the downslide, the artist should pause. He should be silent.’
‘But any artist cannot remain at the top forever. That doesn’t mean Geeta should completely stop singing,’ Bimal Mitra argued.
It was then that Guru Dutt accepted that he doesn’t want a singing career for Geeta. He said, ‘Listen, though I stop her from singing, I still want her to be famous.’
‘No, you just don’t want her to be more famous,’ said Mitra.
‘What are you saying? I never had such thoughts,’ said a baffled Guru.
‘It’s possible you don’t want to think about it but deep down this is your thought process. When you got married to Geeta, she was more famous than you. Now you are more famous. Geeta thinks that you are responsible for her downfall,’ sa
id Mitra.
It was as if Bimal Mitra had touched a raw nerve. Guru Dutt was silent for a few moments.
Then he said, ‘But I let her do playback in all my films.’
‘So?’ asked Mitra. ‘You think you become great by doing that?’
Unfortunately, there is little in the public domain from Geeta’s point of view. The author and music critic, Raju Bharatan, recalls a conversation with Geeta Dutt, ‘She was understandably bitter about her “continuing to sing” being resented. She said she had made a few things clear to one and all even before her marriage. She had emphasised how her work would entail late hours almost daily. All the more so as she took on songs in not so high-grade movies. Such songs got recorded only in cheaper second shifts (3.00 to 9.00 PM with the rare evening possibility of one-hour overtime). At one stage it was even suggested that with growing kids to look after, Geeta should be singing only in Guru Dutt movies. This, said Geeta, would have virtually meant her singing for “the one and only…”, referring to Waheeda Rehman.’
From C.I.D. onwards, every movie that came out of Guru Dutt Movies Pvt. Ltd. starred Waheeda Rehman in the lead role—the ‘one and only’ female lead actor for his films. So by default, Geeta ended up being the ‘voice’ of Waheeda in some of the finest song sequences in Indian cinema. There was much being said about the on-screen chemistry between Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman and the off-screen gossip was reaching Geeta’s ears too.
Lalitha Lajmi says, ‘…Geeta was suspicious by nature. She was extremely possessive. That’s a huge let-down in any marriage and created major problems in their relationship. A filmamaker or an actor works with many actresses. For the film, they have to express love on screen and make it look real. But Geeta couldn’t accept this after their wedding.’