Guru Dutt

by Yasser Usman

  Geeta Dutt had a circle of Bengali friends that included Hemen Gupta and his wife; singer-music composer Hemant Kumar and his wife; and, Manna Ladda, the distributor from Bengal. But the closest friend of Geeta was Smriti Biswas, the actress who played an important role in the flop film Sailaab. The group partied hard regularly but Guru Dutt excused himself from those get-togethers.

  According to Abrar Alvi, Guru Dutt did not like Smriti Biswas and thought of her as a bad influence on Geeta.

  Remembering Geeta Dutt, Smriti Biswas said, ‘Geeta was “saawali”47 but so beautiful! She had a beautiful voice. But yes, she was suspicious and possessive. It wasn’t her weakness, it was her nature…Guru and Geeta loved each other a lot. But a creative person wafts space. He couldn’t handle the possessiveness. When Geeta pestered him for attention, he’d say in jest, “Bore mat karo.”’48

  Smriti also said that she often helped good friend Geeta Dutt keep a tab on Guru Dutt’s whereabouts. This particularly led to a very unfortunate incident a year later from which the Guru-Geeta relationship never really recovered.

  Guru Dutt’s mother writes, ‘Geeta was by nature jealous and temperamental. Her so-called well-wishers provoked her by exaggerating the studio news. She used to pay attention to such people. Thus, the misunderstanding between Guru Dutt and Geeta increased. Guru Dutt’s sensitive mind was always distressed. He would convince Geeta about the real position. But she ignored his words.’

  Raju Bharatan wrote, ‘One reason for the two never “agreeing to differ” could have been that Geeta was as unyeilding, by disposition, as Guru Dutt. Not enough give and take? Who really knows in a marriage gone wrong?’

  23

  BIRTH OF AN ACTRESS

  1957

  ‘Why do you keep saying Waheeda-Waheeda? I can also be a heroine. Am I any less good-looking than Waheeda?’

  —Writer Nabendu Ghosh quoting Geeta Dutt

  Geeta was getting anxious and irritable. She was often lonely because Guru never communicated his feelings and emotions and had also started spending too much time in office. Lalitha says, ‘Guru Dutt was a workaholic. Nothing mattered except work. Also when he was upset he would go quiet. He would never share what’s going on in his mind.’

  Various people close to Guru Dutt have time and again repeated how his off-camera communication skills were exceedingly poor. The trials and tribulations of the finances and responsibilities of running a production house and his own film banner was weighing down on him—something the artist in him had little experience in.

  More than loneliness, it was the feeling of worthlessness that had also taken over Geeta. Unable to reconcile with her personal and professional frustrations, she found solace in liquor.

  Sensing that Geeta was drifting away and to mend their relationship, the thirty-two-year-old Guru Dutt, on his first overseas trip to West Asia/Europe, called Geeta to Beirut for a holiday together.

  From Beirut, Guru Dutt wrote a letter to his mother:

  Dearest Ma,

  I am writing this from Beirut. It is a beautiful place. But inspite of everything I miss home, Geeta and you all. I wish I had brought Geeta along with me. The other day I had phoned Guruswamy to arrange for her coming.

  Geeta soon reached Beirut. During their stay in Beirut, Guru Dutt discovered a new market for Indian films and met the famous composer, Abdul Wahab. Guru Dutt recounted, ‘I asked him to write the music for one of my forthcoming films, which I propose to make in Arabic and Hindi. In order to prove my bonafides I said I would show him a few reel of my pictures, which I had taken along. But it was not necessary. Abdul Wahab said: “Your manners have convinced me that you are an artist. I will write the music for your film.”’

  In Beirut, Mehboob Productions’ Aan starring Dilip Kumar had an uninterrupted run of several weeks while in Tehran, Guru Dutt saw a poster of the film Dhoon which starred Raj Kapoor and Nargis as the former’s films were very popular in Iran.

  In Rome, Guru Dutt visited the famous Cinecitta Studios which was a huge establishment—bigger than a dozen Bombay studios put together. Though Guru Dutt found them to be the same as Indians when it came to shooting and dialogue delivery.

  Arriving in Paris, Geeta was mobbed everywhere they went. People gathered around her, admiring her multicoloured sari or her features. In London, a musical function was organised by the Asian Film Society and Geeta was the star of the evening. Although the audience there did not understand the Hindi language, they seemed to enjoy Geeta’s singing. ‘Music has no geographical frontiers,’ observed Guru Dutt.

  It was during this trip that a major decision was taken to not just revive Geeta’s career but to launch her as an actress too.

  No one knew this would soon lead to the unmaking of Guru and Geeta’s relationship.

  Right after their return, Guru Dutt announced his next movie Gouri with Geeta Dutt in the lead role. She was to be launched as a singer-actress. The film was to be made in Bengali and English.

  Nabendu Ghosh—the famous Bengali author and screenwriter, who wrote classic films like Bandini, Devdas, Abhimaan and Teesri Kasam—had written the story of Aar Paar for Guru Dutt previously. He writes in his autobiography Eka Naukar Jatri (Journey of a Lonesome Boat), ‘I got a call from Guru Dutt once again. I went. Dutt said, “Nabendu Babu, I am making a Bengali film this time.” I remembered his grasp over the Bengali language and said, “You have that right so it’s good news.” “Then write me the screenplay,” he said.’

  He further writes that it was a touching story and he agreed to do its screenplay. ‘Who would star in it? The hero, of course, would be Guru Dutt, and the heroine would be his beautiful wife Geeta. Because one day she had told her husband: “Why do you keep saying Waheeda-Waheeda? I can also be a heroine. Am I any less good-looking than Waheeda?” Her words had touched Guru Dutt so he decided Geeta would be the heroine of the film Gouri.’

  True to his style Guru Dutt visioned a grandiose cinematic spectacle. He decided that Gouri would be the first CinemaScope film of India. He wrote to 20th Century Fox in Hollywood to create the anamorphic lenses for the CinemaScope format. With the new anamorphic lenses, he asked cinematographer V.K. Murthy to film some test shots of Geeta Dutt. Murthy filmed Geeta sitting on a swing in the garden of their Pali Hill bungalow.

  The film became the talk of the town.

  Geeta was excited to play her part as the singer and debutant actress in Gouri. Music composer S.D. Burman had composed and recorded two songs for the film. Things had started looking sunny again. Gouri was going to be the grand comeback Geeta had been waiting for. A renewed hope of a new beginning in her life and career.

  But hope, sometimes, is a dangerous thing. It has the potential to ruin you.

  Gouri was being made to resurrect the damaged relationship of Guru and Geeta. But what happened during the shooting of Gouri changed their lives forever.

  Guru Dutt planned an outdoor shooting schedule for Gouri in Calcutta. A huge house was rented in the New Alipore area and his entire unit was staying there. Even though it was a Bangla film, Guru Dutt was spending money like it was a big-budget Hindi film. While making a film, he never cared about how much money was being spent. Only the quality mattered. He shot on many locations: farms, forests, rivers and roads. Kolkata-based National Award-winning director, Nripen Ganguly, recalled,49 ‘Dutt had shot extensively in Kolkata in quite a few locations. I was there on the day when he was filming the immersion scene on the banks of the Ganges. Geeta Dutt was present during the shooting.’

  After the shoot, the unit used to come back to the New Alipore house but Guru used to go to watch the rush prints. He used to watch the rushes till late night. Then again he’d be shooting the next morning. During the shoot of his films, he was like a man possessed.

  As a director, Guru Dutt had his own vision of presenting his lead character, Gouri, while Geeta looked at it differently. Outside the sets, Guru Dutt was a friend, a sensitive listener, a lover, a father or a husband. But on hi
s film sets he was just a stubborn artist. A ruthless dictatorial director who would not listen or agree with anyone easily, even if the lead actress was his own wife.

  For him, Geeta was just an actress and that’s where the problems began.

  The shooting went on for a few days and then came the storm.

  Gouri was destined to doom. So were Guru and Geeta Dutt.

  24

  THE UN-MAKING OF GOURI

  ‘Tum kya chahte ho…yahi na ki main Waheeda Rahman se badtar lagoon?’50

  —Geeta Dutt to Guru Dutt

  One morning of the shoot schedule in Calcutta, the crew were preparing for the shoot to begin.

  ‘The shot is ready! Call Geeta!’ Guru Dutt said.

  The assistant replied, ‘She is doing her make-up. Will take some time.’

  For the scene, she had to wear an old worn-out sari with her hair untied and a bindi on her forehead. Guru Dutt didn’t want too much make-up on her. Gouri was a tragic love story about a sculptor of Durga idols (played by Guru Dutt) who falls in love with a prostitute Gouri (played by Geeta). Guru Dutt wanted her to look the part.

  Everyone waited for a while. An impatient Guru Dutt now asked Ramu Saria to go and bring Geeta from the make-up room.

  Distributor Ramu Saria was based in Calcutta and Guru Dutt had invited him to the shooting location.51

  Here’s how writer Bimal Mitra narrates the incident in Binidra:

  When Ramu reached he saw Geeta was fixing her hair.

  ‘Bhabhi, everyone is waiting. The shot is ready,’ he said.

  ‘Bas Bhaiya…coming,’ said Geeta.

  Ramu Sariya kept waiting. Some more time passed. Geeta continued working on her hair and make-up. Guru Dutt was getting irritated. He decided to go and call Geeta himself.

  As soon as he looked at Geeta, he was shocked.

  ‘What have you done?’ he shouted in anger. ‘Who asked you to do this make-up?’”

  In his mind, Guru Dutt had conceived a certain image of the character of Gouri. It was conveyed to Geeta during the discussion of the script. As a director, any digression from that image was non-negotiable for Guru Dutt. But in this case the equation was more complicated. The lead actress was his wife and their relationship was going through a challenging phase. Was this a husband shouting at his wife? Or an artist shouting at his subject for the sake of art?

  ‘I told you the character will appear in “simple” makeup. There would be no overdoing of style. And this hairstyle? Do village girls have such a hairstyle?’ Guru kept shouting in anger in front of many people from the unit.

  There was shock and disbelief on Geeta’s face. Finally, she shouted back, ‘Tum kya chahte ho…yahi na ki main Waheeda Rahman se badtar lagoon?’

  For a few moments there was a pindrop silence. Then Guru Dutt turned around and shouted, ‘Pack up! Pack up!’ Then he left immediately. Ramu Saria also left with him. He turned his car towards a bar in Chowringhee.

  Two days later the entire unit left Calcutta. Back in Bombay, the gossip columns were on full display.

  The writer of Gouri, Nabendu Ghosh, writes in his autobiography Eka Naukar Jatri:

  ‘Guru Dutt went to Calcutta with his whole team and shot for almost three months but suddenly returned to Bombay without finishing the film. Why? Why? Why? This “Gouri” got drowned in the water that flowed out of the eyes of a beautiful woman—who was this beautiful woman?

  A voice whispered, “Waheeda Rahman”, the heroine of Guru Dutt’s company.’

  25

  GEETA, INTERRUPTED

  ‘Suddenly, no one knew what happened. Geeta refused to work in the film…Guru Dutt was completely broken by the shock of having to discontinue the film.’

  —Vasanthi, Guru Dutt’s mother

  There are multiple versions behind the shelving of Gouri but Guru Dutt himself had a conversation about it with close friend and famous Bengali writer Bimal Mitra.

  ‘Geeta was the lead actress in the film. But there was some reason why I didn’t complete it,’ Said Guru

  ‘Why? Why didn’t you complete it?’ asked Bimal Mitra.

  ‘Because of Geeta,’ replied Guru.

  ‘But Geeta told me you stopped the film for some other reason,’ confessed Bimal.

  ‘What did she tell you?’ said a surprised Guru.

  Finally, Bimal Mitra dropped the bomb. ‘Geeta said it was because of Waheeda Rahman.’

  Guru Dutt’s eyes and face turned red. He clearly denied that Waheeda Rahman had anything to do with the shelving of Gouri. He told Bimal Mitra, ‘Do you think I wasted lakhs of rupees on the film for no reason? For years I had wished to make a Bengali film. But Geeta herself thwarted my wish.’

  Recalling the crucial incident Guru Dutt’s mother later wrote, ‘Suddenly, no one knew what happened. Geeta refused to work in the film…Guru Dutt was completely broken by the shock of having to discontinue the film. For one week he disappeared and no one could trace him.’52 Guru Dutt’s sister Lalitha Lajmi assigned it to ‘ego problems’ and said, ‘Geeta had some problems during the shooting in Calcutta. Their relationship was going through a very bad phase. Geeta had some ego problems due to which the film was later shelved.’

  Guru Dutt later said, ‘I shelved the film because of Geeta…Geeta wasn’t listening to me. When I am directing a film, I am not a husband or a son, I am only the director of the film.’

  Filmmaker Nripen Ganguly who witnessed the shooting of Gouri said, ‘We had heard that this film was shot to repair the relationship. But, that didn’t happen and the film was abandoned.’53

  Unfortunately, there’s no version from Geeta in the public domain. She never talked about Gouri in her interviews.

  Though in Guru Dutt’s filmography, Gouri is mentioned only as a shelved film, but it truly had a devastating effect on his personal life.

  Author Raju Bharatan remembers a conversation with actress Uma Anand, who also co-wrote the film Taxi Driver. Uma had seen Guru Dutt grow up professionally in front of her eyes from his formative 1950–51 Baazi days at Navketan Films; she had been married to Chetan Anand at that point of time. Raju Bharatan writes, ‘Guru Dutt Shivshankar Padukone would fly into an uncontrollable rage. That would create immense problems for wife Geeta Dutt who was still absolutely stable herself—who, in fact, was endeavouring to put her sadly interrupted singing career back on track.’

  The shelving of the film Gouri had a severe impact on both, but Geeta was particularly devastated. There were reports of complaints from music directors about her not being easily available for either rehearsals or recordings. She neglected her riaz.54 Around the same time, S.D. Burman fell out with Lata Mangeshkar. He could have made Geeta Dutt his main singer rather than the upcoming Asha Bhosle but that did not happen. Geeta, reportedly, owing to a disturbed personal life, was not able to practice sufficiently and couln’t focus on her work. It was reported that she failed to meet the quality expectations of S.D. Burman who was a hard taskmaster. This was one of the reasons why S.D. Burman and later O.P. Nayyar turned to Asha Bhosle.

  Lalitha Lajmi recalls, ‘Slowly, stories about Geeta’s alcoholism were heard. I never saw her drinking openly though. It first began with sleeping tablets. Then it went on to some kind of drugs…55 Lalitha Lajmi told this author it wasn’t just Geeta, both of them took to drinking heavily and consuming sleeping pills. Sleeping pills were the new fad in those days.’

  The thirty-three-year-old Guru Dutt’s downward emotional spiral too was triggered after the collapse of Gouri—the first to-be CinemaScope film of India, the first to-be Bengali film of Guru Dutt, the first to-be film to launch Geeta Dutt as an actor, but it only ended up as the first unfinished, abandoned, shelved big budget project of Guru Dutt.

  The marriage was not working yet their intense love for each other often came to the fore. In a letter to Geeta dated 28 July 1958,56 Guru Dutt writes: ‘Darling, whatever may happen remember you are a part of me and you will always be a part of me. Perhaps you may not know
how much I love you. Perhaps when I am no more then you will realise.’

  It had only been six years since Guru and Geeta had together dreamt and worked to set up the Guru Dutt Films banner while working for other producers in films like Jaal and Baaz.

  They could have never foreseen the demolition of that dream.

  Section Seven

  BUILDING OF A DREAM

  1953–55: BOMBAY

  ‘What is the secret of this frenzy?

  From where does it come?’

  26

  GURU, THE LEAD ACTOR

  ‘I said you look like a hero, why do you want other people to act as heroes in your films?’

  —V.K. Murthy

  To understand the demolition, one first needs to understand the hard work that went into building of the dream. The process of building ‘Team Guru Dutt’ was completed in his next two films: Jaal and Baaz. It also led to the beginning a new journey of Guru Dutt—as a lead actor.

  Released in September 1952, Jaal wasn’t as big a commercial success as Baazi (1951), though it won praise for Guru Dutt for his slick direction. As a director Jaal became Guru Dutt’s last film with Dev Anand. According to Raj Khosla, Dev was steeped in his mannerisms while Guru Dutt wanted his performances to be more realistic. It wasn’t easy to force Dev Anand, the star. There were instances when Guru Dutt used to get irritated. But they were close friends. A headstrong Guru Dutt decided that he would become an actor to portray his characters as he had visualised them.

  Off-screen, Guru Dutt was a poor communicator. His brother Atma Ram who was also his assistant in Jaal said, ‘He was a very hard taskmaster and very dedicated to his work. On the sets it was difficult to say what was on his mind. He tended to keep everything to himself and wouldn’t communicate with the assistants, which made things rather difficult. So he shouted a lot. Often he used to set the shot by looking through the view-finder and develop his ideas visually, which would become confusing to us, and even to the artists. He never told the artists in advance what to do. He would make them stand in a particular frame and then develop the idea of the shot through the view-finder. Often I would be the stand-in for some artists and there would be [a] lot of shouting. But looking back on his films one realises what a fine visual sense he had. The film is essentially a visual medium. And he was trying to communicate to the audience visually first, in his brilliant way. That was Guru Dutt’s strength.’57