by Yasser Usman
The actress opposite Johnny was Noor, actress Shakila’s younger sister. During the shooting, the two fell in love and got married.
Aar Paar was Guru Dutt’s second smash hit as a director, first as an independent producer and first as a successful actor. The press was calling Geeta his lucky charm. It was true to a great extent.
Success was a great leveller in the relationship of Guru and Geeta.
30
THE PRICE OF SUCCESS
‘Geeta was fond of glamour and publicity. They always differed in their tastes and opinions.’
—Vasanthi, Guru Dutt’s mother
Aar Paar’s success changed Guru Dutt’s status tremendously. Professionally, Guru and Geeta were now offcially a ‘superhit team’. There was more good news on the personal front. Geeta and Guru Dutt were expecting their first child. Due to her pregnancy Geeta had reduced her singing assignments.
In the previous four years Lata Mangeshkar had emerged as the new singing sensation with more chart-busters. Though in the initial years, Geeta had shown more versatility. Her inimitable voice sounded ethereal in bhajans, romantic songs, seductive cabaret songs as well as the sad, melancholic numbers. But it was clear that she had been relegated to the number two position, though she and Lata were the top two female playback singers of the 1950s.
Most of her time was dedicated to the family and focusing her energy on Guru Dutt’s films. Two months after the release of Aar Paar, Geeta and Guru Dutt’s first son, Tarun, was born on 9 July 1954. Tarun shared his birthday with Guru Dutt. Geeta, for the time being, got busy with the child. The singing had again taken a backseat. Guru Dutt, meanwhile, had begun to work on his next film.
Geeta admired Guru Dutt’s relentless passion for his work. She said in an interview, ‘From where does the inspiration come which causes those divine fires in the creator, fires which result in his frenzied seeking after artistic perfection? Where indeed? This question often strikes me when I watch my husband at work. I never cease to wonder at the devotion with which he works, his passion for perfection, the zeal which makes him forget people, circumstances, and the mundane, everyday realities. And I asked myself: “What is the secret of this frenzy? From where does it come?”’66
With new found success and money, Guru and Geeta’s lifestyle too had undergone a change. From their moderate house, the family shifted to a five-room apartment called Seth Nivas on 16th Road, Khar. Those days, actress Smriti Biswas was close to Guru and Geeta. She remembered, ‘We lived in Khar and met every day. Often I’d have dinner with them. Guru liked Konkani food. Geeta’s tiffin came from her mother’s house. She enjoyed macher jhol and other fish delicacies…Narang saab [Smriti’s husband] was a member of the boating club in Powai. We had a floating shack there where all of us went fishing.’
Guru Dutt also bought some farm land in Lonavla (near Poona) to do farming. He built a cosy two-room flat there with all facilities for comfortable living. During this period of time the Lonavla farmhouse was witness to many excursions and good times. Abrar Alvi and Johnny Walker were regular visitors. ‘We were all friends. We’d travel together for shikar [hunting], for holidays. Our professional ties also brought us together. We were both part of Guru Dutt’s troupe,’ said Abrar Alvi. Those were the good times.
This was also the time when friends and family members witnessed a peculiar dichotomy in Guru Dutt’s personality. He aspired to be a successful filmmaker and wanted to make great films but he hated being a part of the glamour of the film industry. He was totally missing from the party circuit and gave very few interviews to the film magazines. Filmfare magazine describing Guru Dutt’s personality in a cover story as, ‘Never impolite, Guru could chill a tentative move to friendship with monosyllabic responses or absent-minded nods. Exchange of words to him apparently is no light matter—they are an act of commitment…when warming up to any subject, he talks in a soft, low voice, looking at the world through spectacled eyes, introspective and mildly quizzical, smoking almost continuously and occasionally helping himself to a chew out of a little silver paan-dan. He can joke at himself (I was bad at mathematics; I still am).’67
Strangely, after Aar Paar clicked, his introvert nature had started taking over. He’d started loving solitude more. The Lonavla farmhouse became his regular escape. ‘He loved a quiet life…whenever he felt depressed or had time on his hands, he used to go there and spend a few days. Sometimes he went there with his scripwriter. A couple was engaged to look after the farm. He would ask them to prepare Bajra roti and hot chutney which he loved. Sometimes he himself would cook khichdi,’ wrote his mother Vasanthi.
Dev Anand, too, noticed, ‘He suffered from melancholia. He was a good man, a good thinker, but a back-bencher. He never wanted to be part of a crowd. He was shy, but good at his work.’68 Guru’s brother, Atmaram, recalled in an interview that he would get irritated with parties or family functions. He worked round the clock and sometimes he would go straight from the studio to his farm house, resulting in arguments and fights with Geeta.
Unlike her husband, Geeta was sociable and felt at home in the glitter of the film world. She wasn’t able to devote much time to her career due to her responsibilities as a mother. It frustrated the artist in her. To take her mind off the disappointment, she spent a lot of time with her friends. She organised regular get-togethers at her house and wanted Guru Dutt to participate. Guru Dutt hated it. To him, the peace at the Lonavla farmhouse seemed like heaven. Vasanthi wrote, ‘Geeta was fond of glamour and publicity. She hardly liked staying at Lonavla. They always differed in their tastes and opinions, but sometimes they patched up their disagreements.’69
Interestingly, Guru Dutt’s next film was a take on the modern marriage. The plot of the film was about a supposed sham marriage, for financial benefit, turning into a real one. The lead character was of a ‘modern girl’ who undergoes a change of heart after observing a traditional Indian housewife.
It was called Mr. & Mrs. ’55.
31
MR. & MRS. ’55
‘It was an unsaid rule that no one, not even close friends or family members were welcomed when Guru Dutt was immersed in shooting. He wanted no distractions or disturbances on his sets.’
—V.K. Murthy
With Mr. & Mrs. ’55, Guru Dutt and Abrar Alvi once again proved their mettle in a romantic comedy with great sophistication. Guru Dutt repeated almost the same winning team of Aar Paar with Abrar Alvi, V.K. Murthy, the O.P. Nayyar-Geeta Dutt-Mohd Rafi combination and lyrics by Majrooh Sultanpuri. Commercially, the results were even better than Aar Paar. The big star, Madhubala, led the cast and lifted the film with her screen presence, her talent for comedy and her spontaneity. However, in this film too the first choice for the male lead role wasn’t Guru Dutt but Sunil Dutt. Guru Dutt later felt he would do the role himself.
Praising Guru Dutt’s direction and acting performance, the Filmfare magazine (27 May 1955) review said:
Under Guru Dutt’s sure handed direction the entire cast embellish the picture with high histrionic appeal, their portrayals breathing life into the story and investing the characterisations with utterly convincing human attributes. Guru Dutt, as the impecunious hero who gambles for love, interprets his role perfectly and displays the genius of the born actor.
Filmfare also praised Johnny Walker’s performance, calling it his finest performance to date and one of the year’s best. O.P. Nayyar composed ten evergreen tracks out of which, Geeta’s voice was present in seven. As a composer, Nayyar was vital to Guru Dutt films in the years during which Guru was evolving into a brilliant filmmaker. His collaboration with O.P. Nayyar was a constant in his formative films. Today we might dismiss these earlier films of Guru Dutt when compared to his celebrated trilogy (Pyaasa, Kaagaz Ke Phool and Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam), but these are the unconventional films with sparkling music by Nayyar that became Guru Dutt’s first steps towards his best works.
Guru Dutt planned his song situations as seriously as his dramati
c scenes. He was of the view that it was the way a song is presented that drew a repeat audience to the theatres.70 Guru Dutt’s vision and V.K. Murthy’s remarkable close-ups, smooth camera movements, signature tracking shots and the play of light and shade gave the film and the songs a distinct feel and texture. Guru Dutt shot ‘Jaane kahan mera jigar gaya ji’ with the camera moving fluidly under office desks, ‘Chal diye banda navaz’ was picturised among women drying out saris. In the climactic qawwali ‘Karavan dil ka loota’, Guru and Murthy go back to their favourite light and shadow play with the half-lit face of the hero to convey the emotional turbulence. The lively ‘Thandi hawa kaali ghata’ was shot at the Mahatma Gandhi swimming pool in Bombay’s Shivaji Park. During the shooting of the song, the director was initially indesicive about the camera angles and movements so the shooting was taking a long time. In such situations, Guru Dutt used to get impateint and very irritated. ‘On sets he would shout and get bad-tempered when things did not go right. But it was part of his spirit and I didn’t feel bad. I shouted back at him too. In charge of the camera and the lights, I made the heroines look good and so I was very popular among them, and he would mockingly sulk and say, “Main director hoon, mujhse baat nahin karti!”’71 V.K. Murthy recalled.72
It was an unsaid rule that no one, not even close friends or family members were welcomed when Guru Dutt was immersed in shooting. He wanted no distractions or disturbances on his sets.
Looking back, it seems Guru Dutt’s self-obsession with his lead characters focused on how society owed them something. Iqbal Masud, distinguished film critic and writer, makes this sharp observation: ‘It is the fashion today, to regard Aar Paar (1954) and Mr. & Mrs. ’55 (1955) as slick and successful commercials. So they were. But if you look at the pattern of those films carefully, you will notice remarkable similarities in the big three—Pyaasa, Kagaz Ke Phool, and Saheb Bibi Aur Ghulam. We have the young dissentients (taxi driver and cartoonist in the two films) at odds with society, willing to make a fast buck but unwilling to sell themselves, and remaining loyal to a true love. It is the same romanticism, the same defiant search for some beauty, pure, innocent, untamed that marks the greater films. Only later the search grows more desperate, the costs of failure rise higher, death starts to wait in the wings to confer welcome release.’
Mr. & Mrs. ’55 carries a strong influence of Hollywood romantic comedies. The characters as well as the situations are treated with breezy humour and satire. But post this film, Guru Dutt’s cinematic characters became serious and the tone of the films got dark and darker.
Section Eight
DESTRUCTION OF A DREAM
1955–59: BOMBAY
‘Johnny, I don’t think I know how to direct films.’
32
INDECISIVE, UNSURE GENIUS
‘The moment he felt that the film was not shaping up well, he lost inspiration. No amount of advice, or fear of monetary loss could make him carry on the project.’
—Abrar Alvi
As a director at the helm after Mr. & Mrs. ’55, Guru Dutt went on to make his masterpiece Pyaasa and then after the Gouri fiasco came the quasi-autobiographical Kaagaz Ke Phool. India’s first cinemascope film—made using the anamorphic lenses brought in from Hollywood originally for the film Gouri which ended up to be this film.
As a film producer Guru Dutt had earlier decided on a rule that he would make a commercial entertainer for every serious ‘artistic’ film that he made. But despite being a serious subject, Pyaasa was an unexpected success. It elated him so much that he thought another similar theme would also be accepted by the audience. So, skipping his usual policy of making a commercial entertainer in between, he selected a serious subject again.
While Pyaasa was based on the feelings and experiences from his early years of struggle, Kaagaz Ke Phool emerged from his impressions about life as a filmmaker dealing with problems in his personal life, ultimately leading to neglect and indifference towards his work. The filmmaker was played by Guru Dutt, his muse was Waheeda Rahman.
Those were the days when publicity booklets were printed to announce the new films. The publicity booklet of Kaagaz Ke Phool contained the announcement about two more films from Guru Dutt films: Raaz and Chaudavin Ka Chand with a caption that read:
‘Two more box office smashers in the Guru Dutt tradition’
During the planning of Kaagaz Ke Phool, Guru Dutt’s trusted asistant director and A-team member Raj Khosla had already left the company. Another assistant Niranjan, who had assisted Guru in his previous four films, was roped in to direct the suspense thriller Raaz. The story of Raaz was based on the novel The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. Waheeda Rehman was cast in a double role of two sisters while actor Sunil Dutt of Mother India fame was signed in the lead role of a military doctor. The poster of Raaz only had Waheeda Rehman with a ‘fast progressing’ tag on the right corner.
The filming of Raaz began in the picturesque snow-clad town of Shimla. But soon, Sunil Dutt was out of the film. He was very upset as there was no reason given to him for his ouster. And then soon came the news that Guru Dutt was now to play the lead role instead.
The gossip magazines went into a tizzy. They spun out stories that Guru did not wish for anyone else to play the role of Waheeda’s love interest. After a disturbed schedule, the shooting resumed in Shimla and big money was spent on the schedule and set up of a military hospital. Two songs were recorded by composer R.D. Burman, who was making his debut as a music director with the film.
From Shimla, Guru Dutt wrote a letter to his sons Tarun and Arun (four years and one year old, respectively) in which he wrote that he missed his family but work never seems to end. In a very loaded statement, Guru Dutt wrote to his sons, ‘When you grow up, I want you to remember that work is the most important thing of all. A person who doesn’t work is a fool. So let me finish the work I am doing and then I’ll be back.’
Was this message really meant for his kids (four years and one year old)? Or did he intend to convey it to Geeta?
Back in Bombay, when Guru Dutt edited the scenes they had shot in Shimla, he did not like them. So, staying true to his style, Dutt scrapped them and abandoned the film Raaz despite spending so much time and money on it.
‘Guru Dutt Ji shelved the film. When we asked why, he said, “Nahin jam raha hai [It isn’t working],’ said Waheeda Rehman.73
Screenwriter Abrar Alvi wrote, ‘He was the Hamlet of films. He has often been accused of vacillation and fickle-mindedness; of starting films and dropping them. Having known the man very closely I can say he was a very restless man—but genuine and sincere to the core. If a subject inspired him, on an impulse he would start the film. But as he went along creating, his critical faculties would also have full play. The moment he felt that the film was not shaping up well, he lost inspiration. No amount of advice, or fear of monetary loss could make him carry on the project once the inspiration was gone.’
Dev Anand said, ‘He always looked and felt melancholic. He had a great cinematic sense and rhythm but would shoot and shoot and shoot, wasting a lot of footage. He was indecisive and unsure. We used to meet regularly even after Baazi but gradually both of us got busier.
‘He was always sincere when he started a film—he was equally sincere when he dropped it,’ said Abrar Alvi.
33
WAQT KE SITAM
‘Don’t make this film, it’s just your personal life.’
—S.D. Burman to Guru Dutt
The thirty-four-year-old Guru Dutt had lost huge money as two projects, Gouri and Raaz, were shelved successcively after expensive shooting schedules. There was also the pressure of the distributors to make another profitable film soon. Guru Dutt also had a studio to run with a big staff.
On many occasions, Guru Dutt would even pay the artists signed for the shelved films. Abrar Alvi said, ‘If with the cancellation of a film in the making, some people who had got a break in that film, found their hopes ending— Guru Dutt’s heart bled for them. F
or days I have seen him sulky and morose, not because his money went down the drain, but because he felt he had let down these people. He did not even have the heart to face them and people misunderstood. If only people could have understood his innate sincerity to his art.’
But this explanation sounds too simplistic and cannot be attributed to just his perfectionism. This is not how film production works across the world. Shelving films at such regular intervals can’t be a normal thing. In fact, people close to Guru Dutt knew that his personal life was going through a turbulent phase. Even after a suicide attempt, he was subjected to more turmoil, heartbreak and professional pressures to deliver—something that did not come naturally to the artistic soul in him.
Sometimes he would just leave the studio and seek far-off places to escape the mayhem of his life. At other times he would go straight to his farmhouse in Lonavala. As a form of escape, he seriously considered farming. He stayed there for a few days and often got friendly with the local people. But he realised that farming required hard work, more time and regular trips—so he soon gave up the idea. Instead, the ever curious Guru Dutt did a strange thing. Advised by the local people, he set up a small brewery in his farmhouse.74 He took his close friends to flaunt it and taste the beer produced by his fully operational brewery. But everyone knew that it was Guru Dutt’s escape mechanism at work. Once the curiosity was satisfied, the brewery was uprooted and he had to go back to the life he wanted to escape from.