Pain revisited

In the light of the embers raked up by Nasreen Munni Kabir, ZIYA US SALAM sees the portrait of a man consumed by tragedy

THE ENIGMA Legendary actor-director Guru Dutt

Love does not help anyone survive. The loved one always leaves. The words may be of Agha Shahid Ali, not so well known a writer in this part of the world, but they mirror Guru Dutt's thoughts. A man who faced the daggers of fate, desolation of life, deprecation of loneliness, his saga had it all. A lover not revived by love consumed life. What began as a spark ended in ashes - as a 26-year-old filmmaker, Guru Dutt met playback singer Geeta Roy in 1951. A long courtship, troubled marriage, and finally tragic suicide lay in wait. But then Guru Dutt's tragic romance with Geeta Roy, then arguably with Waheeda Rahman, was never a sad song all his own.

Now his sorrow, like his dreams, his anxiety, has become public, courtesy Nasreen Munni Kabir who has brought some intimate letters of the legendary filmmaker to the public eye. They tell us what we always suspected: The man in love with Geeta, courted tragedy. In his sorrow lay his craft, his art was just an extension of the artiste. Fine, but is it fair to dig into the life of a man not around to defend himself?

Having just put together "Yours Guru Dutt: Intimate Letters of a Great Indian Filmmaker", Nasreen says, "Guru Dutt's son, Arun, showed me the letters two years ago. We deliberated for some time. Some of them were so personal they were only meant for Geeta. Should they be seen? Then we realised that if we did not do anything, in another 20-odd years, they would be no more. They were folded, crumpled, etc. It was a privilege to see these letters. I have not added any masala to them. It is more than 30 years since Geeta passed away. I did not want Geeta to be trivialised even in memory. Nobody will be affected by the contents."

"The very beautiful letters," according to Nasreen, "mirror the same personality as we have got used to on the screen. They are a major source of knowing the man, considering there are no long articles by him. From the letters it is clear that he was a depressed man. He had suicidal feelings since he was five! But he was able to articulate his pain through his films."

Indeed, Guru Dutt could transmute the mundane into the magical on screen, the triumphant into the tragic in life. He died young, perhaps inevitable for somebody who courted death through the written word. Reasons Nasreen, whose work traces Guru Dutt's letters to his wife and two sons, "Most artistes are not sure of what they are making. When Guru Dutt was making films, it was the golden period of Hindi cinema. We had legends like Bimal Roy and Mehboob in the same decade. Guru Dutt then was like a young filmmaker coming up. It could have led to certain complexities of character."

Handwriting shows it

Indeed, dissecting it, she states, "He was ahead of his times. But he was brooding, and living with a troubled genius was not always easy for anybody." The point is supported by men who lay stock on the points and slants of handwriting. "His handwriting shows that he was a depressed man," they argue. However, Nasreen has stayed clear of them in this 168-page work brought out by Roli Books. "People would have found it a bit gimmicky. But I have analysed the letters myself. By 1956-57 the letters became more matter-of-fact. That was the time anxiety went into his films."

And in this age of multiplexes and growing fans of Zayed Khan and Mallika Sherawat, the lady believes sorrow, and indeed Guru Dutt - the two were often interchangeable - will still have takers. "He has an extraordinary number of fans. People who read and love cinema will love the book too." So, more than 40 years after he breathed his last, desire is still aflame, the heart still awash with hope. And Nasreen is around to show the pain, the pathos, the words of a dreamer at odds with a wife who was "a realist", a father telling his sons to take care of their mom, a husband full of angst believing his worth shall be known only after his death.

Ah! death, did one say? Well, they say, he who remembers death, remembers God; but what of the man who longs for death? Guru Dutt was one such man, mysterious, enigmatic... Nasreen Munni Kabir has just walked down the anonymity lane.

Our friendship dates back to the Prabhat era..he was assistant director to a very famous director. I had just started as a leading man. I think if I can call anybody in the movie industry as my greatest pal it was Guru Dutt. And we struck a great friendship jaise langotiya yaar kehte hain hum jaise dost the. And we struck a deal over a glass of beer and then he said Dev..if I ever become a director you are my star and I said if I ever form a company and I invite a directory to direct a film you’re going to be THE one.

So I brought him in for Baazi so that type of friendship. Then he made CID, he invited me to do a picture. Then he made Jaal and then he branched off on his own.. made his own pictures starred himself. we branched off. I brought in my Vijay Anand for Nau Do Gyarah..

I was on the sets of Teen Deviyan and I was ghost directing for Amarjeet a friend of ours and I got a news that Guru Dutt is dead. I packed up.. I went straight to his house and I was the first man to see him lying on his bed. There wasn’t anybody in the room. I was the first man to enter the apartment and be near his body. and I saw him and his face was blue slightly. There was a glass of…. there was a blue liquid in a glass next to him and I think. I do not know what happened….it was a very sudden death. and I had met him 5-6 days earlier when he had invited me -come over let’s do a picture together but at that moment a I also realized when I saw that he was looking very frail very feeble…yellow on the face, he had lost his hair. This was not the same Guru Dutt because he had made some very beautiful films…the film that he made Kaagaz Ke Phool was a very brilliant film but it didn’t do well..and he could not take it after that he never directed a picture. so that was the start of his physical downfall. Even his creative downfall. Sad..

I think he was very melancholic. He was a young man he should not have made depressing pictures…Guru Dutt always made depressing pictures. I don’t know why because he was a brilliant man. He was a good thinker. He had that dogged perseverance to go on and on but he used to shoot a lot but when he found success he was wonderful, on top of the world and the moment failure hit him hard he could not take it. he was melancholic by temperament which is sad. He was a withdrawn man. He never came in the forefront but a good person. We were the same age..

The dissatisfied critical intellectual of Pyaasa (1957), The bewildered vagrant of Awara (1952) and the ethically mixed up hoodlum of Shri 420 (1955) who stalked the bustling city in search of lebenstraum or even the self-destructive lover of Devdas who dreams of transcending class and caste barriers: these were the icons of an age that resonated with the distant rumble of discontent. Here were the heroes who questioned without being strident, who dissented without resorting to aggressive rebellion.

Guru Dutt as Vijay, the angst-ridden poet in Pyaasa, remains one of the most powerful rebels of popular post-Independence cinema. Vijay, the dispossesed bard who haunted the backstreets, watching the fringe people squirm in poverty, disease and death, cried out in scornful anguish: 'Jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahan hain'. This was a direct invocation to the policy-makers - Nehru in particular -to stand by and see what Nehruvian socialism had brought to the country. Juxtaposed against these impoverished, neglected, unfed, unwell, dying human forms - the sore thumbs of a developing nation - is the high society. People who have no need for poetry, love, brotherhood and humanity. People who are motivated by the pursuit of money alone.

It is the very same class that is indicted in Kagaz Ke Phool (1959) too. Here, instead of the poet, it is the film-maker, Suresh Sinha, who falls prey to the unbridled commercialisation of a society which once had place to creativity and art; which was driven by something more refined than the principle of accumulation. Like the poet of Pyaasa, the film-maker of Kagaz ke Phool, too, drifted into the shadows, unwanted, uncared, a social reject.

Nevertheless, his rebellion is limited to himself alone and is a purely individualised one. In Guru Dutt's screen personae, indictment soon gives way to self-negation. The poet in Pyaasa who merely threatened to spurn the world ('Tang aa chuke hain kash-ma-kashe-zindagi se hum', thukra na den jahan ko kahin be-dili se hum') now literally turns his back on it despite the fact that fame awaits him round the comer. After years of ignominy, when his verse was treated as waste, the world finally recognises his worth and is willing to give him his due. But the poet doesn't want it any more. "No, I do not want the world even if I can get this one full of palaces, platforms and crowns; this social set that is inimical to man; this crumbling nation where every soul is wounded; every heart depressed, ('har ek jism ghayal, bar ek rooh pyaasi, nigahon mein uljhan, dilon mein udasi, yeh duniya hai ya alam-e-badhawasi, yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai...'), he intones and simply turns his back on such a world. He walks away announcing, "Burn it, annihilate it, take it away from my sight...."

Rebellion yes, but self-defeating. For in the face of this nihilism, there is only one person who is the actual loser. The poet himself. Guru Dutt then was essentially the prototypal character of a Greek tragedy. One who moved headlong towards doom due to his heightened sensitivity. He was the outsider who, unable to identify himself and keep pace with rapidly changing times, opted for self-abnegation and suicide. In Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam, he was the outsider again, albeit one who watched a similar fate befall the female protagonist (Meena Kumari), victimised as she was by hard-core feudal orthodoxy. Even when it came to love. Guru Dutt chose sacrifice rather than satiation. In Chaudhvin Ka Chand, he was even willing to forsake his lawfully wedded wife (Waheeda Rehman), when he learnt that his best friend (Rehman) was besotted by her. The fact that his wife was an unwilling partner in this masochistic deal did not deter him at all, for pain was always more eagerly sought than pleasure in the credo of the fifties' hero.

As Dance Director:

Hum ek hain ( 1946 ) starring Dev Anand, Rehana

As Assistant Director:

Lakharani ( 1945 ) starring Durga Khote, Monica Desai, Sapru. Guru Dutt acted in it as well.
Mohan ( 1947 ) starring Dev Anand, Hemavati
Girl's School ( 1949 ) starring Geeta Bali, Sohan, Shashikala, Sajjan
Sangram ( 1950 ) starring Ashok Kumar, Nalini Jaywant

As Director :

Baazi ( 1951 ) starring Dev Anand, Geeta Bali, Kalpana Kartik and K.N. Singh. Guru Dutt's first film.
Jaal ( 1952 ) starring Dev Anand, Geeta Bali and K.N. Singh
Sailaab ( 1956 ) starring Abhi Bhatacharya, Geeta Bali

As Producer, Actor, Director:

Baaz ( 1953 ) starring Guru Dutt, Geeta Bali. This was produced in partnership with Geeta Bali's sister under the banner of H.G. Films.

Aar Paar ( 1954 ) starring Guru Dutt,Shyama, Shakila, Johnny Walker
Mr. & Mrs 55 ( 1955 ) starring Guru Dutt, Madhubala, Lalita Pawar, Johnny Walker
Pyaasa ( 1957 ) starring Guru Dutt, Mala Sinha, Waheeda Rehman, Rehman, Johnny Walker
Kaagaz ke Phool ( 1959 ) starring Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman, Johnny Walker

As Producer, Actor :

Chaudhivi ka Chand ( 1960 ) starring Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman, Rehman, Johnny Walker
Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam ( 1962 ) starring Guru Dutt, Meena Kumari, Waheeda Rehman, Rehman

As Producer :

C.I.D. ( 1956 ) starring Dev Anand, Shakila, Johnny Walker and introducing Waheeda Rehman

As Actor:

Twelve o'clock ( 1958 ) starring Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman, Shashikala
Sautela Bhai ( 1962 ) starring Guru Dutt, Pronoti Ghosh
Bahurani ( 1963 ) starring Guru Dutt, Mala Sinha
Bharosa ( 1963 ) starring Guru Dutt, Asha Parekh, Mehmood, Shubha Khote
Sanjh aur Savera ( 1964 ) starring Guru Dutt, Meena Kumari, Mehmood, Shubha Khote
Suhagan ( 1964 ) starring Guru Dutt, Mala Sinha

Incomplete productions :

Gauri ( 1957 ) This was to have launched wife Geeta Dutt as a singing star and was to be India's first ever film in cinemascope.

Raaz ( 1959 ) Based on Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. This was to have been music director R.D. Burman's maiden film. with Waheeda Rehman in 'Raaz'

Kaneez ( 1962 ) A fantasy based on the Arabian nights. This was to have been Guru Dutt's first feature film in colour.
Baharein Phir Bhi Aayengi ( 1963 - 64 ) Guru Dutt died while this film was under production. It was subsequently completed by brother Atma Ram with Dharmendra in the Guru Dutt role and released in 1966.

Other incomplete films :

Love and God ( 1963 - 64 ) Produced and directed by K. Asif, Guru Dutt was the leading man of this film. When he died the role was taken over by Sanjeev Kumar. Both Asif and Sanjeev Kumar died before completing the film. Producer K.C. Bokadia completed it by using doubles and what not and released it in 1986.

Picnic Starring Guru Dutt, Sadhana. The film was shelved

'My father Guru Dutt was a very pessimistic person'

'Guru Duttji was miscast in Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam'

Fifty years after it released in theatres, Guru Dutt's Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam continues to charm audiences.

The film has not only stood the test of time but continues to grow.

Directed by the renowned writer Abrar Alvi, Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam explores the layered relationship that develops between Chhoti Bahu, a neglected, cloistered housewife, and Bhootnath, her male confidante, against the backdrop of late 19th-century feudal Calcutta.

Film historian Dinesh Raheja's latest book -- Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam: The Original Screenplay co-authored with Jitendra Kothari -- seeks to archive the screenplay of this seminal film.

It also explores the behind the-scenes processes of creative filmmaking through interviews with the film's cast and crew and incorporates analytical essays from both authors that bring into focus Guru Dutt's preoccupation with the themes of loss, longing and platonic friendships, and delineate his enduring fascination for bygone eras.

We present here excerpts from an interview that Raheja and Kothari did for the book with actress Waheeda Rehman, one of the central characters in the film.

Courtesy: Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam: The Original Screenplay
Compilation, Translation, Essays & Interviews: Dinesh Raheja & Jitendra Kothari
Paperback 204 pages Price: Rs 595 Free Film DVD
Published by Om Books International
An initiative of Vinod Chopra Films Pvt Ltd

'Guru Duttji wanted to cast Shashi Kapoor as Bhootnath'

During your association with Guru Dutt, you saw him in the role of a director as well as an actor. Do you think Guru Dutt made a better filmmaker or actor?

I always considered him as a director, never an actor. Do you know he always considered other actors for his films first?

For Pyaasa he wanted to cast Dilip saab (Dilip Kumar); only when Dilip saab refused did Guru Duttji decide to do the role himself. For Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, Guru Duttji wanted to cast Shashi Kapoor in the role of Bhootnath.

However, Guru Duttji wanted bulk dates from Shashiji because he had already built a huge set and had acquired Meena Kumari's dates. Shashiji couldn't spare the required dates even though he was still a newcomer.

What an opportunity Shashi Kapoor lost.

Yes.

'Shashi Kapoor was appropriate to play the naive Bhootnath'

By a quirk of fate, Shashi Kapoor was paired opposite Meena Kumari soon thereafter in another film about an unusual relationship -- the Bimal Roy production, Benazir (1964). Biswajeet had once told us that he had also been approached for Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam.

Correct. Guru Duttji spoke to Biswajeet too.

One can only wonder what Shashi Kapoor and Biswajeet would have made of the role. Eventually, the role was essayed by Guru Dutt, and he seemed apt for it.

No, I did not think so. I felt Guru Duttji was miscast in Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam; he looked older than the role. Shashi Kapoor had an innocent face; he would have looked young and vulnerable.

He was appropriate to portray the naive Bhootnath who is fascinated by Bibi, played by Meena Kumari.