A novel efficiency decodes the enigma of Guru Dutt

This yr marks the centenary yr of Guru Dutt. Though lots has been written and spoken about him, none have been capable of weigh the person, his many loves, and the way he struck a stability between empirical analysis and emotional cost. Master storyteller and dastango, Mahmood Farooqui, has tried to unravel the enigma that’s Guru Dutt by means of Dastan-e-Guru Dutt. The 140-minute evocative efficiency opened just lately at Delhi’s Habitat Centre and will likely be staged in Mumbai subsequent. Spread over 250 pages, the dastan will quickly be printed as a e book with talks on for a movie screenplay too.

It begins with a tribute to Guru Dutt’s subversive tone that also resonates, as Farooqui urges the youth to remain vigilant and rise in opposition to injustice with ‘Ae watan ke naujawan jaag aur jaga ke chal’ (from Baaz, 1951), and concludes with a poignant celebration of the ache that Guru Dutt got here to embody.

Farooqui has divided the efficiency into 4 elements. It talks of the making of Guru Dutt, delving into the psychological influences of his mother and father and the environment of deprivation that formed his early years, earlier than he pursued his inventive goals below the mentorship of the inimitable dancer-choreographer Anand Shankar. Farooqui then explores the backdrop of the ‘bloody bazaar of Bombay’— as P.C. Barua, certainly one of Dutt’s inspirations, described the guts of Hindi cinema — the place Dutt discovered his voice. The narrative additionally touches upon his tumultuous relationship with Geeta Roy, and celebrates his cinematic masterpieces.

Everyone is a product of their time, and in Guru Dutt’s case, time was pivotal,” Farooqui observes. In his essay Classics and Cash, Guru Dutt critiques a sure sort of neorealism —maybe a reference to Satyajit Ray — who behave as if there was no Indian cinema earlier than them. He as a substitute talks about P.C. Barua and Devaki Bose, who made life like movies within the Nineteen Thirties with out concern for field workplace returns.

The cinema of the Nineteen Fifties was a product of the progressive writers’ motion. “Through IPTA, movie creatives learnt how one can deal with severe points in widespread idioms. There can’t be a Raj Kapoor with out Shailendra and Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, and there can’t be Guru Dutt with out S.D. Burman, Sahir Ludhianvi, and Majrooh Sultanpuri,” says Farooqui.

However, on the cusp of the Nineteen Fifties, the panorama was far golden because it now seems to be on reflection. The studio system was crumbling, and the ‘movie star’ tradition was discovering its roots. The movie business was turning into a method to show black cash into white for many who noticed it as a enterprise. Stories have been written round songs of union and separation, and there was little scope to speak about poverty, hoarding, black marketeering, unemployment, and social mores.

Guru Dutt noticed it as a interval of decline, attributing the shift to modifications within the cinema-going viewers. He grew up on movies comparable to V. Shantaram’s Duniya Na Mane (1937), which talks of ladies’s emancipation, and Gyan Mukherjee’s early template for a Bollywood blockbuster, Kismet (1943). 

Impressed by the oriental fashion of storytelling in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Guru Dutt didn’t wish to pander to European style. When Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam obtained a tepid response on the Berlin Festival, he took it on his chin.

Guru Dutt’s profession might be divided into two elements — first, when he sharpened his approach and track picturisation expertise with Jaal, Baazi, Aar Paar, and C.I.D (produced by him), and socially-aware romantic comedy Mr & Mrs ‘55. His trusted cinematographer, V.Ok. Murthy, as soon as stated: “in his movies, songs have been by no means further. They have been the movie. The dialogues would lead into songs”.  

In the second section, he expressed his private ache and anguish as cinematic poetry — Pyaasa, Kagaz Ke Phool, and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. The amalgamation of self-pity and melodrama created a brand new syntax. Farooqui sees a hyperlink between the protagonists of each phases. The character traits of the protagonists of Baazi, Aar Paar, and Mr & Mrs ‘55 are additionally discovered within the characters of Vijay in Pyaasa, Suresh Sinha of Kagaz Ke Phool, and Chhoti Bahu of Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. “They should not pleased with their current scenario and are in search of a greater future with out compromising on their rules — a mirrored image of Guru Dutt’s persona.”

Alongside this, Guru Dutt adopted the system of creating a critically acclaimed movie after a preferred one. Pyaasa was preceded by C.I.D; Kagaz Ke Phool was adopted by Chaudhvin Ka Chand; and Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam was adopted by Baharen Phir Bhi Ayengi (which launched posthumously).

“What Guru Dutt couldn’t do was to make small funds movies like Ritwik Ghatak and Satyajit Ray. He tried to make Gauri in Bangla, however it by no means launched. Box workplace was a sort of lure for Guru Dutt,” shares Farooqui.

Satyajit Ray beloved Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam because it was his sort of movie, however Farooqui feels a classical filmmaker couldn’t have made Pyaasa that transcended a distinct segment viewers to succeed in the layman. “The recklessness that’s there in Pyaasa’s protagonist, the way in which he infused private torment right into a common narrative, solely Ritwik Ghatak might have accomplished it. In that sense, I see parallels between Guru Dutt and Ritwik Ghatak.” Born in the identical yr, each tried to specific their lives by means of their movies. At the identical time, Farooqui provides, we now have to acknowledge that Guru Dutt had the assist of a star, his buddy Dev Anand, and progressively he too grew to become widespread.

Farooqui has based mostly his portrait of the grasp on a number of sources, all of which aren’t adulatory. While Bimal Mitra’s reflection in Bichde Sabhi Bari Bari is idolatrous, granting Guru Dutt virtually a saintly standing, Ismat Chughtai’s dissection of his persona in her novel Ajeeb Aadmi assumes a important tone. “The actuality lies someplace in between,” says Farooqui. He additionally attracts on Firoz Rangoonwala’s monograph on Guru Dutt, through which the movie historian described his movies as cultural touchstones, and on Nasreen Munni Kabir’s intensive research of the grasp.

Farooqui questions Guru Dutt’s selections, notably the hole between the progressive concepts in his movies and his conservative stance in the direction of his spouse’s (Geeta Dutt) profession. Geeta’s rising affinity for the bottle and suspicion of Guru Dutt’s relationship with Waheeda Rehman additionally don’t go unquestioned. Singing for Guru Dutt’s movies meant singing for Waheeda, one thing Geeta couldn’t stay with, resulting in cracks within the relationship a lot that Guru Dutt razed the bungalow he constructed to the bottom. All alongside, Guru Dutt saved his gaze inwards, holding himself chargeable for the chaos inside. Always in a rush to get issues accomplished on the units, Farooqui says, he gave the impression to be in a rush to start out a brand new life as effectively. “Only the person of goodwill carries at all times in his coronary heart this capability for damnation and despair — this line from Graham Greene applies to Guru Dutt effectively,” he says.