Even comic sidekicks (think Johnny Walker) got the meatiest songs. Guru Dutt’s films are often lauded for the way he made music an integral part of the plot.
Geeta, on the other hand, has remained a mystery at best and a curiosity at worst. More than five decades after his death in 1964 (he had a history of attempted suicides but this time it was an accident, goes the family version), Guru Dutt has become a myth. Although Waheeda has always maintained a stoic silence and never openly talked about her alleged love story, the media has spun its own narrative. In the book Ten Years with Guru Dutt, Abrar Alvi blames Geeta’s “immature behaviour and suspicious nature” for her hubby’s growing closeness with Waheeda Rehman. She believed her husband was having an affair with the protégé he helped discover and nurture in films like C.I.D, Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool. That last name proved to be Geeta’s scourge.
All four films have at least three figures in common: Abrar Ali, VK Murthy and Waheeda Rehman.Īlso read | Sahir Ludhianvi’s timeless, passionate lyrics The two masterpieces that we most associate with Guru Dutt, Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool and also the two other classics that we think of as quintessentially Guru Dutt but was not directed by him, Chaudhvin Ka Chand and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, were still some years away. Despite objections from her family, the couple got married in 1953 when Guru was a budding director - not yet the Dean of Despair. Guru Dutt was the love of her life but also the reason for her downfall. ‘Tadbeer se bigdi hui,’ ‘Sun sun sun zalima,’ ‘Babuji dheere chalna,’ ‘Udhar tum haseen ho,’ ‘Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam,’ ‘Jaane kya tune kahi’ and ‘Na jao saiyyan chhuda ke baiyan,’ you name it. Even today, an evening with friends and gathering of old souls is rarely complete without a round of Dutts’ Golden Age touchstones playing on the speaker. She sang some of her career’s - and indeed, Hindi cinema’s - best songs for Guru Dutt. All these music legends gave her songs of great emotional depth and romantic yearning, for which her honeyed voice suited perfectly. She would go on to strike a formidable partnership with Burman, just as she did with Hemant Kumar and OP Nayyar. Geeta Ghosh Roy Chowdhuri had a talent for singing from a young age.
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