The boy who loved shadows

He fell in love with shadows as a child and as a teenager would create shadow images with his fingers in candle light. It was a portent of things to come. He was Vasanth Kumar Shivashankar Padukone and he was going to grow up to be Guru Dutt (July 9, 1925 – October 10, 1964), the master of light and shadow in Hindi cinema. Someone who told stories in cinema with more conviction than most of us put in our lives. And someone who could go from the froth and laughter of Aar Paar (1954) and Mr and Mrs 55 (1955) to  the  frightening darkness of Pyaasa (1957) and Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) with shot-taking that blurred the line between paintings and cinema, raw emotion and polished directorial technique. Hindi cinema’s first cinemascope film, Kaagaz Ke Phool, is credited to him. The ‘50s were ripe with great cinema and in post-Independence India, there was a collective flexing of creative muscle with Satyajit Ray painting poverty in poetic beauty, Bimal Roy and Raj Kapoor addressing social issues with a light touch. There were Mehboob Khan’s spectacular melodramas and then there was Guru Dutt, quietly crafting his films.

He had a great musicality and sense of choreography because he was a trained dancer. And because he was an actor he understood other actors, tapping their core to get them to perform naturally and fluently. And nothing can sum up the power of the close-up in a Guru Dutt film. He understood when to tell the story from afar and when to move closer to capture a glint of light in the eye, a glistening teardrop or a frown. He was a generous creative collaborator and his partnerships with Dev Anand, Waheeda Rehman, cinematographer V K Murthy, director Raj Khosla, singer Geeta Dutt, writer Abrar Alvi, music director S D Burman and poet Sahir were magical. Right from his first film Baazi as a director (1951), he showed a stylish understanding of story and technique. Baazi looked more like a Hollywood thriller than a conventional Hindi film. It had multiple close-up shots with a 100 mm lens and this came to be known as the famous ‘Guru Dutt Shot’.

But there were always a battle between sunlight and darkness within him and this polarity was part of his work and his life. And work and life converged in the cult classic Kaagaz Ke Phool where he foresaw what happens when success leaves and along with it, admirers, friends and proteges. In a scene that is considered one of the most beautifully shot ever, he sits alone in a destroyed studio with a lone beam of sunlight and his memories. Kaagaz Ke Phool flopped because the era when it was made belonged to happy musicals and carefully packaged family entertainers and this story was a raw nerve that no one wanted touched. Unlike his more successful Pyaasa where a man chose to walk away from success, Kaagaz Ke Phool was the systematic destruction of a man who, much like Guru Dutt, should not have been the wreck he turned out to be. But then from the peak of success as a director, he falls spectacularly into failure and then fades away.

The film was too personal, too self-indulgent. In a recently independent country just beginning to realise its own power, who wanted to know what personal and professional challenges creative people go through? Film lore has it that at Regal cinema in Mumbai, viewers even indulged in stone throwing. Was it this rejection coupled with his unsorted personal issues that wrecked him? We will never know. On October 10, 1964, he was found dead having overdosed on sleeping pills.

And yet, when you see Guru Dutt the actor in Abrar Alvi’s Saheb Bibi Aur Ghulam, he looks pure and tranquil. Even though the film was one of his last creative endeavours, as Bhootnath he looked like a boy, responding to tragedies and celebrations with wide eyes and an open soul. You could not see any cracks, just dignity even when he falls on his knees in the heart-breaking climactic moment when he sees a skeleton in the ruins of a haveli and lets out a muffled cry of, “Choti Bahu!”

Though cut short tragically, his life was an incredible journey. From a telephone operator to a choreographer, director, actor, he grew with every frame. Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool are today counted among the best films of all time by Time magazine and by the Sight & Sound critics’ and directors’ poll.

In his short life Guru Dutt imprinted the history of Indian cinema. If only he had lived long enough to hear the lasting resonance of his work in minds and hearts across the world. And appreciated the sunlight more than the shadows.