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Geeta Dutt |
THE MEETING
As luck would have it, Guru Dutt, Abrar [Alvi] and Guruswamy [their production controller] landed up at the offices of a distributor in Secunderabad. He was a friend of Murdeshwar Rao [their escort], and Guru Dutt decided to pay him a courtesy call. As they chatted, fate played its hand.
We were idly looking out of the door and talking among ourselves, when a car drew up with a group of urchins trailing behind it. A woman got out and, avoiding the young boys crowding around her, entered the building opposite ours. I asked the distributor, ‘Is there an office there, who is that woman?’ He replied, ‘She is a dancer in a Telugu film called Rojulu Marayi, which is a super hit thanks to her dance number. The film was celebrating its hundredth day and the starlet had become so popular that film goers had started recognising her, which was also the reason the urchins were running after her car, he explained.
The distributor of Rojulu Marayi had his office opposite where we were sitting and that is where the starlet had gone. I asked what her name was, and our host answered, ‘Waheeda Rehman.’ I was intrigued by the Muslim name, and he told me she was a Telugu Muslim girl from Bezwada (present-day Vijayawada).
I asked if she could speak Hindi. She could, he said. ‘Would Guru Dutt like to meet her?’ he suggested. Guru Dutt said why not, anyway we had time to kill. The distributor sent word across the road, and in a little while, she came over to meet us.
It was an anticlimax. She was very plainly dressed, without even lipstick to relieve the monotony of her face, strangely reserved, and spoke softly in near monosyllables in response to our small talk and queries. Then, getting up abruptly, she folded her hands into a namaste, and said, ‘Ab main chaloongi,’ in a markedly south Indian accent, and turned and left.
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Guru Dutt |
In short, there was little in that meeting to suggest that Guru Dutt Films had just encountered its biggest star.
The distributor, however, pushed her case. He persuaded Guru Dutt and his companions to watch the starlet’s dance number. Again, more to kill time than out of any real desire to watch the starlet they had just met, the trio agreed. Needless to say, the reel was not available right away. It had to be arranged, a hall had to be fixed for the viewing, and while all that was being done post-haste, the friends spent the afternoon quaffing beer and having lunch.
By the time we got to the projection room we had downed six bottles, and more likely than not, were in a happy haze.
The reel was shown, the dance number was fast paced and well executed, but there was not a single shot of the dancer in close-up. ‘How is she?’ Guru Dutt asked at the end of it. ‘Very photogenic,’ I replied. ‘I also think so,’ Guru Dutt opined. And we asked the distributor to arrange a meeting.…
We forgot all about Waheeda for the time being. All that remained in memory was that we had made a fruitless trip to see a film called Missiamma which we had not liked. And Guru Dutt was exactly in the same position he had been before the trip. Restless and wondering what to take up next as a foil to Pyaasa.
THE CONFRONTATION
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Waheeda Rehman |
Abrar is categorical that Geeta was in some ways to blame for the growing closeness between Guru Dutt and Waheeda. Her immature behaviour and suspicious nature made Guru Dutt seek solace in Waheeda. He narrates two incidents which throw light on this aspect of Geeta’s mental make-up. The first took place at the time the writer and the director were preparing to go to London before the shooting of Kagaz Ke Phool. Guru Dutt was embarking on his search for a lens that could shoot in cinemascope and convert to 35 mm, and he had wanted Abrar to go along.
Geeta had by then realised that Guru Dutt was close to me, and that I had an influence on him. That is probably why one morning she came over to my house. My wife came to tell me, ‘Geeta has come.’ I though it was Geeta Bali, but she said, ‘No, it is Mrs Dutt.’
I met her, and she put on what I now believe was a great act, even shedding a few tears. I think, seeing that the mother of my children was also present, she thought she could enlist her help, woman to woman, to work on me, to influence her husband.
‘Please understand me,’ she said, ‘I am at my wits’ end, helpless. You are travelling with him, please try to reason with him, he is crazy about Waheeda.’
I told her, ‘I know Waheeda very well by now. There is nothing between them. Please understand that if he does anything that breaks the sanctity of married life, there are at least two people in his unit, Niranjan and me, who will not work with him after that. He has become a father, and we will not brook any irresponsibility on his part towards his children.’
She listened quietly and left. But before she went, she dried her eyes, and said in a very calm voice, ‘Don’t tell him I was here.’
I believe she came only to verify her suspicions. And though I gave Guru Dutt a clean chit, it did little to allay Geeta’s doubts. She was influenced a lot by Smriti Biswas, who also taught her ways to test whether her suspicions were valid and, if possible, catch her husband red-handed.
One day, Guru Dutt handed me a letter. ‘Read it,’ he said. I opened it gingerly and saw that it was signed ‘Yours, Waheeda’. I looked at him, but he said again, ‘Read it.’
The letter was a torrid declaration of love. It said, ‘I need to talk to you, I can’t hold myself back, so I am writing to you, you have driven me to destruction, I am losing my senses, I don’t know what you have done to me…’ And so on. The letter ended with a request for an assignation. ‘Today at 6.30 to 7, meet me at Nariman Point.’
When I looked up after reading the letter, Guru Dutt asked, ‘What do you think?’
I replied, ‘I don’t think Waheeda has written this.’
‘I agree,’ Guru Dutt said.
I said, ‘You meet her everyday, have enough opportunity to meet her in private, in her make-up room. Why would she write this, and why would she want to meet you in a public place like Nariman Point? Why call you there?’
We decided on a plan. He would drive towards Nariman Point and stop near the Cricket Club of India. I would, in my car, take another road, and check out who came there.
I took my second-hand khatara car and parked it in the by-lane next to the CCI. I knew where Guru Dutt was waiting and watching. I saw a car approach and slow down near Nariman Point. Geeta Dutt and Smriti Biswas were sitting in the backseat of the chauffeur-driven car. It moved to the Nariman Point area, waited and watched and then moved on to Marine Drive. I followed the car and went back to Guru Dutt who had seen the whole drama.
I think this was the first time, that night after going home, that he confronted Geeta with the episode and, as he confessed to me later, raised his hand on her.