M A I N   N E W S

At birthplace, a few still remember Guru Dutt on his birthday
Shubhadeep Choudhury/TNS

Bangalore, July 9
In the city where Vasanth Kumar Padukone, better known as Guru Dutt, was born on this day 89 years ago, no event has been held to celebrate the occasion even though the city boasts of a robust film culture. But not everyone in the city has forgotten him.

“He hardly had any connection with Bangalore,” says MS Sathyu, director of the epic “Garam Hawa”, to explain the forgetfulness that is witnessed in Bangalore with regard to the birth anniversary of the iconic Bollywood actor-director-producer.

“Guru Dutt was first working in Pune and then moved to Mumbai, where his career blossomed. He never worked in Karnataka. But some of us who had met him do know that his birth anniversary falls in July,” says Sathyu.

The significance of the day is not lost on VK Murthy, Guru Dutt’s cinematographer, who now lives a retired life here. “I do remember that today is Guru Dutt’s birth anniversary. How can I forget it? People know me because of my association with him,” says the modest cameraman, a celebrity in his own right, being the only cinematographer to be awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award.

Born in Bangalore to Shivashanker Rao Padukone and Vasanthi Padukone in a Konkani Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin family on July 9 in 1925, Guru Dutt grew up in Kolkata where his father was working.

According to Murthy, Dutt was more of a Bengali than a Kannadiga. “His mother was a pucca Kannadiga and had even written novels in Kannada,” Murthy said and added that even though both he and Guru Dutt were Karnataka-born, they communicated in Hindi and English.

“Guru Dutt and Shyam Benegal (who is related to Dutt) are similar,” Sathyu says, adding that film-maker Benegal also has no connection with Karnataka as such even though he is of Konkani origin like Guru Dutt.

Mysore-born Sathyu, despite the phenomenal status attained by his Hindi movie “Garam Hawa” (his first movie), has made about six Kannada movies and now lives in Bangalore and is a well-respected figure here.

Paying his tribute to Guru Dutt, Sathyu said Dutt’s contribution to the Hindi “mainstream” cinema was immense. “He can be compared with Mehboob Khan, Bimal Roy or Amiya Chakravarthy,” Sathyu says.

Sathyu’s favourite Guru Dutt movies are “Pyaasa”, “Kaagaz ke Phool” and “Sahib, Biwi Aur Ghulam”. “I particularly liked the way he shot songs. There were not many cuts and one could follow the lyrical poetry of the songs. Songs are not shot this way any more,” says Sathyu.

Murthy, who has captured the chemistry between Dutt and Waheeda Rehman in all five movies they had acted together, said he worked with Pramod Chakravarty, Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani after Guru Dutt passed away in 1964 at the age of 39 following an overdose of sleeping pills, which is widely suspected to be a case of suicide.

“But it is my days with Dutt which I consider the most precious of all my memories,” says the 90-year-old cameraman.