The legend of Guru Dutt: A rebel without a cause

The idea of critical thinking and introspection lingered forever in his upcoming films.

Guru Dutt was born on July 9th, 1925 as Vasant Kumar Shiv Shankar Padukone in Bangalore. Soon his parents shifted to Bhowanipore, Calcutta. Dutt spent a fair amount of time in the city, picking up the ethos and pathos of the culture and people around him. The Rediff.com reports that the name ‘Guru Dutt’, was considered auspicious at the time in Bengal and was hence picked up by him. Thus, the influence of Bengal lingered upon him.


Dutt has been often remembered as the inquisitive kid. His mother recounted in the documentary In search of Guru Dutt (1989) that if young Dutt wanted to know something, he would pester her till the time she could answer all his questions. These questions would range anything from the pieces of machinery and the world around little Dutt to the myriad of phenomena in nature. His interest in dancing took him to Almora, where he trained himself under the guidance of the luminaire, Udayshankar.

Dutt’s exposé was threatening enough for the dreams and aspirations of the masses at large, and thus, many of his films like Kagaaz ke Phool became commercial disasters. Nevertheless, he would be remembered as “an Orson Welles-like figure, only fully appreciated after his death in 1964,” in the words of Kavita Amarnani.

Dutt at the core was a performer, and would never shy away from acting out most of his scenes to his actors. In the end, the actors were just placed in a scheme of things that the director had already staged for them.

Dutt was not a native speaker of Hindi, and had always been skeptical about his diction and delivery of dialogues. But it is this craze for authenticity that led to his finding actors like Waheeda Rahman and Johnny Walker.

Dutt’s love for exploring the character sketches of minor or secondary characters came through the depiction of different foibles and idiosyncrasies of various communities. Be it through the dialects of a Parsi community or mannerisms of a fisherman community in Goa.

Dutt is also remembered as a socialist and reformist when it comes to storytelling. Films like Aar Paar (1954) and Pyaasa (1957) paved the way for modern screenwriters to integrate real-life authenticity into fiction plots.

Dutt chose to represent the women of his time in a very different light. He developed a feminist approach to question the legacy of the patriarchal society through his strong female characters. He was actually representing the reformist attitude of the nation which was heading towards a society of equal representations, where the economic empowerment of women was as important as the economic upliftment of the entire country. In Guru Dutt’s films, the economically independent woman was positioned higher than the unemployed group of female characters. For example in his 1953 feature, Baaz, the courageous princess, Nisha enslaves a ship to become a rebellious queen; clearly overshadowing the character of Queen Regent in the film, who held her title as a gift of legacy.

Guru Dutt’s passion for cinema and his eager portrayal of the ideals or the erosion of it in his movies had affected his soul to a point of restlessness. As his writer friend Abrar Alvi points out in the May edition of Filmfare (1966):

“…That night (after filming a depressing scene for Baharein Phir Bhi Aayengi), he just approved of the last scene; bade me good-bye, and then, after locking himself up in his room, quietly quit this world when dawn was just round the corner. That cruel night spirited away his restless soul. He did not even leave a note to tell us why he was doing it.”