On his death in 1964, the prestigious Indian director and actor Guru Dutt was just 39 years old, but he surpassed a cinematic heritage, which resonated decades later.

Born on 9 July 1925 in the southern state of Karnataka, his birth is a symbol of his birth centenary next week. But the man behind the camera, his emotional turmoil and mental health conflict remains largely unexplained.

Warning: In this article, some readers may know dangerous.

Staple – Dutt produced a deep personal, introspection style of filmmaking for his timely subjects for classic Hindi films such as Pyaar and Kagaaz Ke Phools – Film School Staple which was a novel in the post -independence era.

His complex characters often reflected his personal conflicts; His plots touched universal motifs, inviting the audience to face uncomfortable realities through ghostly beautiful cinema.

Dutt’s beginning was humble and his childhood was marked by financial difficulty and a disturbed family life. After transferring his family to Bengal in eastern India for work, a young Dutt was deeply inspired by the culture of the region and will shape his cinematic vision later in life.

He sprung his surname – Padukone – Padukone – Padukone after entering the Bombay film industry in the 1940s. He made his debut not as a director but as a choreographer, and also worked as a telephone operator to complete the ends. Unrest and uncertainty of the decade – India’s freedom struggle was intensified – influenced the possibilities of an aspiring filmmaker.

It was during this phase that he gave Kashmash a story contained in artistic frustration and social disillusionment, which would later shape his cinematic work love.

Dutt’s friendship with fellow Stargler Dev Anand – who soon grew to fame as an actor – helped him get a chance to direct his first film in 1951. The Noor thriller, Bazi brought him into the headlines.

He soon celebrated love with singer Geeta Roy, and from many accounts, these early years were his happiest.

After launching his film company, Dutt made back-to-back hits with romantic comedy AAR-Par and Mr. and Mrs. 55, both included him in the lead roles. But craving for artistic depth, he asked to explain what his defined film will become – love.

Hard-touching, the Satai film discovered the struggle of an artist in a materialistic world and decades later, it will be the only Hindi film in the list of 100 biggest films of the 20th century of Time Magazine.

Dutt’s late younger sister, Lalita Lajmi, who cooperated with me on writing my biography, said that love was his brother’s “dream project” and “he wanted it to be right”.

As a director, Dutt was fond of ‘making’ the film as he took shape on the set, to experiment with a lot of changes and camera techniques in scripts and dialogues. While he was known to scrap the scenes and resume, it reached a worrying level during love – for example, he now shot 104 of the famous climax sequence.

Lajmi said that when things were not right, he would shout and get spoiled.

“Sleep developed him. Dependence and dependence on alcohol had begun. In his worst time, he started experimenting with sleeping pills, mixing them in his whiskey. Guru Dutt gave all his love to make love – his sleep, his dreams and his memories,” he said.

In 1956, 31 -year -old Dutt attempted suicide, due to his completion as his dream project.

“When the news came, we shook Pali [where he lived]”Lajmi said.” I knew that he was in turmoil. He often called me, saying that we need to talk, but I would not say a word when I reach there, “he said.

But after his discharge from the hospital, no professional support was sought by the family.

Mental health was a “socially tarnished” theme at the time, and with a ride of big money on Pisa, Lajmi said that the family tried to move forward without failing the reasons behind his brother’s internal conflicts.

In 1957, love was an important and commercial victory that brought Dutt to stardom. But the filmmaker often expressed a sense of emptiness despite his success.

Pyaasa’s main cinematographer VK Murthy recalled Dutt, saying, “I wanted to make an director, an actor, good films – I have achieved all this. I have money, I have everything, I still have nothing.”

There was also a strange contradiction between Dutt’s films and his personal life.

His films often depicted strong, independent women but off -screen, as Lajmi remembered, hoping that his wife would adopt more traditional roles and wanted him to sing only in films produced by his company.

To keep your company prosperous, Dutt had a simple rule: each artistic gambling must be followed by a bank qualified commercial film.

But while undergoing the success of Pyarus, he ignored his own rule and directly diving into making his most personal, expensive and semi-attractive film: Kagaz’s flowers.

This tells the story of a filmmaker’s unhappy marriage and confused relationship with his collection. This ends with the death of the filmmaker, when he fails to come up with his acute loneliness and doom relationships.

Although it was now included as a classic, it was a commercial failure at that time, a setback Dutt never overcomes allegedly.

In search of Guru Dutt in Channel 4 documentary, his co-star Wahida Rehman remembered him saying, “Jeevan mein do hi toh cheezen hai – kamyaabi aur failure(There are only two things in life: success and failure) There is nothing in the middle. ,

After the Kagaz flower, he never directed a film again.

But his company recovered over time, and he made a strong comeback as a producer of his career’s most commercially successful film Chaudhwin with Chand.

He then directed Sahib Bibi and Ghulam to his reliable screenwriter Abrar Alvi. By this time, Lajmi said, his personal life was in severe upheaval, which was marked by mood.

The film was trapped in a loving wedding in the loneliness of a woman, which was often a grand landowned landlord in the feudal world.

Writer Bimal Mitra recalls that Dutt told him about his struggle with sleep and dependence on sleeping pills during this time. By then, their marriage had collapsed and mental health deteriorated. Mitra recalled several conversations with Guru Dutt’s constant avoidance: “I think I will go crazy.”

One night, Dutt tried to take his life again. He was unconscious for three days.

Lajmi says that after this, on the advice of a doctor, his family called a psychiatrist to inquire about Dutt’s treatment, but he never chased. “We never called the psychiatrist again,” he published with regret.

For years, she believed that her brother was crying silently, perhaps trapped in a dark place, where no one could see his pain, so dark that he could not find any way out of it.

A few days after Dutt’s discharge, the shooting of Sahib Bibi and Ghulam started again as if nothing had happened.

When Mitra asked him about the incident, Dutt said, “Nowadays, I often wonder what was this disturbance, what was restless that I was hell-bent on committing suicide? When I think about it, I get terrorized with fear.

The film was a success, India’s official entry at the 1963 Berlin Film Festival and also won the National Award.

But Dutt’s personal struggle continued. He separated from his wife and even though he continued to act in films, he often turned to alcohol and gold pills for relief, struggling with intensive loneliness.

On 10 October 1964, 39 -year -old Dutt was found dead in his room.

“I know he always wished for it [death]It is craving for this … and he received, ‘His co-star Wahida Rehman wrote in The Journal of Film Industry, 1967.

Like Pyarsa’s hero, true praise came only after going to Dutt.

Cinema enthusiasts often wonder what he could live for a long time; Perhaps he would continue to resume India’s cinematic landscape with his visionary, poetic works.

Yasar Usman Biography Guru Dutt: is the author of an unknown story