Today, it is impossible to imagine anyone but Guru Dutt as Suresh Sinha who dies a lonely death in an empty film studio, slumped in the director's chair in Kagaz Ke Phool.

But, according to his writer-director friend Abrar Alvi, Guru Dutt, who had lived with the dream to make this film for eight years, since his days as an assistant director, had initially planned the cult classic with Chetan Anand in mind.

Guru Dutt had sketched out the story of a filmmaker struggling with a troubled marriage, a custody battle for his daughter, a career going steadily downhill, and an ego that won't let him accept favours from his star protégé, to the well-known director Mahesh Kaul. But Kaul wasn't too impressed with this offbeat subject. So Dutt tucked it away till he established himself as a director with Navketan's Baazi and then, decided to direct the film himself.

Kagaz Ke Phool was supposed to roll before Pyaasa and Guru Dutt had taken the role of Suresh to Chetan Anand, who with his salt-and-pepper hair “looked“ the character of the middle-aged director.“He was aghast when Chetan quoted a price which was as high as that of his younger brother Dev Anand, who was a star,“ informed Abrar.

Disappointed but not disheartened Guru Dutt then approached Ashok Kumar. But Dadamoni also declined and thereafter the director got busy with Pyaasa, followed by Raaz, which he shelved after 13 reels, and Gauri, abandoned after four. Kagaz Ke Phool was launched 10 days later to keep the company afloat, with Guru Dutt in the lead.

In later years, many have noted the similarities between the filmmaker and the aging hero of Kagaz Ke Phool. Like Suresh, Guru Dutt too was a man who lived to work in contrast to his fun-loving singer wife Geeta Dutt. The songstress enjoyed the company of friends and was irked that her introverted husband didn't share her fondness for parties. In the film too, Veena, the pampered daughter of an aristocrat, who has committed the cardinal sin of marrying a struggling filmmaker, even though he quickly rises in the social hierarchy with his films, is heard reminding him of a social engagement. Suresh who's in the editing room retorts, “Don't disturb me please.“ The marital problems that follow are inevitable.

Perhaps anticipating that people would find parallels between his real life and reel, Guru Dutt abruptly replaced Shashikala after shooting with her for a fortnight, turning the strongly etched character of the wife into a shadowy figure. “Almost all her best scenes were edited out. By dismissing the character of the wife and their hellish marriage, Guru Dutt weakened the plot because the audience couldn't understand why a man who had name, fame, money and success should be unhappy,“ a despondent Abrar, the film's story and dialogue writer, had said years later.

Many believed that the character of Shanti, the 'other woman', sensitively portrayed by Waheeda Rehman, was also rooted in Guru Dutt's relationship with his own protégé whom he had spotted in a dance number in a Telugu film and later turned her into one of Mumbai's best-loved stars. Abrar acknowledged that Guru Dutt had played Professor Henry Higgins to Waheeda's Eliza Doolittle but insisted that, like in the film, there was nothing physical about the relationship.

It was just a meeting of two minds that were completely in sync and understood each other too well.“Kagaz Ke Phool wasn't Guru Dutt's biography as is often believed, it was just another experimental film that he made.“ An experiment that didn't work commercially when it opened in 1959 but this Paper Flower hasn't withered with time, rather it has acquired the fragrance of a cult classic.