Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 28, 2017)

It was a washerman who forged the connection by inadvertently exchanging their laundered shirts. Dev Anand and Guru Dutt turned up at a Pune studio wearing each other’s shirts and instantly gravitated towards each other, laughing over their dhobi’s mistake. One was the debutante hero of Prabhat’s Hum Ek Hain and the other, an assistant director-choreographer. During the shoot, the two starry-eyed strugglers quickly entered into a pact — if Dev produced a film, he’d take Guru Dutt as the director, and the latter promised to cast him as the hero in his directorial.

Dev saab kept his word and after the debacles of Afsar and Aandhiyan, launched his friend as the director of Navketan’s Baazi in 1951, which turned out to be a big break not just for the duo, but also for its lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi, composer S D Burman, comedian Johnny Walker and actresses Geeta Bali and Kalpana Kartik. Dev went on to marry Kalpana while Guru Dutt tied the knot with singer Geeta Dutt, whom he’d met while recording of the song, “Tadbeer Se Bigdi Hui Taqdeer Bana De.”

“That song brought Guru Dutt and Geeta together, but it also created some friction between S D Burman and Sahir, who was upset that his philosophical number had been turned into a peppy track,” reveals Mohan Churiwala, a close associate of Dev Anand.

Despite the behind-the-scenes friction, Baazi went on to bust the box office and Guru Dutt started a film titled Baaz. Forgetting his promise to his friend, he cast himself in the lead opposite Geeta Bali, but couldn’t replicate the success of Baazi. “Even though he claimed he wanted to be a director, Guru Dutt secretly aspired to be an actor too. Even in Baazi, he popped up in the first scene, sitting on the footpath watching the villain’s sidekick, Rashid Khan, step out of the car and walk into a club where he makes the acquaintance of a card shark played by Dev saab,” informs Churiwala.

After Baaz, Guru Dutt went on to play a cabbie in Aar Paar, which came in the same year (1954) as Dev saab’s Taxi Driver, followed by Mr & Mrs 55. It was only in ’56 that he cast his friend in CID, which he produced, but was directed by Raj Khosla, who’d come to Mumbai with dreams of becoming a playback singer and gone on to assist Guru Dutt in Baazi on Dev saab’s recommendation. Dutt, however, directed TR Fatehchand’s 1952 crime thriller, Jaal, repeating the Baazi jodi, along with K N Singh.

Churiwala recalls how KN Singh had persuaded Dev saab, a teetotaler, to gulp down a glass or two of Feni on the last day of shooting in Goa, assuring him that it was a local, non-alcoholic drink. The next morning, at around 6.30 am, Dev saab left for Mumbai in his Chevrolet Impala, with Geeta sitting beside him, her sister and his chauffeur at the back. “Dev saab was a little drowsy and hungover from the Feni he had drank and was happy to drive sedately. But Geeta egged him on and he put his foot down on the accelerator and the big car was soon racing down the highway. Then, for a split second he shut his eyes, and the car crashed into a tree. His expensive car was totaled and the steering wheel rammed into his chest, cracking a few ribs. Geeta sustained a few bruises on the head. The villagers rushed him to Pune’s Sassoon Hospital where he was treated by Dr Shriram Lagoo, whom he later signed for films like Lootmaar and Des Pardes,” says Churiwala

Despite the crash, Jaal made the cash counters jingle to the tune of Lata Mangeshkar and Hemant Kumar’s chartbuster, “Yeh Raat, Yeh Chandni Phir Kahan, Sun Ja Dil Ki Dastaan.” But the friendship that had begun with rainbow-hued dreams ended with disillusionment, despair and an untimely death. Guru Dutt was a broken man after the debacle of his passion project, Kagaz Ke Phool, and never directed another film. But Churiwala remembers that three days before he passed away, he told Dev saab that he wanted to make a film with him as the hero. Once again he didn’t keep his promise. Their next meeting was in Guru Dutt’s bedroom, as he lay lifeless on the bed. Dev saab outlived his friend by almost five decades. Had he been around, he’d have turned 94 on September 26, and would probably be in the middle of directing a film. For him, dreams didn’t die, and promises were made to be kept.