Filmmaker Raj Khosla at 100: A tale of Dutt, dacoits and a double life
In a 35-year career (1954-89), he directed 26 films, adroitly shifting between Bombay noir crime thrillers and spooky tales of mystery, love stories, family socials and dacoit dramas.
Raj Khosla grew up in Bombay, hero-worshipping the singer KL Saigal, who coincidentally lived close to the Khoslas' home in Matunga.
Khosla, in fact, dreamed of being a playback singer. But, given the opportunity to sing a few songs in films such as Bhool Bhulaiyan (1949) and Aankhen (1950), he soon realised he could never stand out in a field dominated by the likes of Mohammed Rafi and Mukesh.
So, when Dev Anand — who describes Khosla in his autobiography as 'my coffee-house friend from the days I was working at the military censor office' — recommended him to Dutt instead, Khosla accepted the offer.
Dutt, who was working on his directorial debut, Baazi (1951), took him on as one of his two assistant directors. Khosla assisted on his next three films too. In-between, he made his own directorial debut, with Milap (1955). The Dev Anand-Geeta Bali starrer, a tale of a poor country youth who comes into a big inheritance and falls prey to swindlers, flopped at the box office.
A still from Mera Gaon Mera Desh, a 1971 precursor to Sholay (1975), about a small-time thief and jailbird who must protect a village from a merciless daku.
Fortunately, Dutt stepped in and offered him the chance to direct his next production, the noir thriller CID (1956). CID was a huge hit.
Dutt would remain an important figure in Khosla's life and much of his work reveals influences of his guru's cinematic style. These influences are particularly clear in the way he used songs. They weren't just embellishments but carried the story forward. And they were exquisite, truly deserving of the term 'evergreen'.
It was Khosla's films from the '50s and '60s that gave us Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan (CID; OP Nayyar), Naina Barse Rim Jhim and Lag Ja Gale (Woh Kaun Thi; Madan Mohan), Mera Saaya and Jhumka Gira Re (Mera Saaya; Madan Mohan).
Many of Khosla's films are remembered fondly even today: Do Raaste (1969; starring Rajesh Khanna and Mumtaz); Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971, starring Dharmendra); Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki (1978; starring Asha Parekh and Nutan); Dostana (1980, starring Amitabh Bachchan).
Yet, oddly, the man himself has faded from public memory. In his centenary year — he was born in the same year as Guru Dutt — a new biography by Amborish Roychoudhury seeks to right this strange imbalance.
Jabbar Singh!
Two genres stand out in Khosla's filmography: suspense and the dacoit drama.
In the former, the first two films of his famous trilogy — Woh Kaun Thi (1964), Mera Saaya (1966) and Anita (1967) – were almost Hitchcockian. The suspense is real, the plots taut. Both films keep the viewer on the edge of their seat. (The third was weak and faltered on plot and pace).
Among the dacoit dramas, Mera Gaon… foreshadows the blockbuster Sholay (1975): A small-time thief and jailbird Ajit (Dharmendra) must protect a village from the depredations of a merciless daku (who is called Jabbar Singh!). Khosla saw hits and success in his peak years.
Behind the scenes, however, a complex personal life was taking its toll.
Khosla had fallen in love outside his marriage. Amid the turmoil, he sank into alcoholism. 'Going by several accounts, he was mentally disturbed... The double life he was leading sat heavily on his lean shoulders,' Roychoudhury writes in his biography.
Khosla's later films, meanwhile, were neither commercially successful nor did they do justice to his talent. Soon, work started drying up. His time was over. He died in 1991, aged 66, forgotten by the industry.
Until the end, he kept a giant photograph of Guru Dutt in his office, Roychoudhury writes. 'In the autumn of his life, it was not uncommon for journalists or assistants to walk in on him weeping in front of the portrait.'
Perhaps he was remembering his guru, perhaps he was remembering happier times, or perhaps it was a bit of both.
(Poonam Saxena is a writer and translator whose works include Dharmvir Bharati's iconic Gunahon ka Devta, Rahi Masoom Raza's Scene: 75 and Aleph's Greatest Hindi Stories Ever Told)
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The Print
a day ago
- The Print
Guru Dutt built Bollywood's most unlikely dream team—bus conductor, unknown writer, dancer
'Aap bahut photogenic hain (you are very photogenic),' Alvi told him. 'Kuchh actogenic bhi hain ya nahin (Am I also a little actogenic or not)?' Dutt replied, as quoted in Nasreen Munni Kabir's Guru Dutt: A Life in Cinema. This, in fact, was how Dutt discovered most of his A-team: through chance, curiosity, and a fine-tuned instinct for creative spark. Together, this group played a major part in making his most acclaimed films, from Pyaasa and Kaagaz ke Phool to Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. But Baaz (1953), Dutt's first film as a leading man, flopped. Later, when he asked Alvi what he thought of it, he gave a diplomatic answer. New Delhi: Abrar Alvi's most extensive writing experience was lavish love letters when he landed on the set of Baaz, where his cousin Jaswant had a small role. That didn't stop him from critiquing the dialogue, though. Actor and director Guru Dutt overheard, handed him a few scenes to rewrite, and soon hired him as a writer at his production house. Dutt offered Alvi the screenplay and dialogues for Aar Paar (1954), and the writer went on to script some of Dutt's most enduring films. As Kabir wrote, his contribution was immeasurable: 'Alvi's particular talent was in scripting realistic and intelligent repartee and in giving each screen character his or her own individuality.' More such happy accidents followed with other outsiders and unknowns. A BEST bus conductor who later took on the name Johnny Walker. A teenage actress, Waheeda Rehman, whose only credit when Dutt first saw her was a dance number in a Telugu film. An aspiring singer, Raj Khosla, who became one of Hindi cinema's top directors. A cameraman, VK Murthy, who would go on to become the first Indian to use CinemaScope in Kaagaz ke Phool. And a production manager, S Guruswamy, who was part of virtually every film Dutt made. With them, he made some of the most emotional, existential, and enduring films in Hindi cinema. Dutt was the face of these collaborations, but it was this inner circle that gave him creative momentum—through friendship, trust, and an openness to experiment. There were occasional fights too but the bond didn't break. 'Like all creative people, he was very demanding of his co-workers,' recalled cinematographer VK Murthy in a 2010 interview. 'We quarrelled a couple of times because of the time I took to set up the lighting. We had a big argument during the making of Aar Paar. Later, he explained how he was under pressure to deliver quickly, and that we needed to cooperate and work faster. He was a reasonable man, and from then on, we worked harmoniously.' It was with Murthy that Dutt's visual signature was created, from the shattered mirrors and ghostly reflections of Kaagaz ke Phool to the interplay of light and shadow in Pyaasa. In the centenary of Guru Dutt, who was born on 9 July 1925, the spotlight naturally falls on him. But it was the people in his orbit who kept his star burning as brightly as it did, even if it was short-lived, given his death at the age of 39. His legacy was a team effort that was never about fame or money but something more lasting. As Dutt himself put it in a 1963 interview: 'Fame… is a some time thing. It, like everything else, shall pass.' Also Read: Guru Dutt chose Raj Khosla over his brother to direct CID. It became the biggest hit of 1956 'Worked together, partied together' When Guru Dutt made his directorial debut with the 'Bombay Noir' Baazi in 1951 (not to be confused with Baaz), there was a fair bit of scepticism swirling around him. Its star, his friend Dev Anand had brought him on board, but the actor's elder brother Chetan Anand wasn't sure Dutt was up to the job. But not only was the film a box office hit, it was the turning point where his inner circle of actors, writers, and technicians began coalescing. 'To create magic on reel, one needs a dream team in real. With Baazi, Guru Dutt got a chance to work with people who went on to become his A-team, who were an integral part of many of his memorable films in the next decade,' wrote Yasser Usman in his book Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story. It was a motley crew, and yet it clicked into place. On that set, Dutt met Badruddin Jamaluddin Kazi, a bus conductor. He was brought in by actor Balraj Sahni, who'd seen him performing comic routines on Mumbai's BEST buses. Kazi showed up in character, lurching and slurring like a drunk, though he was actually a teetotaller. Dutt took to him instantly, and as someone who wasn't a teetotaller himself, named him after his favourite whisky: Johnny Walker. If Dutt placed his faith in an artist, he would give them a lot of room. 'He'd tell us, Johnny ye tumhara scene hai, ye dialogue hai, ye shot hai. Isme tum jo behtar kar sakte ho to karo [Johnny, this is your scene, this is the dialogue, this is the shot. Do whatever you can to make it better],' Walker recalled in Usman's book. He went on to be part of every film Guru Dutt directed or produced, except Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. Right from his first film, Dutt also had a clear sense of how his films should look. He used light and shadow to an almost poetic level in his cinema. 'On the sets of Baazi, Guru Dutt recognised one such person with whom he was going to create unforgettable images and emotions on screen. His name was VK Murthy,' Usman wrote. Baazi was also where Raj Khosla entered the picture. He had come to Bombay hoping to become a singer, but joined Dutt as an assistant director on Dev Anand's recommendation. When he admitted to exaggerating his Hindi writing skills, Dutt let it slide with a grin. The next to join was production manager S Guruswamy, who handled the nuts and bolts of the filmmaking process. 'They worked together, they partied together. This camaraderie of the team members was translating beautifully on celluloid too,' wrote Usman. The partnership wasn't about forming a coterie around Dutt. It was also about mentorship and mutual benefit. Khosla, for one, went on to become a successful director in his own right, known for films like Woh Kaun Thi? (1964), Mera Saaya (1966), and Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki (1978). But the turning point was CID, produced by Guru Dutt Films. Even though Dutt's brother Atmaram wanted the job, it went to Khosla. The brothers fell out but the film became one of the biggest hits of 1956. 'He never interfered with my work. It's Guru Dutt's skill that I learnt, the use of the face, the eyes more than body movements. And the use of close-ups—they tell the main story,' Khosla told Kabir. In the same interview he also recounted that reviews and criticism did not affect his mentor very much. 'Guru Dutt never bothered about critics. He was his own critic. He knew where he was going wrong and he would say, 'Raj, this film is going wrong, this film will not go over right—yeh gadbad ho gayi hai [this has gone wrong]'. He could feel it,' said Khosla. When CID earned Rs 30 lakh, Dutt called Khosla and handed him the keys to a Dodge convertible. 'It's a present for having made CID,' he said when asked why. Khosla was a 'gushing admirer of Guru Dutt, his persona and his filmmaking,' wrote Amborish Roychoudhury in his book Raj Khosla: The Authorised Biography. Yet, it was not a relationship where anyone was beholden. Khosla turned down Dutt's offer to direct another film for him, reportedly saying, 'I am a small plant and I can't grow under a big tree.' Another dream team member who was fierce about her individuality was Waheeda Rehman. Also Read: Guru Dutt turned melancholia into art. He was 'lost in filmmaking, lost to life' A reluctant muse The story goes it all began in 1955, when Guru Dutt's car hit a buffalo in Hyderabad. Stranded for a day with Guruswamy, he spotted a young woman across the street and asked who she was. Her name was Waheeda Rehman, a dancer in the Telugu film Rojulu Marayi. Dutt arranged to meet her, spoke to her briefly, and returned to Bombay. Months later, a man named Mannu Bhai Patel showed up at her home in Madras and told her Guru Dutt wanted to see her in Bombay. After some deliberation, Rehman travelled to Dutt's office at Famous Studios in Mahalaxmi, where he, Khosla, Alvi, Murthy, and Guruswamy were waiting with a contract. 'When I first met him, I did not think he was a famous and great director because he spoke very little. The meeting lasted for about half an hour,' said Rehman to Kabir. She signed on but right from the beginning she dictated her own terms, sometimes to the ire of the others, especially Khosla. For one, she refused to change her name as he had requested. She also demanded a say in her costumes. 'Raj Khosla was furious – in his world, newcomers didn't throw their weight around…But his mentor could see a spark in her that Raj couldn't. Guru Dutt agreed to all her demands,' reads Raj Khosla: The Authorized Biography. Rehman made her Hindi debut in CID and stuck to her guns from the start. For a seduction scene, she refused to wear a lace blouse unless it was covered by a dupatta. Khosla protested but Dutt acquiesced. 'They had seen Guru Dutt losing his patience with other actors and senior technicians. But he seemed like an entirely different person when talking to Waheeda,' wrote Yasser Usman. Their collaboration gave Dutt's films some of their most haunting moments: the long silences in Pyaasa where she plays the sex worker Gulabo, the ache of 'Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam' in Kaagaz ke Phool. As Rehman became central to his films, rumours about their relationship worsened his already strained marriage to Geeta Dutt. His personal life, by most accounts, was turbulent, with alcohol being a major factor. On 10 October 1964, Walker and Waheeda Rehman were travelling to Madras. As Walker entered his hotel the telephone rang : Johnny Guru gaya. He broke down and Rehman was stunned, writes Usman. The cause of death was a fatal mix of alcohol and sleeping pills. Whether it was accidental or intentional has never been resolved. 'His death may have been just an accident; but I know that he had always wished for it, longed for it…and he got it,' Rehman later wrote in 1967. 'Whatever happened was perhaps best for him! That is the only consolation left.' (Edited by Asavari Singh)
Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Hindustan Times
Guru Dutt at 100: A Wknd tribute to a tortured artist and his enduring art
On the morning of October 10, 1964, Guru Dutt was found dead in his flat in Bombay, lying on his bed in a crumpled kurta-pyjama. He had drunk a glass of pink liquid, sleeping pills crushed and dissolved in water. He had turned 39 in July. This was his third suicide attempt. His first was at the peak of his career, while directing and starring in Pyaasa (1957), a classic that is considered his greatest film. What was it that haunted this young man? Biographers have been trying to answer that question for decades. It was as if success drew him deeper into himself. In her book Guru Dutt: A Life in Cinema, Nasreen Munni Kabir quotes his brother, the filmmaker Atma Ram, as saying: 'He was quite social in his early days… had a very pleasant nature… Whether it was the success or his filmmaking, he became increasingly enclosed, more and more cut off.' His movies changed too. After early light-hearted releases such as Aar Paar (1954) and Mr & Mrs '55 (1955), both romantic comedies, came Pyaasa, a dark masterpiece about a poet rejected at every turn, who finds solace with a prostitute. This was followed by the even bleaker Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), about a successful film director whose anguished personal life leads to his ruin. Stills from Dutt's first film, Baazi (1951; above) and his dark masterpiece, Pyaasa (1957; below). . The melancholy of his movies made him something of an outlier in the world of 1950s Hindi cinema, when directors such as Raj Kapoor and Mehboob Khan were telling hopeful stories that reflected the exuberance-amid-hardship of a newly independent India. Filmmakers such as Bimal Roy spotlit the darker side, with tales of systemic injustice, exploitation and caste. But Guru Dutt's stories didn't fit in here either. Because the despair he sketched with such artistry wasn't systemic, it was deeply personal. The descents into insomnia, depression and drink were the story of his life, told in real time. *** Guru Dutt was born in 1925, into a family from Mangalore. His father, Shivashankar Padukone, moved cities and jobs frequently, before settling in Calcutta in 1929, where he found work as a clerk. (Incidentally, Dutt's given name was Vasanth Padukone. His parents changed it, after a childhood accident, hoping to accord him better luck.) After his matriculation exam, Dutt stopped studying and began to work, to help keep the family afloat. At 16, he found a job as a telephone operator. The following year, hope dawned. Knowing how much he loved to dance, a relative helped him join Uday Shankar's academy, in 1942. Two years later, when the school shut, the relative, BB Benegal, an artist and his mother's cousin, stepped in again. He took Dutt to Poona and introduced him to Baburao Pai, chief executive at the pioneering Prabhat Film Company. Dutt was hired as a dance director. A still from Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959). It is hard to tell if fate was smiling or scheming at this point, but this is where he met Dev Anand, who was acting in the Prabhat film Hum Ek Hain in 1945. A dhobi mixed up their shirts, which is how the two met and became friends, the story goes. They grew so close that they made a promise to each other: Dev Anand would take Guru Dutt on as director in the first film he produced, and Dutt would sign the actor for the first movie he directed. Both would keep these promises. As Dev Anand wrote in his autobiography, Romancing with Life (2007): 'Guru Dutt and I were on the same wavelength. He wanted to make some great films, and I wanted to be a great actor, a great star... We saw masterpieces of outstanding filmmakers together… We were inseparable. Together we tramped and cycled the streets of Poona…' *** When his contract with Pai ended, in 1947, Dutt moved to Bombay. He would find no work of significance for almost a year. In those difficult days, he began to write a story titled Kashmakash (Conflict). This would later become Pyaasa. In 1950, he finally got a break, as filmmaker Gyan Mukherjee's assistant on the crime thriller Sangram (1950). In Mukherjee, an educated, talented man, Dutt also found a mentor. He would eventually dedicate Pyaasa to Mukherjee, who had died aged 47, the year before its release. Meanwhile, Dev Anand had not forgotten his promise. He invited his friend to direct a movie for his banner, Navketan. Dutt's first film, Baazi (1951) — starring Dev Anand, Kalpana Kartik and Geeta Bali, in a tale about an expert card player embroiled in the murky dealings of a nightclub that runs an illegal gambling den — was a hit. In his cap, scarf and cigarette, Dev Anand cut a rakish figure. As he wrote in his autobiography: 'I became a phenomenon after the release of Baazi…' In his next movie, Jaal (1952), true to his word, he signed Dev Anand to play the lead role: that of a ruthless smuggler who ensnares a perky young woman in Goa. Baaz (1953), Dutt's third film as director, was interesting for three reasons. It was his first starring role (he would go on to star in all his own films, and was in demand by other directors too). It was his first and only period drama. Set in 16th-century Malabar, he played a young prince who falls in love with a daring anti-Portuguese rebel (Geeta Bali). The film was also his first box-office failure; he never attempted the genre again. Instead, he stuck to urban stories about crime and love in Bombay. His next two, Aar Paar (1954) and Mr & Mrs '55 (1955), were runaway hits. A year later came CID, produced by Guru Dutt but helmed by his former assistant director, Raj Khosla. That too was a hit. With these three films, he and Khosla more or less invented Bombay noir, a genre in which the action shifts from plush nightclubs with cabaret dancers and cigarette girls to lamplit city streets and dingy eating houses. Crime is everywhere. The heroes are rakish rogues; the heroines are luminously beautiful. The sultry 'other woman' propels the plot: Geeta Bali as a club dancer in Baazi, Shakila in Aar Paar, and Waheeda Rehman as a gangster's moll in her first Hindi film, CID. *** Based on his later films, Dutt is perhaps the only filmmaker of his generation who can be called an auteur. His distinctive personal style reflected in his stories of unhappy and troubled artists, and in the intense visuals he created onscreen. These included the stunning shots of the Ajanta Studios, dominated by the towering garuda, in Kaagaz Ke Phool; and the black-and-white frames of Pyaasa, particularly the haunting Christ-like pose of the poet in the song Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye. From the start, Dutt did marvellous and unexpected things with music too. Think of Waqt Ne Kiya from Kaagaz Ke Phool, with its panoramic shots of a studio floor complete with cranes, catwalks and cameras; the sequence remains a landmark in Hindi cinema. The songs in his films were used unusually, often as an extension of the dialogue, beginning without prelude or introductory music (as with Johnny Walker's Jane Kahan Mera Jigar Gaya Ji in Mr & Mrs '55). They moved the story forward, lifted the mood, and reflected sweeping emotion. Yet not even Mohammed Rafi's Sar Jo Tera Chakraye could lift the mood of Pyaasa. Dutt played Vijay, a disillusioned poet belittled by his brothers, spurned by publishers and cast aside by the woman he loves in favour of a rich husband. Perennially broke, he wanders the city aimlessly, finally finding solace in the love of a prostitute named Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman) who never stops believing in him. If the poet was devastated by failure, Dutt seemed living proof that success wasn't the answer either. The filmmaker was well-off, had moved into a larger flat in Bombay and bought farm land in Lonavala. None of it made him happy. A turbulent personal life may have contributed to his despondency. In 1953, he married the beautiful singer Geeta Roy, whom he met during the making of Baazi. By all accounts they were very much in love, but their marriage soon soured. She hated the rumours of a great love between him and Waheeda Rehman, and hated even more the idea that they might be true. *** Amid the turmoil, Dutt's next film, Kaagaz Ke Phool, with its tale of a successful film director's self-destructive slide into penury and alcoholism, was so dark and defeatist, it crashed at the box office. Even Waheeda Rehman didn't believe in it. In an interview with Nasreen Munni Kabir, she said: 'I thought the film was too sad… too heavy… I know there are many good moments in Kaagaz Ke Phool, but as a whole I don't think it worked.' Dutt, who set great store by commercial success, lost a little more of himself with this failure. He never directed a film again. *** Still, he had great hits. His production company, Guru Dutt Films, produced Chaudhvin Ka Chand in 1960, directed by M Sadiq. Set in Lucknow, it was a story of misunderstandings, sacrifice, duty and love, set in Muslim households. It swept the box office and was, by the numbers, the biggest hit of Dutt's career. Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962), the last major film he produced, was directed by his long-time writer Abrar Alvi and, for many Guru Dutt fans, is second only to Pyaasa. The tale of the decay of a feudal zamindari family in turn-of-the-century Bengal features Dutt alongside Meena Kumari, who is magnificent in the role of a chhoti bahu who turns to alcohol in an attempt to win over her indifferent husband (Rehman). In 1963-64 alone, he played the lead in three family dramas made by other production houses: Bharosa, Bahurani and Sanjh Aur Savera. He had already tried to kill himself a second time by this point, swallowing 38 sleeping pills during the making of Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam in 1962. *** Through it all, he continued to love movie-making. Even after he stopped directing, in films such as Chaudhvin Ka Chand and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, he shot the songs. Waheeda Rehman has never been filmed more beautifully than in the song Chaudhvin Ka Chand Ho. *** What was it that haunted this young man? All these years on, his tormented genius remains an enigma. As Yasser Usman, author of the 2020 biography Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story, puts it, 'He never gave interviews. No magazines ran cover stories on him. Whatever we know about him is through what others have said.' And yet, in a way, he had been telling his story all along; he had built his life, legacy and fandom around it. One can't help but think of Vijay's words in Pyaasa: 'Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaye toh kya hai?' (Poonam Saxena is a writer and translator whose works include Dharmvir Bharati's iconic Gunahon ka Devta, Rahi Masoom Raza's Scene: 75 and Aleph's Greatest Hindi Stories Ever Told)
Time of India
a day ago
- Time of India
When Sanjay Dutt recalled Sunil Dutt's hilarious reaction to him crashing a car, but not forgetting THIS
Sanjay Dutt , the versatile actor, has been winning fans' hearts with his peculiar style and innate acting skills, whether it's action sequences or emotional confrontations. While his acting made headlines, Dutt's substance abuse in the past is no stranger to the fans. Sanjay Dutt recalls the incident... This happened on Salman Khan 's show Dus Ka Dum, where Sanjay made a guest appearance with Jackie Shroff . During the show, the 'Munna Bhai M.B.B.S.' actor narrated an incident between him and his father, Sunil Dutt , leaving the other two stunned and in laughter. The incident occurred before Dutt's Bollywood debut, which ended with him having cuts on his face. 'There is one incident I remember, I was doing a film with Rajiv Rai . So, I went to his place at night for a narration. The narration never happened, but we started consuming liquor. Later, when it was 2 am, I left his house in an inebriated state, and I crashed my car,' the 65-year-old said. 'It was before 'Rocky'; the glass broke on my face, so I had all the cut marks. He had given me a present of four liquor bottles, and with that, I went home and slept,' he continued, before hilariously adding, 'The next morning, when Dutt Sahab ( Sunil Dutt) woke me up, the first thing he said to me was that it is okay that you had an accident, he forgave me, but he said, 'How did you not forget those 4 bottles in the car, how did you remember those?'' Sanjay Dutt's films... On the work front, Sanjay Dutt starred in two movies that were released this year, 'The Bhootnii' and 'Housefull 5.' The latter was a multi-starrer and had a smashing box office run, breaking the record of its earlier instalments.
