
Guru Dutt at 100: A Wknd tribute to a tortured artist and his enduring art
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).
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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.
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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…'
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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Indian Express
2 hours ago
- Indian Express
Why Guru Dutt's first feature Baazi remains the film Bollywood still owes a debt to, Raj Kapoor did it in his own style in Shree 420
Whenever I think of Guru Dutt, I think of two of his films. No, they aren't Pyaasa or Kaagaz Ke Phool. As much as I love them, and I do, deeply, and as lucky as I've been to watch them on the big screen in the last few years, they aren't the ones I return to. Maybe because they leave me too undone. Maybe because they are too complete in themselves, too soul-stirring, too perfectly aching, and, sometimes, too personally haunting. So instead, I find myself thinking of two others. Indeed, not as cinematically accomplished, not as poetically distilled, perhaps not as even polished. But they are more revealing. Indeed, not the masterpieces that sealed his legacy. But they revealed who he was before he knew it fully himself. These are the films that tell me more about the artist becoming, rather than the artiste already arrived. One of them is Mr. & Mrs. '55, the film that changed everything for him. It was after that he became the Guru Dutt we speak of now, the one preserved in sighs and frames. But I'll write about that some other day. Today, I want to write about the other one. The first one. The film that might, in some corners, be called his weakest, if only because what followed was so impossibly rich. But that's the thing about Dutt: even at his most unfinished, his least certain, he is already more than most at their sharpest. After all, even in his fragments, there is force. And even in force, there is always a feeling. So Baazi it is. Watching Baazi today, it might appear inferior to many. It's a film full of turns we now call cliches. You can see the twists coming from a distance; even the smallest scenes feel like they're announcing themselves in advance. But to view a historical work without its context is, frankly, an act of ignorance, and to do so with a Dutt film is something far worse. What looks like familiarity now was, in 1951, completely unexpected. The beats we now anticipate, they were all new once. And Baazi was among the first to strike them. Film scholars have often credited it as the film that lit the spark for the urban noir in Hindi cinema, a style and mood that would come to define much of the 1950s. So seminal was its form and feel that Raj Kapoor would do it in his own style with Shree 420 just four years later. Yes, Awaara, which came out the same year as Baazi, shares its own tonal kinship, and that's a fair conversation to have, but Baazi remains the first of its kind. And more than that, it was made by artists who themselves were at their beginning. Dutt, of course, started his innings with it, alongside Johnny Walker, whose first stint with comedy was in Baazi. There was lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi, whose first proper success was Baazi. Zohra Sehgal, who choreographed the songs, was still years away from becoming the iconic actor we remember her as, but post-Baazi, her skills were in some demand. Raj Khosla, still at least five years away from directing his blockbuster CID, began his career as an assistant on Baazi. And then there was V.K. Murthy (not yet the master of light and shadow that he would become, not yet Dutt's visual muse), who worked here as a camera assistant, but still he left his stamp on both Dutt and the audience. In fact, one of my favourite shots from the film was also taken by him. Also Read | Guru Dutt@100: How songs became the soul of his films So, it's in the song 'Suno Gajar Kya Gaaye', where the moll, Nina (Geeta Bali), warns the hero, Madan (Dev Anand), that he is going to be killed, through the words of Ludhianvi and a dance choreographed by Sehgal. While a lot of scholars, like Nasreen Munni Kabir, have written extensively about the ending of the song, where, through rapid cuts, Dutt builds tension and immerses the viewer. However, for me, the genius of Dutt as a director and Murthy as a cameraman lies in the opening of the song. It begins with Nina starting to dance, and we see her not directly, but through a mirror. Soon, the camera pans, and we see Madan walking into the club to take his seat. It's not just a regular panning shot, it's a dolly movement preceded by a tilt down, all done together with poetic grace. This is where Baazi peaks for me. In the way it understands the grammar of song picturisation, something no one before, or perhaps since, has grasped the way Dutt did. Almost every song in the film became a blueprint, a trope that continues to shape the language of storytelling in Bollywood even today. Take, for instance, the film's opening song, 'Sharmaye Kahe Ghabraye Kahe,' where Nina tries to draw Madan into the club, and into a life of crime. It's a moment that Kapoor would imitate, in his own way, with style and flair in 'Mud Mud Ke Na Dekh' from Shree 420. And then, of course, there's the all-time great: 'Tadbir Se Bigdi Hui Taqdeer'. A ghazal at heart, but one that S.D. Burman daringly sets to a hip, Western beat, as Nina attempts to seduce Madan. What stands out, again and again, is minimalism. Because that's what Dutt understood, the art of withholding. There is no spectacle here. No sweeping camera movements, no elaborate sets, no frantic edits. Just the barest essentials, the camera held close, intimate, drawn towards both Bali and Anand. The tension isn't in the choreography. It's in the distance between two eyes, in the pause before a line, in the silence the music moves through. That's the thing with Dutt, the quality that would later make him an artist impossible to ignore. The real story, the real tragedy, is never on the surface. It lives just beyond the obvious. His frames are so layered, that both the art and the artistry are never flaunted, but they are always present, hence always felt. And so it feels inevitable, almost poetic, that in his very first film, and in the very first shot of that film, we find him, as a nameless figure, sitting alone at the corner of a street, watching the world pass. The camera doesn't lean in. It barely notices him. He could be anyone. A poet, at odds with the world, like Vijay from Pyaasa. Or a filmmaker broken by beauty and its cost, like Suresh from Kaagaz Ke Phool. Or maybe, simply, he is what he was. An artist, unknown to the world, waiting at the edge of the frame, for his taqdeer to unfold.


The Print
12 hours ago
- The Print
Guru Dutt's female characters were mirrors to a changing India
Scholars and professors are examining the women in his films through a feminist lens. Even actors such as Ratna Pathak Shah have spoken about the portrayal of women in Dutt's films, although she found the depiction 'offensive'. The impact Guru Dutt made on Hindi cinema can be understood through the fact that, even six decades after his death, his female characters continue to be studied and written about in research papers. New Delhi: Guru Dutt's female protagonists reflected the changing tides of Indian society and helped shape his noir narratives. Through these characters, Dutt explored themes of love, loss, and the struggles of living within societal rules. Yet it's clear that in Dutt's films, women were integral to the storytelling. They weren't just mothers or weak, feckless side characters, like those played by Nirupa Roy in later Bollywood films. In his cinema, women were the emotional and moral centres of the plot. 'In Dutt's films, these characters influence the journey of the male protagonists. These women represent society's darker sides, for example corruption, betrayal and moral issues. Their actions often lead to tragic endings,' wrote Chinmoyee Das, research scholar, and Pankaj Kumar, assistant professor, department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Central University of Haryana, in their 2025 paper titled The Role of the Femme Fatale in Shaping Guru Dutt's Noir Narratives. A man ahead of his time, Dutt used female characters in films such as Pyaasa and Kagaz ke Phool to express deep emotions and complex ideas. These women are etched in memory like brushstrokes on a canvas: vibrant, poignant, and hauntingly beautiful. Through their nuanced portrayals, they embody the struggles, desires, and contradictions of their era. 'In Guru Dutt's movies, the femme fatale reflects society's contradictions at that time,' the paper reads. In Guru Dutt's centenary year, ThePrint revisits some of the unforgettable women characters from his films. Also read: 'He never spoke about why he wanted to die'—Guru Dutt's sister broke her silence Guru Dutt's complex women characters In one of the conversations in Pyaasa, Meena, played by Mala Sinha, asks Gulab, played by Waheeda Rehman, how a gentleman like Vijay (Guru Dutt) could know someone like her, a prostitute. Gulab answers quietly: 'Saubhagya se (by good fortune).' Dutt indulged in reflecting the realistic state of post-Independence India. In the film, Vijay's college sweetheart Meena chooses wealth over love. As she tell him during an argument: 'Sirf pyaar kaafi nahi hota (Love alone is not enough).' In Pyaasa, the female characters are intricately woven into the complexities of the narrative. Gulab and Meena represent contrasting aspects of womanhood. Gulab, despite being marginalised and objectified, shows strength and becomes Vijay's emotional anchor. Meena, on the other hand, represents an idealised figure trapped in societal expectations, highlighting the limitations placed on women at the time. Dutt critiques the very norms that restrict women's autonomy and agency. 'Pyaasa is a poetic, cinematic representation of a pseudo-modern world,' writes Tamanna, an English educator, in a 2024 paper titled Cinema Through Guru Dutt's Gaze. Das notes in her paper how Dutt's women characters reflect the changing role of women in 1950s India. 'It shows independence, the conflict between old and new values and criticism of materialism. Guru Dutt gives strength, vulnerability and ambition,' the paper reads. Dutt's characters were nuanced but written with such simplicity that new actors could easily navigate them on the sets. Waheeda Rehman once admitted in conversation with TV producer and director Nasreen Munni Kabir that she did not know much about acting before Pyaasa. 'All the credit goes to Guru Dutt in the way he built the character of Gulab,' she told Kabir for her book Guru Dutt: A life in Cinema. Also read: Guru Dutt built Bollywood's most unlikely dream team—bus conductor, unknown writer, dancer Challenging patriarchy, marriage, zamindari system A turning point in Guru Dutt's cinematic life came with the much-celebrated Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), which is widely believed to be based on his personal life. The entertainment industry was awash with rumours of an affair between Rehman and Gutt, affecting his married life. In Kaagaz Ke Phool, Dutt played the role of a film director, Suresh, whose troubled marriage reaches a breaking point after he discovers an orphaned girl (Rehman) and turns her into a famous movie star while falling in love with her. Although the film failed at the box office upon its release, it had a revival of sorts in the 1980s and is now remembered as a classic that remains an inspiration for filmmakers and actors. In Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962), directed by Abrar Alvi and produced by Dutt, the story takes on patriarchy, the institution of marriage, and the zamindari system. Chhoti Bahu, played by Meena Kumari, is a complex character defined by loneliness and longing. Despite her elite background, Chhoti Bahu's life is surrounded by the emptiness of her aristocratic life. The character broke the traditional view that a pious Hindu wife could neither drink alcohol nor be close to a man outside her marriage, such as Bhutnath (played by Guru Dutt). 'The film undoubtedly is based on the decay of feudalism in the British Raj when masculinity posed problems for women in the patriarchal order. Guru Dutt, however, unleashes the pain and trauma of a lonely 'aristocratic' wife who later reduces herself to an alcoholic in order to get attention of her husband,' wrote Prerana Sinha, assistant professor at Delhi University in her 2021 paper Guru Dutt, an auteur or an existentialist: A Critical Evaluation of his Art. His focus on women, irrespective of class and social position, makes the film special, Sinha added. Meena Kumari was at the peak of her career when she agreed to play the role of an alcoholic wife. For Sinha, the scene where Kumari gulps down liquor is 'really revolting'.


Hindustan Times
13 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
The Guru Dutt legacy: His granddaughters on the man they never met
Mumbai, They have grown up on stories of their grandfather, the fabled Guru Dutt, carry his name with pride and say the best tribute to him would be to work on films that connect with people. The Guru Dutt legacy: His granddaughters on the man they never met Karuna and Gouri, daughters of Guru Dutt's son Arun, are both in the film industry and have worked with several filmmakers as assistant directors. As grandchildren of the legendary Guru Dutt and Geeta Dutt, one an actor-filmmaker and the other a singer, the sisters say they don't introduce themselves when they start a project. '… We're not like, 'Oh, you know who I am'... in the end they're like, 'What? You did not tell us this', and the reaction is happy and big,' Gouri, 37, told PTI. As the cinema world celebrates the 100th anniversary of the filmmaker who gave Indian cinema a string of classics, including 'Pyaasa', 'Kaagaz Ke Phool' and 'Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam', the sisters discuss his enduring legacy. 'I feel the best tribute we could give to him would be by making films that connect with people and have that resonance. We would like to pay a tribute to him through our work,' added Karuna, 40. They have, of course, never met either grandparent. Guru Dutt died in 1964 when he was just 39. Geeta Dutt died in 1972 at the age of 41. But they have heard many stories from their father, uncle Tarun. And also from granduncle Devi Dutt and grandaunt Lalita Lajmi, Guru Dutt's brother and sister. 'He was a disciplinarian. Both the children were quite mischievous growing up. We also hear that he was very generous as a person,' Karuna said. 'Lalita ji used to tell us that he was very fond of sweets. I remember, Devi uncle once told us that after pack up, he would bring sweets for his crew to celebrate the work of the day. So these are these little things, the stories we've grown up with,' she said. Gouri added that she admires the legacy of compassion that Guru Dutt instilled in the family, particularly their love for animals. 'His love for animals got passed down to us as well. Like, from our father and then to us, because he also loved animals. He had a lot of animals,' she said. The two sisters, both aspiring filmmakers, have reservations about chronicling Guru Dutt's life through a biopic or a book. 'I don't know if I'd be able to be objective about it because at the end of the day, he is my grandfather. To make a good biopic on somebody, you do need objectivity to be able to talk about a person's life as a whole. I would love to help, be a part of that process, but not personally make it. "In terms of books, there's so much written about him. We never met him personally, I don't know what new we would be able to bring or say about him, even if it has to come from his grandchildren's perspective,' Karuna said. They said they didn't know how much their legendary grandfather meant to people until they started engaging with the film community where he is a much revered figure. 'It's heartening to see how well loved he is even today, and how many people are speaking about him and wanting to celebrate his birth and his contribution to cinema. As his family, it's a matter of pride because there are so many artists who are so easily forgotten; it's joyous to see how he's being celebrated,' Karuna said. 'I feel like that is the legacy he has left behind... that even after so many years, his writing, his direction, his voice as a director is still relatable and has still found a place in people's hearts,' she said. Hundred years is a long time but it's amazing that people remember his body of work as if it was 10 years ago, said Gouri. The sisters, who were raised in Pune and later moved to Mumbai, recalled the impact Guru Dutt had on the filmmakers they have worked with. Karuna, who has served as an AD on Anurag Kashyap's films 'Ugly', 'That Girl in Yellow Boots', and 'Gangs of Wasseypur', said he was working on a screenplay for a biopic on her grandfather. Kashyap visited her home in Pune to research Dutt's life, went through family photographs and letters for a biopic that was to be directed by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur. 'On one of the days of the shoot, I remember him telling me how daunting he had found the task of trying to capture my grandfather's life in a screenplay. For him, it also came from a moment of being such an ardent fan. 'How do you do justice'? He had found the process quite difficult,' Karuna said. Gouri, who has worked as an AD on films like 'Victoria and Abdul', 'Tenet', and 'Girls Will Be Girls', said she often hides her connection with Guru Dutt and finds it amusing when people discover it later. "People who know him have a lot of curiosity, and they are like, 'How was he like? What was his life? What do you know?',' Gouri said. Her favourite Guru Dutt movie is 'Kaagaz Ke Phool'. Karuna's two personal favourites are "Pyaasa" and "Mr and Mrs 55". ' 'Pyaasa' because I feel as somebody in the creative field, you do understand that sense of disillusionment, you kind of connect to that from that perspective, which I feel like for a lot of filmmakers and writers, that's the feeling for them as well. And 'Mr and Mrs. 55', I feel, because it's a very rare opportunity to see a very lighthearted side of him, which most people don't discuss very often. I feel like that is why that is one of my personal favourites.' Gouri said it is heartwarming to hear praise for her grandfather from those she works with. 'Last year, I worked with Sudhir Mishra sir, and he's a huge, huge fan. He said his filmmaking affected by my grandfather's films. It's a lot of admiration. Everybody wants to share their side, their connection, how they connected to his work and how that has affected their work, be it a director or an actor or a musician or anyone.' This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.