A quest for love remembered

Guru Dutt: A Quest for Love could have surpassed the grandeur of a production like Kaifi Aur Main (which had portrayed the poet through the eyes of his wife). Guru Dutt, conceptualised by Sujoy Prasad Chatterjee and scripted by Suchita Ray Chaudhuri, drew upon moments from the legend's life and songs from his classics to portray his love and (failed) marriage with Geeta Dutt.A novel effort to usher in Poila Boishakh, though it stopped short of realising the full potential of two lives as tantalising as Guru and Geeta's.
Guru Dutt Padukone, born in Mysore (1925), had his education in Kolkata where he also trained under Uday Shankar. This fact got him his first assignment in cinema, as the choreographer of Hum Ek Hain, the launching pad of Dev Anand! Here the celebrated duo struck a friendship and pledged that if Dev were ever to produce a film, Guru would direct it, and if Guru were to direct a film, Dev would feature in it.
There was something in Guru's personality - he made friends and changed lives, but never retained them to his last breath. Quite the contrary happened with the two lady loves of his life. Geeta Roy, born in Faridpur (1930), had moved to Mumbai with her parents, as a girl of 12. On hearing her singing casually, the music director of Bhakt Prahlad asked her to sing two lines for a song - and those two lines were heard by S D Burman. Her playback for Do Bhai led to a string of memorable songs for Barsaat, Andaaz, Mahal, as too for Bengali hits, and by 1951, when she recorded for Baazi, she was a nation's heartthrob.
Baazi fulfilled the pledge between Guru and Dev. It brought Dev together with Kalpana Kartik, and Guru met Geeta. Their marriage in 1953 helped both Guru and Geeta professionally. His creativity peaked through Baaz where he also acted; Aar Paar which established him as a director to reckon with; Mr & Mrs 55, Pyaasa, Kaagaz Ke Phool... She carved a niche with her sensuous rendering of Babuji dhire chalna, Tumi je aamar, Jaane kya tune kahi, Waqt ne kiya... But the irony of it was that most of the sweet nothings she recorded for Guru, were played out on the screen by Waheeda Rehman, who had already become an invisible wall between the two sensitive, poetic, mesmerising souls!
What vacuum in his life drove Guru to the sleeping pills that left a gaping hole in Indian cinema? Not the BO failure of Kaagaz Ke Phool, for he subsequently produced Saheb Bibi Ghulam (and credited Abrar Alvi as director), which won a President's award. Was he going nowhere with Waheeda Rehman? Was he trying to appease Geeta again? Guru had announced Gauri with her as the leading lady, so why did Geeta Dutt, much like the Bibi' of his acclaimed film, immerse her all including her career in alcohol?
If anything, the years before and after Guru's tragic demise shattered the singer who would just glide through her songs. Like a flame, Geeta did burn bright before going out, leaving us with Mujhe jaan na kaho meri jaan... It was the musical equivalent of the shaft of light on the back of Guru in Kaagaz Ke Phool, long after life had drained out.