Guru Dutt@100: The bungalow that never became his home

Filmmaker Guru Dutt demolished his Pali Hill bungalow on his birthday, calling it a source of sorrow instead of sanctuary. Haunted by depression and a troubled marriage, the house symbolized emotional turmoil. Dutt died a year later in 1964

New Delhi: Bungalow No 48 in Pali Hills was a dream for many but not for its owner, filmmaker Guru Dutt. For his wife, singer Geeta Dutt, it was a haunted space, for him, never the sanctuary he longed for. In time, he had it demolished – that too on his birthday.

The heartbreaking story of the palatial house that never became a home for the celebrity couple has been vividly captured in two books, Bimal Mitra’s “Bichhde Sabhi Baari Baari” and Yasser Usman’s “Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story”.

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Purchased for Rs 1 lakh – and razed in 1963, the year before Guru Dutt was found dead after a cocktail of alcohol and sleeping pills — the bungalow was the filmmaker’s prized possession. But tragedy soon seeped into its walls.

It’s the house in which he tried to end his life twice.

“I always wanted to be happy in my household. My house is the most beautiful among all the buildings in Pali Hill. Sitting in that house, it does not look like you are in Bombay. That garden, that ambience — where else can I find it? Despite this, I could not stay in that house for much longer,” Usman quotes Guru Dutt as saying.

According to Lalitha Lajmi, Guru Dutt’s sister, it was Geeta Dutt who suggested they leave the house. “She believed that the bungalow was haunted. There was a particular tree in the house and she said there’s a ghost who lives in that tree, who is bringing bad omen and ruining their marriage. She also had something against a Buddha statue that was kept in their huge drawing room,” Lajmi, who witnessed the relationship from the early days of courtship till the end, recalls in Usman’s book.

Grappling with depression, a troubled marriage and his wife calling it “graveyard”, the director-actor eventually made up his mind.

According to Usman’s book, on the morning of his birthday, the man who once dreamed of peace in his expansive bungalow — yet often found resting only in a modest 7×7 foot room at his studio — called in workers and instructed them to tear it down. ‘I remember it was his birthday. He loved that house and he was heartbroken when it was demolished,” says Lajmi.

The abrupt demolition of the house is also recounted by writer and close friend Mitra, who held many fond memories of time spent at the Pali Hill bungalow.

Mitra was the author of the Bengali bestseller “Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam”, which Guru Dutt famously adapted into a critically acclaimed film.

When Mitra visited Bombay (now Mumbai) at Guru Dutt’s invitation, he was surprised to be taken not to the familiar Pali bungalow, but to a modest rented flat. Bewildered, he soon learned that the house had been demolished.

Later, Guru Dutt drove him to the site of the now razed Bungalow No 48. Nothing looked the same. “I felt as if he wasn’t my Guru anymore, as if this wasn’t Bombay — as if this wasn’t Pali Hill… Where Guru used to sleep, there was now a pile of bricks…The flower garden at the front was now covered with thorny shrubs,” recounts Mitra, staring at the ruins of what was once a majestic bungalow where he had often stayed during his scriptwriting visits.

Stunned, Mitra finally asked his friend why he had taken such a drastic step.

Guru Dutt’s reply, “Because of Geeta… Ghar na hone ki takleef se, ghar hone ki takleef aur bhayanak hoti hai.(The pain of not having a home is bearable, but the pain of having one — and not finding peace in it — is far worse).”

When Mitra posed the same query to Geeta, she said she had been sleeping in the guest house and, upon hearing a loud noise and looking out the window, saw that the workers had already torn down the entire house.

“I immediately called up Guru who was in the studio and told him that labourers were demolishing the house. ‘Let them do it! I have asked them to raze it to the ground,’ replied Guru Dutt,” reads the book.

Guru Dutt, regarded as amongst the greats of Indian cinema with films such as “Pyaasa”, “Kaagaz Ke Phool” and “Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam”, would have been 100 on July 9. He was found dead in 1964 when he was just 39.