One, born a Bengali in body and soul. The other, evolved into the very embodiment of Bangaliana(Bengaliness). Both were born into Brahmin families, one Bengali, the other a Kannadiga Saraswat. Arun Kumar Chatterjee was born at his maternal uncle’s house in Ahiritola, north Calcutta (as it was then) on September 3, 1926 and Vasantha Kumar Shivashankar Padukone was born in Bangalore (as it was then) a year earlier on July 9, 1925. Even though their paths were intertwined, Fate brought them and kept them close without actually bringing them together as professional collaborators.
Young Master Padukone’s aesthetic taste evolved with a generous dose of Bengali culture as the Padukones moved to Calcutta and settled down in Bhawanipur, the same neighborhood where Arun’s paternal/ancestral home was. Both were growing up in the same part of the city which, in the 1930s, was the epicentre of the freedom movement, and though not the political capital of British India any more, was still the cultural capital of the subcontinent. While young Arun found love, care, and nurture from his ‘mamar bari’ in Ahiritola, Vasanth was inspired by his mama, the illustrator Batuk Benegal, whose paternal nephew was to become the doyen of Indian neo-realist cinema, Shyam Benegal. This healthy cocktail of Bengal and Benegal shaped the young impressionable mind. A serpent illustration made by Benegal captured young Padukone’s imagination so much that he choreographed a sequence out of it and performed in front of the family much to the wonder of everyone. His footloose skills prompted the Padukones to enrol him at the legendary Uday Shankar’s dance academy at Almora. Vasanth Kumar’s training was to be his window to the tinseltown as he was to later gain entry into the Bombay film industry as a choreographer with V. Shantaram’s Prabhat Talkies.
Arun, along with his brothers Tarun and Barun was fascinated by the Jatra shows that he got to see and also take part in – his father Satkari Chatterjee had his own amateur group called Suhrid Samaj and it was in one of their productions, Brajer Kanai, that Arun played Balaram as his maiden stage outing. While Vasanth was training to be a dancer, Arun was undergoing music lessons and after completing his B.Com from the Goenka College, he landed a clerical job at the Calcutta Port Trust, and kept moonlighting as a music teacher to augment his paltry monthly salary of ₹275. Arun had earlier been named “Uttam” as a baby but the name was rejected in favour of the former by his parents. However, an ascetic who was the guru of the maternal uncle’s family, had predicted that the child would become world famous as Uttam, and so, after having tried his luck as Arun and even Arup Kumar, Uttam Kumar it became and remained.
Meanwhile, a laundry mix-up caused Vasanth, who had now assumed the name Guru Dutt, to befriend fellow ‘struggler’ Dev, with whom he made a gentleman’s agreement that they would give each other work when they establish themselves. Dev fulfilled that promise when he gave Guru Dutt his big break as a director in his elder brother, Chetan Anand’s production house, Navketan, and Guru Dutt returned the favour by casting Dev as his leading man. Guru Dutt’s ‘Benglophilia’ took a new turn as he fell for the playback singer Geeta Roy, who had cast her spell with her rendition of the song – Tadbeer se bigdi hui taqdeer bana le – that made the film, BAAZI, a superhit. Geeta Roy became Geeta Dutt, her voice was to resonate across Hindi and Bangla cinema – including several Uttam-Suchitra classics like HARANO SUR (Lost melody) and INDRANI.
When Bimal Mitra’s bestseller SAHEB BIBI GOLAM was adapted on celluloid, Uttam Kumar was cast as the simpleton Bhootnath in a film that boasted a stellar cast featuring Chhabi Biswas, Anubha Gupta and Sumitra Devi in a showstopper performance as Chhoto bou. But Uttam Kumar held his own in a quiet, restrained, understated performance that truly brought Bhootnath alive. The film became an instant hit and the overwhelming success prompted Guru Dutt, having already tasted success as actor and director with AAR PAAR, MR AND MRS 55, PYAASA, to tackle his favourite domain – a Bengali literary adaptation, a Calcutta setting, and a pure Bengali character to portray. Having a reputation of not repeating his writers, he found his Pyaasa writer, Abrar Alvi, so much to his liking that he gave Alvi the responsibility of bringing Bimal Mitra’s world into Hindostani. He took up the challenge of playing Bhootnath himself – deep inside he was equally excited and nervous – nervous especially about his Bengali audience – how they would judge him in comparison to their new screen idol, whether his love and dedication towards Bengali culture would have a triumphant fruition in the Hindi adaptation. Meena Kumari was cast as Chhoti Bahu. Her expressions in the picturisation of the song rendered unforgettably by Geeta Dutt – Na jaao saiyan chhudake baiyan – complemented by excellent support from Rehman as the neglecting husband, the haunting tune of Hemanta Mukhopadhyay set to words by Shakeel Badayuni (the same tune is familiar to Bengali listeners in Hemanta’s own voice as “Olir katha suney…”.
SAHIB, BIWI AUR GHULAM was a true wish fulfilment for Guru Dutt because his first fascination for this story began when he had come to this writer’s own neighbourhood – Hatibagan of North Calcutta which was famous as Theatrepara. He came to the Rangmahal theatre with his wife Geeta and sat with Bimal Mitra himself to watch the stage adaptation of the latter’s novel in 1953, even before the Uttam Kumar-starrer had been executed by director Kartik Chattopadhyay. His wish was finally fulfilled 9 years later in 1962.
Guru Dutt died of an overdose in 1964 when he was 39, often speculated as suicide. Uttam Kumar died when he was 53 in 1980. But such has been their enduring legacy that one remains the numero uno of his native film industry even four-and-a-half decades after his demise and the other continues to be rediscovered and reinterpreted by newer generations of cineastes not just in his native land but across the globe.
In the novel, Bhootnath oversees the demolition of the old mansion and skeletons of the past are unearthed in the process. In real life, these two Bhootnaths have left behind such metaphorical mansions for us that one might finish exploring Elvis Presley’s Graceland, but the exploration of the rabbit holes of Arun Kumar and Vasanth Kumar into the wonderlands of Uttam Kumar and Guru Dutt will never end or exhaust. As one birth centenary ends and the other begins, we pay tribute to these masters of the past – Bhoot-nath.
DoubleSpeak 