Mahesh Bhatt Remembers Guru Dutt: His Legacy Is Not A Style You Can Copy, It's A Wound You Must Survive

It has been six decades since the death of the iconic actor and visionary filmmaker Guru Dutt, and he is still remembered as one of the towering legends of Indian cinema. He left an indelible mark with his classics like Pyaasa, Kaagaz Ke Phool, Chaudhvin Ka Chand, and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, among others. Had he been alive, the legendary actor-filmmaker would have turned 100 on July 9. Dutt passed away in 1964 at the young age of just 39.

Ahead of his birth centenary, filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt remembers Guru Dutt saying that he took the "aching mess of human life, and turned it into poetry that could pierce even silence" and those who came after him "carried forward the wound".

"We do not celebrate a hundred years of Guru Dutt. We return to him," Bhatt told PTI.

Mahesh Bhatt on Guru Dutt

Mahesh Bhatt recalled of seeing a large photograph of Guru Dutt at Raj Khosla's office. Calling him Vyasa, Bhatt said Dutt’s "legacy isn’t made of awards, posters, or reels. It is made of silence. The kind that enters a room after the screen goes black and stays."

Bhatt went on to say that "Guru Dutt took private anguish and gave it mythic proportions." and he "lit his characters with compassion and contradiction, let the poet in him rage, let the woman feel to the point of tears and let beauty crumble into truth."

The 76-year-old filmmaker also said that one can't copy Dutt's legacy. He called it a "wound you must survive."

Bhatt, who directed some of the cult classics like Arth, Saaransh, and Zakhm, among others, said, he carried the wound into his own work.

He recalled watching 1957 iconic film, Pyaasa in a theatre and how it moved him deeply. Pyaasa didn’t entertain him, it "undressed him. "It showed me what it meant to ache without apology," Bhatt said.

Guru Dutt is not a memory for Mahesh Bhatt. He is someone who he carries inside. Bhatt calls Dutt a "wound that never healed."

"Even today, when the lights dim and I hear the rustle of silence before a scene, it is his ghost I meet. He is the one who taught me that sorrow, when surrendered to, becomes your signature," he added.

Guru Dutt is less his inspiration and more his inheritance, and he "cannot be reproduced, only echoed".