A Rain of Sorrow, A Rain of Gloom

He loved darkness. He was a magician of black and white. He was a shadow wavering in the dark. No one could see him clearly. Not Geeta, not Waheeda, and not the viewers who came to the cinema hall for two and a half hours, whose darkness he filled with light, for years mixing with his scotch the darkness that spread across all the corridors of his heart. That mixture, like tears, flowed through his films. Guru Dutt was the name of that drop that comes out of the tear glands and is transformed into rain. A rain of sorrow, a rain of gloom.

In life we are touched by some people. We are embraced by some people. But there is a kind of touch that surpasses all others, giving strength in its uniqueness. We can spend our whole lives recalling that one touch. The wealth of a lifetime can accrue from that one glance that forever lives in our heart, wraps our bodies like a shadow, that challenges heat’s time with its shade, that cries out in its coldness, that gives the warmth the gift of its ice, and moistens burning eyes. Guru also lived for one touch. He set up his home in Waheeda’s one glance, which had first fallen on him in Hyderabad. He lived in those tears, which fell from his eyes when he read Bengal’s Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay and Norway’s Knut Hamsun. He lived in those travails, which slipped on the street in Mumbai’s naked nights.

When, in the shikaras floating on Kashmir’s Dal Lake, Waheeda planted kisses on his forehead, his eyes brimmed over. He said, “Geeta has left me. Don’t ever leave me.” And a few days later, Waheeda left him. For her career’s sake, she began to sign on with rival studios. The film industry is full of cunning foxes. Guru and his friend Abrar Alvi repeatedly explained to Waheeda that he needed her. Waheeda simply counted her dreams. And so Guru collapsed in such a way that he could never be put together again. The last kiss on his forehead had proved to be a trick, adding to the number of lines spreading there.

Almost all of Guru’s letters were filled with apologies. He was like a rabbit that breaks out of its enclosure in its sleep and, having awoken, returns to beg forgiveness from the barbed wire. He had a forever-yearning heart, which wandered in search of love. All he wanted from the world was one thing: that it would understand him a little, steady him a little. And all the world said that he was but a sultan of eccentricity: don’t give him anything, just laugh at him. The people around Guru did not manage to understand him, did not give him what he wanted. One fine day Guru dismissed his name from the world’s ledger.

Translated from the Hindi by Asokan