Recalling Mother India's favourite son
V. GANGADHAR
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His life was full of battles but Sunil Dutt faced them with courage.
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A HERO HALTS: Sunil Dutt (left) in "Mother India".
Only death could have halted this indefatigable marcher. Sunil Dutt, my best friend in the Hindi film industry, was always marching — to bring peace to a communally torn Punjab, to halt the spread of nuclear weapons, to commemorate the Dandi march, to protest against any kind of injustice and so on. Now Dutt Saab will march no more.
One of the most versatile individuals of modern times, he was an actor, an MP, a social worker, a family man, a crusader against cancer and a courageous crisis manager. Yet life to him was one crisis after the other - early struggles as an actor, bankruptcy as a producer, the death of Nargis, his wife, battling son Sunjay's drug addiction and later TADA arrest, defending anti national charges against Sunjay, survival in an air crash and many more. ``Will you ever have a moment of peace?" I once asked him. ``Don't I look peaceful? Have you ever seen me flare up?" he quipped. ``I have full confidence in our people, in our nation," he said though the charges against Sunjay hurt him terribly. Particularly, he felt let down by his so-called friends within the Congress party.
Yes, he was a film man to start with. But that was incidental. As an actor, he was competent and did not possess the spark of genius associated with Dilip Kumar or Raj Kapoor. But there were plenty of hits — `Ek Hi Rasta,' `Sadhana,' `Padosan,' `Mother India,' `Milan,' `Khandaan.' But the pull of the nation was strong. As a young actor-producer his `Ajanta Arts' provided entertainment to the jawans posted in remote areas like Leh and the Himalayan glaciers.
Willing to experiment
Sunil Dutt in Parliament.
As a producer and director, he was way ahead of his times. Imagine making a one-actor film like `Yaadein' in the 1950s. `Reshma Aur Sehra' in glorious colour, was poetry in celluloid. `Mujhe Jeene Do' and the film on cancer, `Dard ka Rishta' were socially significant films.
They did not click commercially and left the Dutt family in serious financial problems, but he did not mind. ``If young producers did not experiment, who else will?" he argued.
Politics and social work left him with very little time for films. But occasionally he did films, like `Parampara' and the more recent super hit `Munnabhai MBBS' where he starred with son Sunjay. He was present at every film function and raised film related issues in Parliament.
Once I spent a couple of days with Dutt saab when he talked about his debut film, `Railway Platform.'
The shy young man from Punjab who held women in high regard and consumed no less than 40 takes appearing in a cabaret scene had come a long way. He had many dreams, but destiny, it seems, had other plans.
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