Much before he made it as a film director, there was a period right after his stint at Prabhat Films, when Guru Dutt was looking for work in Bombay. Every day, he would make the rounds of production houses, often facing rejection. So far, both at Uday Shankar’s dance school and then at Prabhat, Guru Dutt had found a creatively stimulating atmosphere, and he had taken to it like a fish takes to water.
But now, the struggle he was going through and the constant rejections weighed heavy on his mind. While waiting at the offices of Pramukh Pictures, one of the production houses he visited often, Dutt wrote a story about the struggles of an artist and how the world tries to put him down. He called it Kashmakash, and promised himself that he would make a film on it. This is the story that eventually morphed into Pyaasa (1957).
Around the mid-1950s, after having made several successful films, Guru Dutt was finally toying with the idea of Pyaasa. But it was an intense film. So far, the projects he had worked on were either films noir or romances, which were seen as commercially viable subjects. This would be an inward-looking film, which wouldn’t necessarily have the trappings of conventional mainstream Hindi cinema. While he mulled over it, he was
conscious that he would have to get another film with better box-office prospects on the floor. Dutt already had a subject in mind. Submerged in Pyaasa, he needed someone else to direct the other commercially feasible film. It had to be a noir, and he knew his protégé Raj Khosla had learned the ropes of making a good thriller.
But there was also another reason to offer C.I.D. (1956) to Raj. ‘He had a contract with somebody,’ Raj told Nasreen Munni Kabir in an interview. ‘Some very skilful manipulator had bogged him down to three films. The only escape from the contract was if somebody else directed it for him. So he told me, “Raj make a film for me.” I said, “Fine.” He told me about this plot. “This title will be a hit,” he said, ‘title is enough, Raj. C.I.D. is enough.”’
But there was somebody else waiting in the wings. Guru Dutt’s brother Atmaram had been assisting him since Jaal, and had remained by his side when Raj went away on his own adventure. Atmaram felt that if there was anyone else who deserved to direct the next Guru Dutt production, it was him.
Lalitha Lajmi said of him, ‘We always felt that Atma never had that talent in him to make a Hindi film. I don’t know what it is… some people have it, others don’t. He was very good at documentary filmmaking – he won many international awards for them. But Guru Dutt felt he was not capable of making a commercial Hindi film. This was discussed many times at home between Guru and my mother.’
But Atmaram was not pleased that his brother chose someone else over him. In a huff, he left Bombay and went away to make documentary films for Burmah Shell in London. To be fair to him, after a few years of making acclaimed documentary films in the UK, Atmaram did come back and made several Hindi commercial movies like Shikar (1968), Ye Gulistan Hamara (1973) and Aarop (1974).
Raj later said that his Guru offering him a film was one of the most thrilling moments of his life. He had already directed a film, but his mentor bestowing his faith on him was all the validation he needed. Yet, for someone who craved validation from his mentor, Raj Khosla could also be quite headstrong and unyielding in certain matters.
One of the centrepieces of any discussion on C.I.D. is the face-off between Guru Dutt’s team – primarily Raj Khosla – and a new actress called Waheeda Rehman. Dutt had been at a distributor’s office in Hyderabad when there was a commotion outside.
To his amusement, he saw some fans chasing a new girl who had just shot a dance sequence in a new Telugu film. The film was Rojulu Marayi (1955), and the girl had danced to a song called ‘Eruvaaka sagaroranno chinnanna’ (this song had a special significance in a future Raj Khosla film). Guru Dutt’s interest was piqued when he learned that she was fluent in Urdu. He arranged a meeting with her and her mother. They spoke for about half an hour and went their respective ways. Waheeda Rehman narrated the following events to me in an interview:
There was no news for around three or four months. At the time I was living in Chennai [then Madras]. One day, a man called Mannu Bhai Patel came to meet us. He rang the bell and then said that he was from Bombay. We were wondering who would have come from Bombay. He explained that he was there on behalf of Guru Dutt. It took us some time to process. We had heard of Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand or Mehboob Khan. Who was this Guru Dutt? Then he reminded us of the Hyderabad meeting and said that Guru Dutt wanted me in Bombay. We told him we’ll think about it and let him know.
For the next two days, while Mannu Bhai Patel waited in Madras, Waheeda and her mother consulted friends and elders of the family. Theirs was a conservative south Indian family, so it wasn’t easy to say ‘yes’ to a summons all the way from Bombay, that too from a film director. Finally, Waheeda Rehman reached Bombay and met Guru Dutt at his office in Famous Studios. Sitting with him was Raj Khosla. ‘We spoke for some time, and then they took some of my still photographs. Then they said, we’ll do a three-year contract with you, and you will be on a monthly salary. But Raj Khosla added, “Magar aap ka naam bahut lamba hai, change karna padega. You have a long name, we must change it for the screen.”’
Today, if one were to think about the incident with Waheeda in detail, one would see that it was the meeting of two headstrong, proud people who didn’t see eye to eye on certain aspects. Raj Khosla was a no-nonsense man trained in the ways of the film industry. It was the norm for most heroines to take on more ‘acceptable’ names, which is why Kokila Kishorechandra Balsara became Nirupa Roy, Harkirtan Kaur was Geeta Bali and Mumtaz Jahan Dehlvi was Madhubala. Waheeda Rehman, however, didn’t want to change her name at any cost. She was all of 17 but didn’t mince her words.
She was clear about what she wanted and what she didn’t want. ‘Why should I change the name my parents have given me?’ she protested. She was still a minor, so her mother was accompanying her. They took a day to think about it but didn’t change their stand. Waheeda also wanted to add a clause about costumes. If the clothes were not to her liking, she reserved the right to refuse to wear them. Raj Khosla was furious – in his world, newcomers didn’t throw their weight around. This girl was just getting started! If she was throwing such tantrums already, who would want to cast her? But his mentor could see a spark in her that Raj couldn’t. Guru Dutt agreed to all her demands.
Waheeda got an ‘introducing’ credit in the film but C.I.D. also saw a whole bunch of other debuts. On the recommendation of Johnny Walker, Guru Dutt had signed up Mehmood to play his unholy brother in Pyaasa. Since C.I.D. was being filmed at the same time, Mehmood played a part in it too – that of a goon who kills a journalist in cold blood, and eventually shares his fate. It was one of his earliest major roles. C.I.D. was also costume designer Bhanu Athaiya’s first film. She would, of course, go on to win an Oscar for her work in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982). Here, she was credited as Bhanumati.
C.I.D. is also the first-known instance where Jagdish Raj donned a police uniform. For the next four decades, the man portrayed countless police officers and commissioners. Popular association of him with the role is evident – multiple sources on the internet (including many news websites) mention a Guinness World Record title in his name for the ‘most typecast actor’, probably inaccurate because a search on the Guinness website didn’t throw up anything.
Meanwhile, the same band of assistant directors that Raj had put together for Milap worked with him again: Pramod Chakravorty, Padmanabham and Bhappi Sonie. O.P. Nayyar, who began his journey with Guru Dutt from Baaz, and went on to deliver consistent hits with Aar Paar and Mr. & Mrs. 55 (1955), was chosen as the music director. As far as Raj was concerned, he was quite fond of the song ‘Preetam aan milo’, a non-film composition by O.P. Nayyar, one of his earliest jobs.
It was performed by C.H. Atma, for whom it was a career-defining number. The song was immensely popular, and 10 years later, when Nayyar was working on Mr. & Mrs. 55, he used the same track for the film. This time it was sung by Geeta Dutt, a self-proclaimed admirer of C.H. Atma. Whether it was the original version of the song that Raj heard on the radio way back in 1945, when it was first aired, or the second one, it was this song that Raj stated as the reason for taking on O.P. Nayyar as the music director for C.I.D.
This excerpt from Amborish Roychoudhury, Uma Khosla Kapur, and Anita Khosla’s book, ‘Raj Khosla: The Authorized Biography’, has been published with permission from Hachette India.