Doordarshan was my unwitting matchmaker. A lazy afternoon, 15 years ago, I switched on the television and fell in love. Instantly. Irrevocably. All I saw was a vulnerable face, frail shoulders covered in an expansive shawl — silhouetted against the light. And Rafi’s buttery voice brimming with existential angst.

That was my first initiation to Guru Dutt and anybody who has been introduced to this icon through that unforgettable scene in Pyaasa cannot help but fall in love. I ask Sathya Saran, well known journalist and author of Ten Years with Guru Dutt:Abrar Alvi’s journey about her first introduction to the filmmaker.

“Of course, I knew of Guru Dutt but there were these charming personas around — Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor, Dilip Saab and when you are young, you get attracted more to them. When I first saw Kaagaz Ki Phool, I was terribly depressed. But once you see and imbibe his movies, there’s no looking back.”

Sathya Saran was in Bangalore recently to promote her book, where the hero is not Guru Dutt as much as his unsung writer Abrar Alvi. Their partnership of around 10 years brought out the best in both of them — Pyaasa, Kaagaz Ki Phool and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, to name a few. But Abrar Alvi remains largely unknown and even Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, which he directed, is mostly stage whispered to be captained by Guru Dutt himself.

“The book came about in a very providential way. I happened to read an interview of Abrar in a newspaper where his frustrations and anger at being ignored was apparent — ‘I have many stories to tell, if only somebody listens’, he had said and so I landed on his doorstep,” she narrates.

And so he told her stories. Fascinating stories. About Guru Dutt’s last few hours on earth; about meeting Waheeda Rahman, all thanks to a buffalo; about S D Burman breaking into an impromptu jig...and about holding your own while getting overshadowed by a genius... “His stories were anecdotal and descriptive,” says Sathya.

“I took copious notes. I went to his apartment in Andheri every Saturday and sometimes spent entire days with him. He was frail and old but his memory of those glorious years was mostly crystal clear. For me, it was like opening the door of another era, immersing myself in their world and coming out refreshed. Abrar was after all a brilliant scriptwriter and his stories were narrated like scripts,” she adds.

Abrar is today a very ill man whose spirit is broken and whose soul is bitter. “He lives his life in those years...when I prodded him to narrate, his features would get animated. Yes, he rambled a lot but he rambled well.”

In fact, during her long conversations with Abrar, it was clear to Sathya that Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam had indeed been directed by Abrar and Guru Dutt only filmed the songs. Unfortunately, Abrar could not find the letter that Dutt had written to him which declared unequivocally that Abrar was the director of Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam.

“Guru Dutt was a multi-faceted genius in his own right but he also had the good fortune to work with other geniuses like Sahir, S D and Abrar himself...if you listen to Abrar, you get a sense of the electric atmosphere that must have been there on the sets. In the book, I have tried to give a thumbnail portrayal of all these brilliant people who worked with Dutt,” says Sathya who, ultimately, had so much notes that writing the book became an insurmountable task. “My editor and I decided to use a simple narrative technique where each chapter begins with what I have to say and then I leave the field open for Abrar’s narration.”

This indeed works well in the book, which almost reads like a thriller. How difficult was it to keep her voice out of Abrar’s story? “Not very. The material was so potent that I really did not have to do much,” she confesses.

She also credits Abrar with “being a gentleman to the end” and refusing to divulge any ‘sordid details’ of the relationship Dutt shared with Waheeda Rahman. “And he did not much like talking about ace cinematographer V K Murthy. I suspect he was a shade jealous of Murthy’s equation with Dutt.”

“My only wish is that Abrar gets his place in the sun — alteast now,” concludes Sathya. I am though reminded of her concluding line in the book, “after 10 years with Guru Dutt, it is the pictures that got small.” What of mere mortals then?