Aamir Khan is being touted to play screen legend Guru Dutt in a new movie that may also star Katrina Kaif as Guru’s muse Waheeda Rehman. Aamir is said to have been spending hundreds of hours perfecting the mannerisms of Guru and the two do have a remarkable resemblance.
Guru Dutt inaugurated the star-led era of Bollywood in the golden age of the fifties with such movies as Pyaasa, Kagaz ke Phool, Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam and Chaudvin ka Chand. An innovative film director, inspired by the film noir genre of the forties, Guru is often referred to as the Indian Orson Welles. Like many creative geniuses, however, his personal life was a mess. He smoked and drank heavily, was estranged from his wife and at the time of his death, had fallen out with Waheeda Rehman. At the age of only thirty-nine, in 1964, he was found dead in his bed from a mixture of sleeping pills and alcohol. The mystery remains as to whether it was suicide or an accident.
Waheeda Rehman has continued in the film industry and was most recently seen in Delhi 6. Her role in Deepa Mehta’s Water was greatly acclaimed and she also appeared in Aamir’s Rang De Basanti. The writing team for that movie Renzil D’Silva, Prasoon Joshi and Kamlesh Pandey are said to be behind the Guru Dutt project – so the wheel has turned full circle.
