Welcome Clouds

What a relief to have clouds, some of them dark, stationed in the Nagpur sky! After about 2 and a half months of steady highs going up to 47 and something degrees, the pleasant sight makes one really happy. Like the old ad line...Happy Days are Here Again. Not that the summer is a total wasteland. It brings us the much needed summer vacations (those that have them), the sweetest mangoes (missed those in the US), and sundry other pleasures. This summer, it was mostly above normal here, increasing suspicions of global-local warming.

Reading a biography of Guru Dutt by Nasreen Munni Kabir. Some insights are that he was unsure of himself as an actor. He also dithered a lot over some shots, doing many retakes, or no takes. Also, he felt that songs impeded the flow of the narrative in a film. Yet, he was known for great song picturisations, even on smaller characters like Johny Walker, apart from heroines and himself. Almost every movie of his has a couple of classic songs still hummed and remembered. An interesting experiment by the music director in a movie of his was setting a ghazal to western beats...Tadbeer se bigdi hui taqdeer bana le..apne pe bharosa hai to yeh daav lagale. Pyaasa was a great success..and Kagaz ke Phool a big flop...and it literally killed him, like his character in the film. His use of lighting (that got VK Murthy the cameraman a Dadasaheb Phalke award) was legendary in the black and white era.

An amazing guy. Married the singer Geeta Roy, known as Geeta Dutt.