Recalling the connect of Guru Dutt with Madras in his centenary

Today, July 9, 2025, when Guru Dutt, he lived wisely and well, a hundred was completed. And I could not let my favorite filmmaker pass this opportunity to connect with my favorite city. Everything I write in this article is received from Nasreen Munni Kabir’s Guru Dutt, A Life in Cinema (OP, 1996).

Although Born in a Saraswat by Bangalore and the community, it was Calcutta which was most closely connected to Guru Dutt. It was shown in many of his films, as Bombay also did, where he spent most of his working life. But the very interesting thing is that a film alone connected a strong Madras in terms of its location, although it is not clearly written in the film. It is considered the best film of Guru Dutt today – Papers (1959), which was also the greatest business failure among his compositions. In fact, he hurt him that he never directed another film, assuming that he brought bad luck. He then produced films and some such as Sahib Bibi and Ghulam are very clear, but the credit was always given to others.

Papers (Paper Flowers) is related to the rise and collapse of a famous film director and is set in the glorious days of the cinema studio. Most of its backgrounds, although not all, are provided by Wauhini Studio, Madras, although strangely, it is not named in Casting Credit. Very initial sequence, where an old Sinha Sahab, director, totters in Gates, are shot in the studio. And so there are many other scenes, where you can see studio flooring, crane, arch lights, sheds and a long driveway, where props, scenes and often equipment are being carried. This shows us what was always called as Vijaya Studio, as it was in its successor. Final view of Papers Show the studio in your best form and as the major character comes out of the gates, we get a fleeting glimpse of Vadapalani in the 1950s – no soul and just coconut trees.

Incidentally, the most reputed view of Papers – Song Time didIn the form of Gatea Dutt (Mrs. Guru Dutt in real life) also sings in the background with dust particles caught in rays of light, shooting was not done here. This record goes to modern studio, Bombay.

For records, Wauhini Studio Vijaya Productions had the facility. Although they started separately, they were tightly connected by the end of the 1940s. The films that were produced by the Nagi Reddy-Charani controlled units were always known as the Vijaya Wauhini Creation, and the huge anterior was known as Vijaya Garden. It was also home to that very popular children’s magazine – Chandamma in all its languages. A few decades later, Vijaya-Vauhini will become South Asia’s largest film production facility. And then, hit with changing trends in cinema, it faded, left behind the real estate that became hospital, hotel and much more. Guru Dutt must have remembered that, he focused on dark themes.

The absence of Wauhini in Casting Credit, and Central Studio name, Bombay surprised me. And he was taking me to the young Shiv Reddy Chirla, who immediately asked his grandfather -the Grandanath Vishwanath Reddy, whose father B Negi Reddy had ownership of Vijaya Wauhini. The confirmation was immediate. And I had another confirmation – in their unique introduction to artists and crew Bomai (1964), The Brilliant Veena Mestro and filmmaker S Balchander shows us a shot of Vijaya Wauhini and it is similar to Guru Dutt!