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ShareMumbai: Seizing the opportunity, he would zero in to where his friend, mentor, he who was greater than him but equal too, who was so close but had gone so far, now dwelled and renew the partnership.
And who knows what the result will be, when Abrar Alvi gathers up the threads that Fate had snapped, between him and Guru Dutt and gets to weaving them together again, in some distant heaven.
The world had forgotten Abrar Alvi, even when he was alive. He lived, in comfort with his family in a flat in Oshiwara, but his mind wandered about in a wilderness searching for the oasis of creativity that he had lost, and which had left him bereft.
The man who had spent 10 of his most productive years being a foil to one of Indian cinema's greatest creative minds, Guru Dutt, and had directed the one film from G D Films to win a President's Gold Medal, lived in complete anonymity, thanks to his own move of withdrawing from a world that just did not match up to the one he had known and lost.
The Filmfare award, the Dada Phalke Award that the government had bestowed on him, and a clutch of other awards that stood in his living room caught the eye of any visitor who dropped in, but in the two years of Saturdays that I visited him while he unspooled the story of his 10 best years, I never saw him look in their direction.
Abrar believed he was a spent force. He was old, ill, lonely for company that would challenge his mind to new pursuits. He believed he was waiting for death, "one foot in the grave", "senility is my mental state" were phrases that he would greet me with most days as we settled down to work.
But once the spool of his memory started playing, it would be like a switch turning on all: lights, camera, action. He would emote, sing, dramatise lines, and almost verbatim repeat from his cache of writings, entire dialogues. There would be many walkabouts off the track and back on it, but it would be a trip that was an amazing insight into the creative powerhouse he must have been at his peak.
The past few years since the book was published, Alvi was victim to the very state he kept threatening me with.His mind wandered, his memory played tricks on him, his legs atrophied and he was bed ridden.
Yet a radiant smile would brighten his face when someone like old friend and colleague Lekh Tandon dropped in. He felt then he was ready for work, all over again. The man who had written seven of cinema's most enduring films for his friend Guru Dutt, and delivered hits like Sunghursh and Laila Majnu for other banners could have definitely continued to make an impact on Hindi cinema. Unfortunately, the world forgot him!
