Page 16 - SeniorsToday May20
P. 16
Cover Story
Guru Dutt:
Introvert and
Genius
Artist Lalitha Lajmi reminisces on growing up with her brother Guru Dutt,
a story of struggle, passion, love, and fate… the fate of traumatic depression
that took over his craft of filmmaking
The story goes back to the city of joy where
Shivashankar Rao Padukone and Vasanthi
Padukone were struggling to make ends
meet. Shivashankar was a poet who worked
as a clerk at Burmah Shell, and Vasanthi
was a self-taught linguist who worked as a
Hindi schoolteacher. While Shivashankar
did overtime, Vasanthi took tuitions, and
both gave their best to raise four sons and
a daughter – Atma, Guru, Devi, Vijay and
Lalitha. When the couple worked Vasanthi’s Guru Dutt’s sister Lalitha Lajmi
mother took care of the children.
Later on, the family moved into a bigger the floor and grandmother would serve
house. The centre of the house was the the meal. There was a separate pooja
kitchen where the children’s grandmother room for her where she would do her
cooked vegetarian Saraswat meals. prayers, lighting diyas in the mornings
Everybody would gather together, sit on and evenings. Guru enjoyed playing with
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