Guru Dutt @100: The Bungalow That Never Became a Home – and the Birthday Demolition That Followed
Guru Dutt @100: The Bungalow That Never Became a Home – and the Birthday Demolition That Followed
NEW DELHI: (Jul 9) Bungalow No. 48 in Mumbai’s upscale Pali Hill was meant to be a dream abode for legendary filmmaker Guru Dutt. Yet, it never brought him peace. For his wife, celebrated singer Geeta Dutt, it carried an air of unease — a haunted space. For Guru Dutt himself, it remained a house, never a home. In a poignant twist of fate, he ordered it demolished — on his own birthday.
The deeply emotional tale of the grand bungalow, purchased for ₹1 lakh, is chronicled in Bimal Mitra’s “Bichhde Sabhi Baari Baari” and Yasser Usman’s “Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story”. The home that once stood as a symbol of success became a silent witness to growing sorrow.
In 1963, just a year before Guru Dutt’s tragic death — reportedly due to a fatal mix of alcohol and sleeping pills — the bungalow was brought down. What remained was not just an empty plot, but the echo of unfulfilled dreams and emotional unraveling that marked the final chapters of one of Hindi cinema’s greatest visionaries.
