June is a month associated with Nargis and Sunil Dutt. Nargis died on 01 June and Sunil Dutt was born on 6 June and every year, around this time, I make it a point to read their biography Mr and Mrs Sunil Dutt Memories of our Parents penned by daughters, Namrata Dutt Kumar and Priya Dutt.
Nargis was14 when her mother launched her in Mehboob Khan’s 1943 Taqdeer. Sunil Dutt began his career as a radio jockey, interviewing film stars on Radio Ceylon before Ramesh Saigal gave him a break in the1955 Railway Platform. Everybody is aware of their dramatic love story triggered by a fatal fire on the sets of Mother India in 1957 when Sunil Dutt jumped into raging flames to save his heroine and won her heart.
In the late 70s I have attended the mahurat of Sanjay Dutt’s Rocky and in 1981 I have reported on Nargis’s funeral. Over the decades, the magazines I associated with conducted several photo-shoots with both Sunil and Sanjay Dutt and in the process interacted with the entire family, namely Namrata and Priya Dutt so years later, when the daughters launched a book on their parents, I was with the family to cheer them.
To be continued