Geeta Dutt - Personal Life

Personal Life

During Geeta's recording of songs for the movie Baazi, she met the movie's young and upcoming director, Guru Dutt. Their romance culminated in marriage on 26 May 1953. Geeta went on to sing some of her best songs in his movies while continuing to sing in various other assignments as well.

Geeta and Guru Dutt had three children: Tarun (b. 1954), Arun (b. 1956), and Ninā (b. 1962).

In 1957, Guru Dutt launched a movie, Gauri, with Geeta as its singing star. It was to be India's first movie in Cinemascope, but the project was shelved after only a few days of shooting. By then, their marriage was on the rocks, Guru Dutt had got romantically involved with Waheedā Rehmān, and Geeta had taken to drinking. The breakup of their marriage affected Geeta's singing career.

In 1958, S.D. Burman had developed discord with Lata Mangeshkar as a playback singer, and he attempted to work with Geeta as the main singer of his compositions rather than the upcoming Asha Bhosle, who, he felt, was relatively raw. However, out of her personal problems, Geeta would not practice her art sufficiently, and failed to meet Burman's demanding standards. (He, and O.P. Nayyar too, then started to work with Asha and helped her blossom as a singer.)

In 1964, Guru Dutt died from a combination of alcohol and an overdose of sleeping pills. (His death was widely perceived as a suicide following two earlier attempts.) Geeta then suffered a serious nervous breakdown, and also ran into financial problems. She tried to resume her singing career, cutting discs at Durgā Pujā, and giving stage shows. She also performed in a leading role in a Bengali movie, Bhadu Bharan (1967), and sang admirably for a movie, Anubhav (1971), which turned out to her final performance to the music of Kanu Roy as she died of liver cirrhosis in 1972, at the age of 42.