Unfair to judge Guru Dutt by today's standards, says Yasser Usman

Yasser Usman, author of Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story, speaks to Chintan Girish Modi on Guru Dutt's life

Q: Guru Dutt's life and work have been memorialised in books by Vasanthi Padukone, Bimal Mitra, Nasreen Munni Kabir, Sathya Saran, Firoze Rangoonwalla, Darius Cooper, Henri Micciollo and Shampa Banerjee. Why does his story still seem unfinished to you?

A: These books have been important resources, and I have quoted from some of them in my own book. While the authors mention that Guru Dutt’s cinema was intensely personal and quasi-autobiographical, no one really explains why he was going through so much turmoil. All the films he produced were either hugely or reasonably successful, with the exception of Kaagaz Ke