Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.
© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Sunil Dutt and Nargis’ love story was written in the stars. He was a newbie, and she was a superstar when they first met on the set of Mehboob Khan’s Mother India. An unfortunate accident on set led to them falling in love with each other, and after that, they were inseparable. It is famously known that Sunil risked his life to save Nargis from a raging fire on set and as she nursed him back to health, she knew that he was the man for her. They got married in 1958 and stayed together until Nargis’ untimely death in 1981. Nargis was only 52 at the time.
Nargis passed away after a difficult battle with cancer, just days before her son Sanjay Dutt’s debut release, Rocky. Her death shook the family to its core and Sunil “shut down” for a few years. His oldest daughter Namrata Dutt shared with Kishwar Desai in the book Darlingji: The True Love Story Of Nargis & Sunil Dutt, “For years, my dad shut down. He could not sleep in the same room. He was in depression, he couldn’t work. He had done everything and he thought he could make her survive. He was truly finished. He didn’t talk to anybody, he used to go to toffice, go for walks. But he was very quiet.” Priya echoed the same sentiments and told Vickey Lalwani in a recent chat, “A little more than a year later, my father was a completely broken man. We were scared for him. What is he going to do? He used to wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning, and go to the kabristan, and just sit there alone. He couldn’t sleep at night, he couldn’t work, he couldn’t do anything.”
Sunil Dutt went on like this for two years until an innocent remark by then 14-year-old Priya Dutt made him realise that he had to take care of his three children. Priya innocently pointed at a star in the night sky and told her father that she was looking out for them from the other side. Sunil woke up from a deep slumber and started working again. In the same chat, Priya shared, “He was pulled back into reality, and he did a 360 degree turn. He threw out all his cigarettes, every alcohol bottle in the house was thrown out. He’d started drinking. But he cleared up everything overnight. And then, he went on a mission to focus on his kids.”
Sunil Dutt was trying to put his life back together piece by piece but many on the outside believed that he should get married as quickly as possible. He was a single father dealing with three children and was only 52 at the time. Sanjay Dutt was already addicted to drugs by this time, Namrata Dutt, still in her late teens, had become the de facto head of the household, and Priya Dutt was in her early teens. Nargis’ niece Zahida Hussain shared that Nargis once appeared in her dreams long after she had passed away and told her to warn Sunil to never remarry.
Zahida recalled Nargis’ words from her dream and shared with Kishwar, “Tell that uncle of yours, I will never leave him in peace if he remarries.” When Zahida told Sunil, he wondered why Nargis had not appeared in his dream and spoke to him from the other side. In any case, he knew that there couldn’t be another Mrs Dutt. “I told him and he said, ‘How come she came in your dream and not in mine? But how can I remarry? There will never be another Mrs Dutt in my life. Tell her to relax. I will never remarry,'” she recalled.
Sunil Dutt did not get married until his death in 2005 at 75.
Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.
