Geeta Dutt

Geeta Dutt (born Geeta Ghosh Roy Chowdhuri; 23 November 1930 – 20 July 1972[1]) was a prominent Indian playback singer and a famous Hindi and Bengali classical artist, born in Faridpur before the Partition of India. She found particular prominence as a playback singer in Hindi cinema. She also sang many modern Bengali songs, both in the film and non-film genre.

Geeta Ghosh Roy Chowdhuri was one of 10 children born to a wealthy Zamindar family in a village named Idilpur, Madaripur Subdivision (presently under Gosairhat Upzilla of Shariatpur District, Bangladesh), formerly under Faridpur district in Bengal, British India. Her family moved to Calcutta and Assam in the early forties, leaving behind their land and properties. In 1942, her parents moved to an apartment in Bombay. Geeta was twelve and continued her schooling at the Bengali High School.[1]

K. Hanuman Prasad took Geeta under his patronage, trained and groomed her in singing and later launched her into singing for movies. In 1946, she got the first break with an opportunity to sing in the mythological film Bhakta Prahlad for which Prasad was the music director. She was given two lines to sing for two songs. She was sixteen at that time.

During Geeta’s recording of songs for the movie Baazi, she met its young up-and-coming director, Guru Dutt. Their romance culminated in marriage on 26 May 1953. Together they had three children: Tarun (1954-1985), Arun (1956-2014) and Nina (b. 1964).

She also cut a number Non-film discs, singing to the tune of notable music directors like Sudhin Dasgupta and Anal Chatterjee.

In 1957, Guru Dutt launched the film Gauri with Geeta Dutt as its singing star. It was to be India’s first movie in cinemascope but the project was shelved after just a few days of the shooting. By then, Guru Dutt had got romantically involved with Waheeda Rehman and Geeta had taken to drinking. The break up 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 then started to work with Asha and helped her blossom as a singer.