Guru Dutt left this world about four decades ago but his films have acquired an evergreen status. His sister Lalita Lajmi remembers with fondness the elder brother whom she loved and revered.

As I look back, I still have this regret that I didn't visit my brother on Raksha Bandhan day to give him a raakhee in 1964 - the year in which he passed away. More so because I wanted to do so. Raksha Bandhan was not a tradition our mother had taught us to follow with the result that I had never tied a raakhee on him. But that year, something made me feel that I should visit him who was then living alone on Peddar Road. But as soon as I announced my intention, my husband said, "Oh! You want to go to get a gift." Later I heard that my brother had said "I have only one sister and she didn't come to tie a raakhee." Others from the film industry had gone to visit him on that day.

However, I had spent an evening with him ten days before he died. What a lovely evening it was! I invited him to our house for next 10th of October when Abdul Halim Jaffar Khan was going to perform. We had already invited lots of people. At 12 O' clock that day, I got a call from one of his friends saying that Guru Dutt was no more. It came as such a shock to me. I couldn't understand what had happened. I rushed to Peddar Road. People had already gathered there. It must have happened between 4 and 4.30 in the morning. Earlier, there had been a couple of times when he had attempted to commit suicide. Now we presumed that he had taken an overdose of tablets after a lot of drinking which might have induced a heart attack. It was very sad. He was very young, just 38 years old.
He had turned 38 on July 9 and he passed away in October.

I was seven and a half years younger to him and we revered him too much to really discuss his films with him. Every time he made a film, he used to ask everyone quite seriously about his or her opinion. He would say, "Give me a frank opinion. Don't just say it's good, tell me objectively what you think."
I remember Ustad Vilayat Khan had come to visit him and he had shown a trailer of Kagaz Ke Phool. I was told that when the film was shown in Delhi, the then President Dr Radhakrishnan (who was the chief guest) walked out and people started throwing stones and chairs at the screen. This came as a big shock to my brother. Kagaz ke Phool premiered in Maratha Mandir in Mumbai and I recall there wasn't much of a response either. My brother was so shocked by its failure that he refused to put his name on his films after that.

We are a family of four brothers and one sister. I am the middle one and Guru Dutt was the eldest. He was a very handsome child, fair and with curly hair. The neighbours used to fondle him and called him 'Gomti' which means beautiful.
When Guru Dutt was about 14, he went to see Uday Shankar's performance. He was so impressed that he composed a dance number 'snake charmer'. We used to have a small community of Saraswats in Kolkata and once or twice a month we'd all meet in the Eden Gardens.

On one such gathering, he danced to the tune of his own composition of the 'snake charmer'. My uncle filmed it with an 8 mm camera. That was what made my uncle understand that he was very talented and asked him whether he would like to join the Almora school the Shankars had established.

Soon after his matriculation, my brother took up a job as a telephone operator. With his first paycheck he got gifts for everyone in the family.