Where can
one get the book:
The book can be purchased directly from the author. She is
based in Pune, India and can be contacted at her mobile number 9850770881.She can also be reached at her email address hb_filmaker@yahoo.com
The price:
The book is priced at Rs. 495.
What does it contain:
A detailed life story on young playback singer Geeta Roy
who married Guru Dutt to become Geeta Dutt. The book has over
200 pages with more than 100 never before seen photos of the
singer and many aspects of her life.
More details about the book based on various articles
and reviews about the book:
Her’s was a voice you could see, feel and experience.
For it was a voice that danced, cried and allured with versatility
rarely seen in Hindi film music. And it is this extraordinary
magic of the legendary singer that Pune-based film maker and
author Haimanti Banerjee has strived to capture in the first
ever biography being written on Geeta Dutt.
Painstakingly gathering tidbits of information since the past
more than four years to piece together her life story, Banerjee
says the book is a tribute to the genius of Dutt, who never
really got her due in life.
The blithe spirit of a skylark’s croon is what Banerjee
associates Geeta Dutt’s voice with. Thus titling the
book as Geeta Dutt – The Skylark, Banerjee unsheathes
the real Geeta whose ability to cover the range from the sensual
to the soothing gave her an edge over other singers of her
time. The book especially focuses on those songs sung by Geeta
that do not have the tag of Guru Dutt overshadowing her name.
Says Banerjee, “ I wanted the Geeta in my book to define
her own presence. And that she very well does with her independent
share of songs she sung for various other films apart from
Guru Dutt’s. Very few people know that Geeta lent her
voice to Nargis in the Film Jogan and that she has given her
voice to all the twelve songs of the film.”
There is also an exploration of the kind of music directors,
lyricists and actresses Dutt sang for and their relation with
her, with some rare pictures obtained from her family members,
especially son Arun Dutt. And though comments on her subject’s
personal life have been studiously avoided, an analysis of
the Guru Dutt-Geeta Dutt relationship finds a place in the
book.
Apart from meeting people, rummaging through the National
Archives library and flipping through the pages of Geet Kosh
a book that literally has in store listings of all the songs
since the advent of sound in the year 1931 were the other
efforts put in by Banerjee to detail her research. “
A book on Geeta Dutt was like a chimera for me that never
took off. But then one day I decided that this legend has
to be resurrected, if not for the sake of her own identity,
then for the sake of good music because hers is a name long
lost in the clutches of a transitional phase. I felt a voice
like hers should be revived so that more and more people listen
to it.”
In the book visually reviving the memory of the inimitable
Geeta Dutt would be 120 rare photographs of hers spanning
her life. The book also contains some excerpts from Guru Dutt’s
love letters, which he wrote to Geeta Dutt during their courtship
along with around 100 songs of Geeta Dutt translated in English. |