What Made Sunil Dutt Choose Nargis As His Life Partner?

Photo: Nargis Dutt in the Film Mother India

New Delhi: It is Nargis’s birth anniversary today. Born on this day in 1929, she would have been 93 today had she not died of cancer on May 3, 1981.

Her love story with Sunil Dutt was like a Mills & Boon romantic novel, in which the tall, dark and handsome hero saves his lady love from a fire and they live happily ever after.

Everyone knows that Sunil Dutt saved Nargis from a fire on the set of ‘Mother India’ but that was not the incident why they fell in love with each other. In a 1991 documentary titled ‘Nargis’ made by their daughter Priya Dutt, Sunil recalled that he was once sitting on the lawn of Mehboob Studios when Nargis came up to him. She would call him Birju in those days as they were shooting for Mother India, he recalled. She asked him why he looked so worried.

Sunil’s sister was suffering from TB at the time, Sunil said in the documentary. Nargis listened to him intently about the same. Later in the evening, when he returned home, he learnt from his sister that Nargis had visited, taken her to the doctor and made an appointment for her surgery. When Sunil’s sister was hospitalised, she took care of her infant for a few days. Watching her be a selfless woman for anyone in need had Sunil fall in love with her, and he knew that she was the woman he wanted to be with. “I knew she was the one I wanted to be with. She could be with my family. They have been through a lot and she could put a smile on their face,” he recalled in the documentary, The Indian Express reported.