Sanjay Dutt: Return of the prodigal son

Perhaps no Bollywood actor has had such a beleaguered and heartbreak-filled life as Sanjay Dutt. we track the rocky road of the wild child turned sober veteran

"Sanju has always been a wild child," Sunil Dutt had stated once during an interview, his eyes moistening as he added, "Maybe I haven't been a good father to him; maybe I shouldn't have sent him to boarding school when he was a kid. He missed home. I guess I was preoccupied with my career as an actor and director."

The father, however, sought to make up for lost time, battling for clemency when Sanjay was jailed in 1993 for illegal possession of arms in connection with the serial bombings in the city of Mumbai the same year. Subsequently, some severe charges were dropped, but other allegations persisted.

The case continued. Dutt Jr was incarcerated again in 2013. On being released this year on February 25, the wild child appears to have gained a twist of sobriety. Regretfully, the doting and broken father is no longer around to see the liberation of his son. Sunil Dutt passed away almost a decade ago, at the age of 74, after a prolonged illness.

Sanjay, who has been endemically drawn to controversies, is no longer a spring chicken. All of 56, he carries a boyish attitude, an aura of befuddlement, but is bolstered by the resolve of returning to a normal life. Or to reboot his career as an actor, besides venturing big time into film production.

Currently, the talk is that he will be prioritising his home production banner, Ajanta Arts, founded by his father with a series of cherished films, including the dacoit-drama Mujhe Jeene Do, Yaadein (a guilt-ridden husband's monologue which proved to be too avant-garde for its time) and Reshma Aur Shera, a riff on Romeo and Juliet (which incidentally also introduced an adolescent Sanju baba in a qawwali song interlude).

However, film production is easier conjectured than achieved, involving as it does the setting up of an administrative infrastructure, investing enormous sums of money, selecting the right projects, marketing said projects and then praying that they find favour with the multiplex distribution grid and, above all, with the ticket-buying audience.

Apparently, Sanjay's capable wife Manyata, born Dilnawaz Sheikh, is monitoring the nitty-gritty aspects of the revival of Ajanta Arts. Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, Rajkumar Hirani, who revived Sanjay's popularity with the Munnabhai films, is on the cusp of shooting a biopic on his beleaguered hero. Ranbir Kapoor, who will portray Dutt's younger version, is prepping for the film, which, hopefully, will not end up as a whitewash job.

The two projects that have been firmed up for Sanjay's next innings before the cameras will be helmed by Siddharth Anand (director of the Agneepath remake featuring Sanjay and Hrithik Roshan a few years ago) and by Vidhu Vinod Chopra (who extracted an impressive performance from Sanjay in Mission Kashmir, which also starred Hrithik). Seemingly, the decks have been cleared for a comeback.

Predictably, talks are on about a retread of Khalnayak by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, but there have been no official announcements yet.

Always media-friendly, the actor has maintained a high profile, posing with his five-year-old twins Shahraan and Iqra, to convey that he's a family man. Plus, to indicate that he's a people person, he walked away from his Rolls-Royce after his release from jail, hopping into a humble autorickshaw and instantly driving the waiting paparazzi into a frenzy.

From the look of things, the actor's on a 'swachh (clean) Sanjay' mode, and about time too. Like it or not, he'd reached a point where he had even started dabbling with the prospect of joining politics, no doubt exhorted by the then-Samajawadi Party's majordomo Amar Singh. As a politician, undoubtedly, he would have been disastrous, clueless as he is about anything remotely complicated. By contrast, his father and sister, Priya, as elected members of Parliament, managed to balance strategies with sensibility and gravitas.

That Sanjay is emotionally overwrought has been asserted time and again, especially in his private life. He would break in and out of relationships with leading ladies of his initial films. His first wife, actress Richa Sharma, passed away after a terminal illness, reactivating the depression he had sunk into following the death of his mother, Nargis - heartbreakingly on the eve of the release of Rocky, his 1981 film debut. His second marriage, to model and socialite Rhea Pillai, was sudden and ended abruptly. His widely discussed closeness to then-top actress Madhuri Dixit also went kaput as soon as he was arrested in '93. Without naming her specifically, papa Dutt had confided in me, "See, even that girl has dropped him. How many blows can he take in a single lifetime?"

That was a concerned father's perspective, no doubt. But I'd agree that Sanjay has had it rough. His own weaknesses, frailties, brashness, the tide of circumstances, and the artifice of show business, have collectively contributed to a turbulent life.

As an actor, he has established a tremendous screen presence. Emotively, though, he can be inconsistent, depending largely upon the director's skill to extract a bravura performance. It's said that once he loses faith in a director's competence, he becomes indifferent to the filmmaking, completes his shoot in a hurry, and flees the studio.

Expectedly, his most accomplished performances have been in Mahesh Bhatt's Naam and Sadak, J P Dutta's Hathyar, Mahesh Manjrekar's Vaastav, Lawrence D'Souza's Saajan, and Rajkumar Hirani's Munnabhai series.

Directors have to treat him with patience and win over his trust. But who knows? The new, improved Sanjay Dutt could now spring his own distinctive surprises as an actor. After all, the prodigal son has come back home, older and hopefully wiser.

• UAE