'Somehow he knew that the film would not succeed,' Abrar says. He lost all enthusiasm and would gladly have scrapped it as was his way with things he did not find up to the mark, but he was too far gone, too committed to back out. He had taken a loan to make the film and there was no going back.

'I really don't know whether the turmoil over his latest project contributed to his suicide,' Abrar says. The fact was that, unlike in the past, when Dutt closed a project summarily the moment he decided that he was unhappy with the way it was turning out, with no thought of the money spent, the director was forced to keep going with Baharen, even though his heart was not in it. In fact, Abrar and he were working on the script even on that fateful night when Dutt decided to take his own life.

There was no premonition, absolutely no warning. If there had been any inkling, Abrar says, he would have hung around and kept his friend and mentor company. He would have ensured that the loneliness, the depression, did not overcome Dutt, leading him to the point of no return.

The evening was like any other with Dutt pondering over his project, though in the throes of a dark mood, while Abrar toiled on the next set of scenes. Perhaps it was coincidental that the scene Abrar was working on was the one in which the heroine dies a sad, lonely death. Thwarted in love, with her loved one being the lover of her younger sister, the broken-hearted woman has nothing to live for, and it is the depression that causes her death.

It was a delicate scene to write and one that needed concentration and a fine balance, if it was not to slip into the maudlin. Abrar worried the scene like a dog worries a bone, looking at it in his typical fashion, logically and critically. Dutt would infuse the sequence with emotion while shooting it. Abrar's role was to ensure that it made practical sense and kept the story credible and logical.

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