Finally, he stepped into Bollywood, with Rocky – a film directed by his father. Filming was going well. At home, there was a minor concern: Nargis Dutt had come down with jaundice. Treatment to heal her liver began, but her condition did not improve. One day after shooting, Sunil Dutt told his children what they were least prepared for: their mother had cancer.

“She was flown to America. We shut Rocky down. That phase was terrible,” Sanjay says. The family stayed there for months, but Sanjay had to return to finish the film, even as his mother struggled for her life thousands of kilometres away. Close family friend Raj Khosla had come to the Dutts’ aid, directing the rest of the film.

Meanwhile, things began looking up slightly for Nargis Dutt.

“My mom was in coma for threefour months, and when she came out of coma, the first thing she asked was: ‘Where is Sanju?’” His father made up an excuse, but Sanjay took the first flight out.

“I still remember, he went and told her that I have a surprise for you, close your eyes. She closed her eyes and I walked in, and I just said ‘Ma?’” Sanjay says. “You know, her face just changed. She was so happy – she was crying and she held me.

“The doctors said, give her more time, but she was adamant. She was feeling better … I don’t know why she was so adamant to come home.” Nargis Dutt was flown home. The homecoming would be shortlived.

“We got her back, and in one of her routine checkups at Breach Candy, she went into a coma again and was gone,” he says.

The twang of sadness comes across clearly in Dutt’s voice; he seems trying to wish it away in another whiff of cigarette smoke.

Rocky was a big hit, but it did not give Sanjay Dutt the stardom he sought. And even as he struggled with the aftermath of his mother’s death, another old, familiar enemy was creeping up on him: his drug addiction.

He had signed up a few more films, but his addiction, earlier the subject of just Bollywood whispers, was beginning to show.

“I didn’t lose films but if you look at those films, I was not in a proper state of mind,” he says candidly.

What started as a fad had become a killer disease over the years – watched in helplessness by his father. Sunil Dutt began to study journals to find ways of coping with narcotic addictions, and did not hide the truth from producers who came to sign up Sanjay.

“I think those were the worst nine years of my life. It was too dark. I was running away from everybody. I used to be alone, I used to be with just those people who were doing drugs,” says Sanjay. “It was very tough – I was on heroin and cocaine. I had reached a point where either I died or did something about it. I had realised that I just could not go on like this.” It was time for another heart-toheart with his father, also his friend.

“After nine years of trying, I went to my father and I said ‘Dad, I have to get out of this, please help me’,” he says. It was the moment of tough will power that the father had been waiting for.

The senior Dutt took his son to Mumbai’s Breach Candy hospital for 21 days, and then to the United States. They went to a rehabilitation centre in the town of Canton near Jackson, Mississippi. Sanjay was a part of a group of 30 men and 30 women, many of them doctors, lawyers and professionals.

“It is such a beautiful programme where they go down to the core of your addiction. It is in a group. I cried for hours, just talking about my life and talking about my mom. They used to take us to the swamps and the lakes for barbecues, and I used to see people laughing and having a blast without drugs. And I said ‘man, this is my life. This is what it is. This is what I want to be’,” he says.
The programme began to heal Sanjay – so much so that he decided to settle down in America. The person partly responsible for that was a man he remembers only as Bill, who became a good friend.

“He was from Austin, Texas, and his father was a rancher. He had a lot of longhorn cattle and he used to supply beef all over Texas – it was pretty huge,” he says. So when he got to make his weekly call to his father, he declared his verdict.

“I told Dad, ‘I don’t want to come back, I want to have a life on the ranches.’ He said ‘I will come there and talk’. I said, ‘Yeah, but how much money do I have in the bank?’ He said about 50 lakhs. That was too much money then. I said, ‘You bring all that money and I will invest it and buy land.’ He came down, and he said ‘Son, for my sake, you come back’. He said, ‘I need to show you, that you are not in hiding’. I said, ‘Dad, I will come, but for a year.’’’ Within hours of his arrival, he had overcome his first great challenge. He had rebuffed his drug peddler.