New Delhi: Caught between a fruitless relationship and a family that hardly understood her, Nargis actually contemplated committing suicide, just before Sunil Dutt entered her life, rekindling in her the desire to live, reveals a recently released book, relating the love story of the duo. While their relationship began with the fire that broke out on the sets of the 1957 film Mother India, it was while recuperating from the injuries that the two really came close, says author Kishwar Desai in her book 'Darlingji - the true love story of Nargis and Sunil Dutt'.

"If it were not for him, perhaps I would have ended my life before the 8th of March. For I alone know the turmoil that was going through me. I want you to live, he said and I felt I had to live. Begin all over again," Desai quotes Nargis from her personal diary written after the accident.

Sunil was a man who treated her like a normal human being and in rescuing her from the accidental flames, was perhaps the first person in a long time to have really done something for her.

"As she sat by his bedside, she realized that his courage in pulling her out of the fire had impressed her. It was a long time since someone had sacrificed anything for her. She was the one who always did things for others, whether it was for her family or Raj.... " writes the author on what drew Nargis towards the handsome Dutt.

Struggling to come out of a futile relationship and dealing with a family which in her own words considered her a mere money-making machine , Nargis confided in her new found love, laying her past thread-bare in front of him.

Source : PTI