Romancing with Life Dev style
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: alashbiswaskl@gmail.com">palashbiswaskl@gmail.com
Since the calf Love days , I had been a fan of Dev Anand. And the admiration continues till this date! Anand has acted in, directed and produced more than 110 films -- most of the recent ones being such disasters that many call him master of "magnum flopus".
A vegetarian and a teetotaller, Anand, who turns 84 this month, says he never feels old because he retains all the elements of youth.
"I'm excited all the time about the things I do. So I feel young. Young people feel excited all the time," he said. "And what compensates me for my youth is my wisdom, my experience, whatever I have gained from life so far."
Evergreen Dev Anand is still a romantic at heart! Anand, considered the epitome of the suave, urbane gentleman, was seen as one of the most handsome men in Indian cinema and looked strikingly similar to Hollywood hero Gregory Peck. The puff in his hair and collared shirt became the rage among Indian men and his trademark singsong delivery and penchant for nodding while speaking were all heavily copied. Many accused his acting of being all style and little substance, but he produced some of the biggest cult hits in Bollywood, won best actor awards several times and was given India's highest award for cinema. His personal life was equally dramatic. He fell in love with Suraiya, a beautiful Muslim actress he saved from drowning while shooting a film. After her grandmother opposed the relationship, the actress retreated from public life and never married.
I was a student of class Nineth when I first saw a devanand film and it was not Hare Arama Hare Krishna. Neither it has been Guide or Gambler. I saw the legend first time in Asli Naqli starring Sadhana and Sandhya Roy. Due to involvement with Naxal Ideology, I was dreming to change the society and had not been enough studious, hence my father sent me 36 KM away in shaktifarm. shaktifarm was an isolated zone of resetlled Bengali Refugees. I used the opportunity of coming home during vacations and enjoyed films like Heer ranjha, Naya Jamana and Johny Mera Naam. I also saw CHHupa Rustam during this period . I became quite a fan of Devanand with his specil mannerism. It was in Nainital, during my GIC days I invented the Artist romancing with love when I saw Hare Rama Hare Krishna. he portrayed the changing generation so well! I knew the director with a purpose. I loved him. Later I saw his films with Zeenat, tina Munim and Parveen Bobby starring. but the man was quite amazing in Guide, Jwell Thief and Gambler.He had been always very positive and so fresh and young, Ever Green.
He may even consider making it into a film if he feels a good director will make it. Now that’s asking for too much, don’t you think? A good director means working on a good script. And working well. How can one prove his talent if all you need of the actor to do is swing trees with a suede jacket or corduroys and a woolen scarf and shake his head like he’s cleansing off all the dandruff? Not too hard I would say. We have many vertically deficit guys to portray him and a lot of lose heads too. Would there be a heroine, me wonders. What if it would be a much taller woman? They can use Yukta Mookhey. Anyway, Dev saab is also preparing his cast for his next movie and soon he will start a Croatian movie as well, which will be in English of course. Indians aren’t very well versed with Croatian (do they have a specific language? Maybe Russian). Whatever; it’s going to be all exciting. I can’t wait!
At 83, even the most flamboyant of celebrities retreat from public life, but if you are Dev Anand, the evergreen hero of Indian cinema, it's never too late for love. With a white scarf draped over a blue jacket, his hair dyed black and his skin still taut, Anand retains the charm of a mischievous romantic -- the image from his heyday that he has cultivated over a career spanning 60 years.
Credited with introducing several actresses to Bollywood, Anand lived his lover-boy image to the fullest, wooing heroines with songs late into his 50s. When he was too old for that, he turned to making romantic films.
"Romance is beautiful. I am always in love," the actor told reporters. "But it doesn't mean you are sleeping with women all the time. Even thinking about a beautiful girl or reading poetry is romantic."
Dev Anand, the ever green epitome of Indian Cinema, has finally launched his autobiography: Romancing with Life. Very typical of Dev saab to use such a colourful title; he has music in every stride. The book is all about him. Obviously! In and out all about him, him and him (in his words). He had so much to write, with a story for everyday rounding to a chapter. And he is 83 years old so that would mean a bigger volume than the Harry Potter AND the Britannica encyclopedia (five editions, full set) combined! But Dev saab isn’t as dumb as he may seem. He did a lot of editing and gave gory details only of what really pricked him in life. In other words, another whiney ol’ timer story. Romancing with Life is a carelessly structured, overwritten and often meandering book, but it has one thing going for it that most other star autobiographies in India lack: this is almost without question Dev Anand’s own work. It’s full of the cheerful, uninhibited floridity that marks everything the man does, and that no ghostwriter would have been able to simulate. (How could anyone but Anand himself have produced a sentence like this one: “Those I am closest to, those who like and love me and I them, call me ‘Dev’, just ‘Dev’, short and sweet and possessive, godly and sexy, and intimate to the extreme, in bedrooms, in drawing rooms, in the streets and in public squares.”) The reviewer’s stock complaint “it should have been better edited” is completely irrelevant in this case, for Romancing with Life represents Dev Anand on the page in a way that a better written, better edited book never could.
Well, I was studying literature, philosophy and ideologies during those days of Nainital and had been quite an antiestablishment individual. It was emergency while we were active against Indira Gandhi`s Absolute Regime. We invented another devanand who led the film industry against Emergency and supported JP full heartedly. Then Indira was defeated and Indian Polity faced so many transitions , Devanand never appeared in the political scene. since Amitabh Bacchan defeated Hemvati nandan bahuguna as a friend of Rajiv Gandhi, so many film personalities entered politics, but we never saw devanand, the original politician vying for political power.
Dev Anand always believed in creativity and his activism in the sphere of films always inspired me.We used to see lot of old movies during winter off season with reduced rates concessions and enjoyed every classic of Indian films. We also enjoyed the Hollywood Films ! But never I came through a second personality who may be compared with dev! I wonder how they compared him with a Peck!
At the age of 84 the man has more enthusiasm for life than many of his younger contemporaries. Ask him the secret of his never-say-die spirit, pat comes the reply, “I love what I do”. After being an actor for years and director for many more, Dev Anand has turned his attention to writing.
Recently dev Anand visited Kolkata. I saw him on small screen facing journalists like suman dey and Ranjan Bandopaddhyaya. We knew his experience with Prem Pujari while the Marxists in Bengal set the screen on fire. We also enjoyed two films strarring Dev Anand and the Ultimate bengali screen queen Suchitra Sen in sarhad and Bombai kaa Baabu. We expected him to be in nostalgia. Every Indian knows about Surraya Dev lovestory and his fantacy with Zinnie baby. But Dev Anand is a man who never looks back and always looks forward, for something new , something cahllanging like the shooting of Ishq Ishq Ishq near the everest on 14 thousands metres above sea level!
He said, ` No no, I work alone but I never feel loneliness!’ Simple logic while you are so busy with your creativty how loneliness may dare to touch you! he emphasised on restlessness for creativity. You have to assume yourself supreme in your field while creating something. Don`t imitate. Do something new, something original.
We read and hear so many things about negetive shades in a role and use to say that only sahrukh Khan dared to play the negetive roles as in the films like Bazigar and Dar. Why do you forget Guide? dev Anand also did that.
I loved Raj Kapoor for his romantic films, Dilip Kumar for his mastery in the medium, Raj Kumar for dialogue delivery, manoj kumar for Upkar and shaheed and Guru dutta for his vision and creativty. Dev Anand is the personality which intermingles all these love elements in itself!
Waiting to launch his autobiography on his birthday, he was thrilled by the fact that the Prime Minister and he shared birthdays and also that the PM consented to launch his book. “This book does not belong to me alone. It belongs to all those people who love me and to the whole world really.”
There’s so much fun to be had with Dev Anand’s new autobiography (assuming, of course, that you have a basic interest in the man’s life and work) that it’s almost pointless to read the book chronologically. Instead, you can randomly flip pages to chuckle at the elaborate prose, marvel at Anand’s many blithe descriptions of being chased around by crazed fans, mainly pretty young girls (“a sensuous mouth lunged forward to rub her lipstick on my laughing but bashful face”), or the conviction with which he defends the turkeys that he’s directed in the last couple of decades (Awwal Number was apparently “ahead of its time” because it alluded to LTTE terrorism a year before the Rajiv Gandhi assassination; further, its cricket theme “found some resonance years later in the Oscar-nominated Lagaan”).
Or you can scan sex scenes that incongruously combine Mills-and-Boon-style soft porn with a quaint, old-world reticence (“she offered me the opening to her ecstasy”) while noting how these passages are always about anonymous women (when it comes to public figures, he doesn’t kiss and tell to the same degree, which makes this a disappointing book for stardust-collectors). And you can roll your eyes while reading passages such as the one where, during a shooting, his red cap flew off and landed — wouldn’t you know it — on “the bulging breasts of a village belle”.
Which is as it should be, for no one is going to read it for its literary merits anyway. This is a memoir meant for Anand fans or for those who have, at least sporadically, admired certain things he has stood for over his career: the flamboyant screen persona (watch his best early films to see how his mix of style and substance holds up better than the often heavy-handed work of his two great contemporaries Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor, both of whom were taken more seriously by critics at the time); the determination to keep going in the face of dissuasion and mockery; the willingness to throw his arms open and embrace the world, even when the world didn’t particularly want to be embraced.
And of course, the eternal optimism. A reader casually skimming through this book might get the impression that Anand has received nothing but love and adulation from everyone he’s ever met, but it would be short-sighted to see it as a mere litany of the peaks that he conquered (or imagined he conquered). The fact is that he’s equally candid about his failures —but since his default mode is sanguinity, since he so insistently looks at the bright side of things, the downbeat passages are brief and it’s easy to gloss over them.
Take the much-anticipated (and anti-climactic, for it tells us nothing we haven’t read in film magazines before) chapter about his relationship with Suraiya, which was ended by her domineering grandmother. Anand makes it clear that this was one of the most traumatic incidents in his life, but even here he ends on a positive note, with his elder brother Chetan telling him that the episode would make him stronger for battles ahead. The recurring imagery of a “special ray” that the sun reserves for Anand (to brighten his face when things are looking down) would be unbearably trite elsewhere, but it almost (almost) works here, because you can believe that the man is being sincere; this really is the way he’s lived most of his life.
Is Romancing with Life worth the Rs 695 it’s priced at? Not unless you’re a rabid fan (or one of the apparently millions of nubile young girls lining up to be cast in his next film). But if you get it as a gift, it’s as entertaining in its kitschy way as his mid-period movies were.
Called Romancing With Life, the book runs into about 455 pages. “Yes it is a bit long but I have so much to tell. It is about my 62 years in Mumbai, where I came as a non-entity from Pakistan.”
Though the book has taken a lot of his time, it was a “true and honest effort and is not ghost written. I have scripted it by hand; no computer. My only condition to the publishers was that nothing should be changed. They agreed and now it’s ready,” exulted Dev Anand.
He says the book mentions details even his family does not know.
"I'm getting old and there's so much to say," he said about his autobiography titled "Romancing with Life".
Anand will tour India with his 465-page book which he will also take to Frankfurt, London, Stockholm, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta and Canada.
"You see how busy I am," the actor said. "The secret is I enjoy what I do and I do what I enjoy."
Like all his mega projects, this one too is slated to hit the stores worldwide.
PM Manmohan Singh releases Anand's autobiography
Thursday, September 27, 2007
New Delhi (ANI): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday released an autobiography of ‘evergreen’ Hindi movie star Dev Anand here. Interestingly, the book release ceremony coincided with both Anand's and Singh's birthdays. The actor's memoir titled “Romancing with Life” narrates tales of his journey through life from a young aspiring actor to becoming the evergreen hero of Indian cinema.
Singh lauded Anand calling him one of the India's most 'enduring romantics in the last half century'. "At 84, he is not only young at heart, but also youthful to look at. I am sure that for several generations of his fans, he will always be remembered as a delightfully romantic and endearing artist," Singh said.
A vegetarian and a teetotaler, Anand said: "A book which is in my hand, my autobiography I call it romance with life, romancing with my joy, with my sorrow, with my highs, my lows, an honest depicting of man, of himself, with all my strengths and weaknesses."
With a green scarf draped over a navy blue jacket, his hair dyed black and his skin still taut, Anand retains the charm of a mischievous romantic – the image from his heyday that he has cultivated over a career spanning 60 years. Credited with introducing several actresses to Bollywood, Anand lived his lover-boy image to the fullest, wooing heroines with songs late into his 50s. When he was too old for that, he turned to making romantic films.
Anand, considered the epitome of the suave, urbane gentleman, was seen as one of the most handsome men in Indian cinema and looked strikingly similar to Hollywood hero Gregory Peck. The puff in his hair and collared shirt became a rage among Indian men, and his trademark singsong delivery and penchant for nodding while speaking were all heavily copied.
Many accused his acting of being all style and little substance, but he produced some of the biggest cult hits in Bollywood, won best actor awards several times and was given India's highest award for cinema. His personal life was equally dramatic. He fell in love with a beautiful Muslim actress he saved from drowning while shooting a film. After her grandmother opposed the relationship, the actress retreated from public life and never married. Anand has acted in, directed and produced more than 110 films. Anand will tour India with his 465-page book, which he will also take to Frankfurt, London, Stockholm, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta and Canada.
Dev Anand an eternal optimist
For evergreen hero Dev Anand, life is an endless succession of fascinating tomorrows. Dev Anand became a name to reckon with in the early 1950s when the startling socio-economic changes in the nation after independence gave rise to hero-oriented films. During the period, he formed popular star teams along with Suraiya, Geeta Bali and Waheeda Rehman.
The actor, along with Ashok Kumar, Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor, held the fortunes of the production sector in the palms of their glorious hands for at least two decades. All of them left their own imprint on the history of Indian cinema.
He was the maker of India's first Indo-American co-production "Guide" in English and Hindi. His HUM DONO, which was an entry at the Berlin international film festival, was well received there. Described in Bollywood circles as an eternal optimist, Dev Anand after an endless series of flops in the last few years, still dreams of making one more super hit. The Hindi version of GUIDE, which was directed by his brother Vijay Anand with music by S D Burman, became a big box office success and saved him from financial disaster as the English version had flopped.
The Hindi version was the Indian entry in the foreign language category in Hollywood academy awards in 1965.
The sophisticated actor of today, who has consistently been one of the best dressed men of the country for over three decades and a sartorial stylelist who set trends in menswear, was a shy and reserved boy, never properly dressed, a skinny fellow always bullied by girls.
He was given to singing passages from the holy book and chanting the 'slokas'. The only habit of his childhood days, which Dev Anand remembers to this day, was his love for marbles. He had literally hundreds and hundreds of them in all colours and sizes and was quite adept at playing games with them.
Dev Anand, who went to college in Dharmsala in Kangra district, was specially fond of climbing the snow-clad peaks in winter and had shot films in the upper peaks of nature where man cannot easily reach. He graduated in arts in 1942 from the government college in Lahore, which has given Balraj Sahani, Chetan Anand, B R Chopra and Kushwant Singh to the world of Indian film and literature.
After studies, Dev Anand went to Delhi to work as a clerk for two months before he came to Bombay in search of a break in the film world. In Bombay, he stayed with his elder brother late Chetan Anand and took up a job in the wartime British censor office where he worked as a clerk for two and a half years. All through this period, he visited the studios and film offices of the city seeking the break which nobody was keen to give him.
Dev Anand has starred opposite all the top leading ladies of the 40s and 50s including Suraiya, Kamini Kaushal, Nargis, Meena Kumari, Madhubala, Nimi, Geeta Bali, Nalini Jayawant and Nutan.
The Suraiya-Dev Anand romantic team emerged as the most sought after by producers and distributors, a team whose charisma on screen could only emanate from a deep inner warmth. They starred in seven films together and almost all of them were successful at the box office.
The filmy romance reached its culmination when Dev pressed her to marry him and presented her with a diamond ring. But the ring was destined to land up at the bottom of the ocean bed off marine drive when Suraiya's grandmother took it off from her finger and flung it into the sea.
After Suraiya went out of his life, Dev met the girl who would become his wife. Her name was Mona Singha and she became his heroine in BAAZI directed by Guru Dutt. Mona was renamed as Kalpana Kartik for the screen. Their marriage took place on January 3, 1954, on the sets of TAXI DRIVER at Model studios. After her marriage Kalpana worked in two more films with her husband, HOUSE NUMBER 44 and NAU DO GYARAH.
In 26 years from 1950 to 1976 Dev Anand made 22 films under the Nav Ketan banner. His other notable films were JEWEL THIEF, HEERA PANNA, PREM PUJARI, HARE RAMA HARE KRISHNA, JOHNNY MERA NAAM, SHARREEF BADMASH, TERE MERE SAPNE AND CHUPA RUSTUM, ISHQ ISHQ ISHQ and JANEMAN.
Dev has hobnobbed with kings and queens. The royal family of Nepal invited him as a personal and privileged guest to attend a wedding in the royal family few years ago in Kathmandu.
Summing up, Dev says, "I believe that the making of a motion picture should be brought as close as possible to the making of a newspaper. How can anybody live with the same old idea for five years? No. The world is moving so fast today that you either move it or get left behind."
At 83, even the most flamboyant of celebrities retreat from public life, but if you are Dev Anand, the evergreen hero of Indian cinema, it's never too late for love.
With a white scarf draped over a blue jacket, his hair dyed black and his skin still taut, Anand retains the charm of a mischievous romantic -- the image from his heyday that he has cultivated over a career spanning 60 years.
Credited with introducing several actresses to Bollywood, Anand lived his lover-boy image to the fullest, wooing heroines with songs late into his 50s. When he was too old for that, he turned to making romantic films.
"Romance is beautiful. I am always in love," the actor told Reuters. "But it doesn't mean you are sleeping with women all the time. Even thinking about a beautiful girl or reading poetry is romantic."
Anand, considered the epitome of the suave, urbane gentleman, was seen as one of the most handsome men in Indian cinema and looked strikingly similar to Hollywood hero Gregory Peck.
The puff in his hair and collared shirt became the rage among Indian men and his trademark singsong delivery and penchant for nodding while speaking were all heavily copied.
Many accused his acting of being all style and little substance, but he produced some of the biggest cult hits in Bollywood, won best actor awards several times and was given India's highest award for cinema.
His personal life was equally dramatic. He fell in love with a beautiful Muslim actress he saved from drowning while shooting a film. After her grandmother opposed the relationship, the actress retreated from public life and never married.
Anand has acted in, directed and produced more than 110 films -- most of the recent ones being such disasters that many call him master of "magnum flopus".
A vegetarian and a teetotaller, Anand, who turns 84 this month, says he never feels old because he retains all the elements of youth.
"I'm excited all the time about the things I do. So I feel young. Young people feel excited all the time," he said. "And what compensates me for my youth is my wisdom, my experience, whatever I have gained from life so far."
Anand's autobiography is due out this month. He says the book mentions details even his family does not know.
"I'm getting old and there's so much to say," he said about his autobiography titled Romancing with Life.
Anand will tour India with his 465-page book which he will also take to Frankfurt, London, Stockholm, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta and Canada.
"You see how busy I am," the actor said. "The secret is I enjoy what I do and I do what I enjoy."
When Dev Anand was desperately in love with Zeenat
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 21:28 [IST]
PTI
New Delhi: Evergreen hero Dev Anand was desperately in love with Zeenat Aman but was heart broken before a date with her to find Raj Kapoor throwing his arms around her at a party.
"My heart broken to pieces.... I wanted to leave the party at once and go off somewhere alone, to be just be myself, so that I could swallow the humiliation thrust on my ego," Dev Anand says in his autobiography Romancing with life.
The octogenarian Bollywood hero's autobiography is scheduled to be released by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the capital on Wednesday.
"Zeenat and I started being linked to each other in the magazines and newspapers that people, hungry for gossip, love to read. In the subconscious, we had become emotionally attached to each other," Anand says. Time moved on and one day he felt that he was desperately in love with Zeenat and wanted to say so to her at a very special, exclusive place meant for romance.
"I pick her up and together we went to a party. The first person who greeted Zeenat was drunken Raj Kapoor with a gallant drawl who threw his arms around her," Dev says. "A struggle within me transformed itself into a to-hell-with-it-all attitude and prompted me to say goodbye to a relationship which, though it had been non-committal emotionally on both sides, had been honest all the same," he says.
The evening had delivered a blow to Dev's personality, and his dominating spirit. "I had decided on the spur of the movement to tell Zeenat for the first time how much I loved her. And that there was an idea in my mind of another story that would put her on a pedestal as never before, the highest so far. But that was never to be," the evergreen hero says.
In his autobiography, said to be the first ever full-fledged memoir by a leading Bollywood star, Dev Anand tells his remarkable life story, no less dramatic and gripping than any of his films. It carries recollections from Dev's youth in 1930 in Gurdaspur and Lahore, his years of struggle in 1940s in Bombay, his friendship with Gurudutt and his doomed romance with Surayya. The star also writes about his marriage to Kalpana Kartik, his relationship with his brothers Chetan and Vijay Anand as also his co-stars Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor.
Dev Anand however quickly detached himself from Zeenat. "And so be it! I quickly detached myself. I had blundered, taking too many things for granted. There was no need for me to let any rancour remain in my mind against Zeenat. I had prepared her for the world and she was free to go into the arms of anyone who would help her further her ambitious dreams," he writes.
"A group of chanting devotees was passing by my car -- Hare Krishna Hare Krishna.. I closed my eyes. Zeenat still remained beautiful in my eyes, with an honest soul. And Raj a passionate filmmaker...an idea of a new film was slowly coming into focus," he writes.
"Writing an autobiography is tougher when you are a public figure that the world has known and admired for over six decades and has looked up as a larger-than-life hero. Unless I take my readers to a plane of absolute adoration for me as they read my book, the attempt will not have been worth it. And yet, my life has been an open book to my fans, and they must not feel that I am hiding something or glossing over some unsavoury bumps now that I have set out to write my autobiography," Dev writes.
Being Dev Anand: Romance personified
Anuradha SenGupta / CNN-IBN
Published on Sunday , September 30, 2007 at 03:41 in Entertainment section
Tags: Being, Dev Anand
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Anuradha SenGupta: If a person is going through a heartbreak today, and you after having experienced life for 84 years and having symbolised romance, what would you tell that person?
Dev Anand: I would tell him to proceed further and to move on or else he will die. And I am sure that nobody wants to die as life is worth living.
Anuradha SenGupta: But shouldn’t we hang on to that grand romance and the great passion?
Dev Anand: Why should you? If you do that than you would die and you would be good for nothing. That happens only in the books.
Anuradha SenGupta: Playback singers including Kishore Kumar, Hemant Kumar and Mohammad Rafi all sang for you. All of them gave you big hits.
Dev Anand: Rafi, Kishore, Hemant and even the modern singers who are singing today have sung for me in different films.
Anuradha SenGupta: Out of these three singers whose voice do you think fit you like a glove?
Dev Anand: Kishore had a wonderful resonant voice and when he sang at his best then he was superb. He was not a trained singer. Rafi was a trained singer and sang classical songs and gahazals very well. Hemant’s voice was also very melodious.
Anuradha SenGupta: Yeh raat, yeh chandni phir kahan, right?
Dev Anand: Yes, tuned in Bengali music style. I am fond of Bengali music. S D Burman also used to compose great notes. I think ultimately it is the composition that matters. I go in for melody more than rhythm. Rhythm is of course there all the time but melody survives and stays longer in your mind.
Anuradha SenGupta: I have all your music and whatever is available in the public domain. The moment we realised that were going to meet you, I have been listening to your music with utmost pleasure. Do you listen to your own music?
Dev Anand: No, only for a simple reason. It is rarely with a sense of nostalgia that I listen to my songs. Things are happening for me and there is no time to listen to the songs.
Anuradha SenGupta: You are missing out on a lot if you are not listening to the music of your films.
Dev Anand: Why should I be missing out on them as I given them to the world.
Anuradha SenGupta: Can you tell me of a couple of songs that you listen to from your own films?
Dev Anand: The songs from Guide, Hare Rama Hare Krishna, Jewel Thief, Amir Garib and Swami Dada.
Anuradha SenGupta: What could you leave out?
Dev Anand: There is a lot left out because I have suddenly realised that I have sung so much on screen.
Devdutt Pishorimal Anand dreamt of becoming a film star; but even in his native Gurdaspur, Punjab, he realised Dev Anand would be more appropriate as a screen name. It had a starry, dashing, urbane ring that would soon reflect his own persona.
An Arts graduate from Lahore, Dev first came to Mumbai in 1943 to pursue his dreams of becoming an actor. Riding out of Bombay Central station in a tonga, he was struck by the dazzle of the city. Yet, he was confident he would soon be an ineluctable part of the elite circle of glamour. He stayed as a paying guest at inexpensive lodges and with obliging friends like Raja Rao, the famous novelist.
Famous songs picturised on Dev Anand
Song Film Singer
Jaaye to
jaaye kahan Taxi Driver Talat Mehmood
Jeevan ke safar mein rahee Munimji Kishore Kumar
Chhod do aanchal Paying Guest Kishore Kumar,
Asha Bhosle
Jiya o, jiya kuch bol do Jab Pyar Kisise Hota Hai Mohammed Rafi
Dil ka bhanwar Tere Ghar Ke Saamne Lata Mangeshkar
Abhi na jao chhodke Hum Dono Mohammed Rafi,
Asha Bhosle
Gaata rahe
mera dil Guide Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar
Yeh dil na
hota bechara Jewel Thief Kishore Kumar
Phoolon ke
rang se Prem Pujari Kishore Kumar
Pal bhar ke liye Johnny Mera Naam Kishore Kumar
Dev began his career in the military censor office at Churchgate, Mumbai, for a princely salary of Rs 160. He was soon offered a break as an actor by Prabhat Talkies to star in their Hum Ek Hain (1946).
While shooting for the film in Pune, Dev struck a friendship with fellow actor Guru Dutt. Soon, they were swapping shirts, double dating and sharing dreams. They made a pact: if Dev produced a film, Guru Dutt would direct it; if Guru Dutt produced a film, Dev would act in it.
Dev made the grade first. By a strange coincidence, Dev was offered his first big break by Ashok Kumar, his favourite star. Kumar spotted Dev hanging around in the studios and picked him as hero for the Bombay Talkies production, Ziddi, costarring Kamini Kaushal (1948).
Dev never looked back. He bought his first car, a black Hillman. His dream of working with his teenage idol, actress Snehprabha Pradhan, was also fulfilled.
In 1949, Dev and his elder brother Chetan Anand launched their home banner, Navketan, with Afsar. Dev fell head over heels in love with his heroine, star-songstress Suraiya. But Suraiya's strict granny nipped the romance in the bud.
As promised, Dev gambled on Guru Dutt as director for the crime thriller, Baazi (1951). The dice rolled in favour of this creative collaboration; the Sahir [Ludhianvi, lyricist] song, Tadbeer se bigdi huyee taqdeer bana de, proved prophetic and Dev became a true blue star. I
