Starry, starry knight: The Wknd Dev Anand tribute
He was a superstar, social commentator, even – briefly – a politician. Dev Anand would have been 100 this year. How has his legacy unfolded? Take a look.
There is a song in the 1961 film Hum Dono, in which the hero sums up his philosophy of life: “Main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya, har fikr ko dhuen mein udata chala gaya (I go through life as it unfolds before me, letting go of every worry in a puff of smoke).”
Nothing symbolises the onscreen and offscreen persona of the evergreen actor Dev Anand better than these lyrics, written by the poet Sahir Ludhianvi; sung by Mohammed Rafi.
In his 65-year career (from Hum Ek Hain in 1946 to Chargesheet in 2011), Dev Anand acted in over 100 films, directed 19, launched an influential film banner (Navketan), won multiple awards, introduced a plethora of newcomers to Hindi cinema (including Zeenat Aman, Tina Munim, and his brother, the filmmaker Vijay Anand), saw magnificent professional highs and setbacks, fell in and out of love, travelled the world, was adored by fans, took firm political stands even at serious personal risk, retained his buoyant outlook — and always, always dressed sharply.
He gave India a new kind of icon – a gentle, dapper, Westernised city-dweller, as adept at charming the women as he was at treading the fine line between lovable rascal and plain rogue. He personified optimism, hope and perseverance, in a newly independent nation.
In his centenary year, the lasting legacy of India’s first superstar is so much more than the sum of these parts.
***
It was a humid day in July 1943, when Dev Anand stepped off the Frontier Mail at the Bombay Central railway station, aged 20. He has just seen the sea for the first time, and something had shifted in his universe.
“I suddenly felt my horizon broadening,” he writes in his autobiography, Romancing with Life (2007). “I saw new vistas opening up before me… From now onwards, my movements have to be as fast as the train that was taking me to my destination.”
He would keep to those words. All his life, people who met him remarked on how he never sat down, and always paced about as he talked.
The son of a lawyer, Dev Anand studied English literature in Lahore, where he also had many romantic escapades. The admiration of women sparked in him a desire to seek a career in the movies. Looking in the mirror, he laughed in joy at his reflection. He writes: “Isn’t this face presentable?... There is something about me – I am going to present myself to the world… I am going to be an actor. Not just an actor – I am going to be a star!”
Bombay did not, at first, notice his arrival. Living in a Parel chawl building, he was compelled to sell his precious stamp collection and take up sundry jobs to survive.
It was on a local train that he bumped into his destiny. He met a friend who told him that Prabhat Film Company was looking for a handsome young man for their new venture. One thing led to another and he was cast in Hum Ek Hain (1946). The PL Santoshi tale of Hindu-Muslim unity fared reasonably well, but real success eluded Dev Anand until Ziddi (1948), directed by Shaheed Latif for Bombay Talkies.
While shooting for Ziddi, he would make his way to the studio in Malad via local train, with Dilip Kumar for company. Dilip Kumar would step off at Goregaon, where he was filming Shaheed. (After Ziddi, Dev Anand would buy his first flashy car, a Hillman Minx.)
***
Dev Anand’s golden era, from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, was also the golden era of Hindi cinema. The great trio of him, Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor ruled, each bringing their distinct persona to a wide spectrum of stories.
Dilip Kumar was intense and understated, and acted in a mix of rural and urban dramas and costume capers. Raj Kapoor played the simple, good-hearted innocent from the hinterland adrift among big-city villains. Dev Anand was cast in a completely different mould. In a series of black-and-white classics, many of them in the genre that came to be known as Bombay Noir, he gave us the quintessential urban hero, with a rakish puff, jaunty caps, cigarettes and Western outfits in sharp silhouettes.
Often, his character was part of the urban poor, but his characters were never self-pitying or lachrymose. They were men of optimism and action.
He played a range of morally ambiguous protagonists too: a gambler in the Guru Dutt crime thriller Baazi (1951), a ruthless smuggler in Jaal (1952, also Guru Dutt), a black marketeer in Kala Bazar (1960, Vijay Anand).
The city that Dev Anand inhabited in his films was invariably Bombay, a thriving, cosmopolitan, creative hub. His films captured the streets, sounds and architecture of this long-gone city, and evoke wistful nostalgia among viewers today.
Much of Dev Anand’s enduring charm can also be ascribed to the unforgettable songs in his films. Most were composed by the brilliant SD Burman, and constitute a legacy of monumental proportions, representing the greatest years of the Hindi film song.
Burman would, in fact, become almost the in-house composer for Navketan, the film production studio launched by Dev Anand in 1949.
Navketan’s first venture, Afsar (1950; directed by his brother Chetan Anand), was a satirical comedy about corruption, co-starring Suraiya. She was the first person to tell Dev Anand that he looked like Gregory Peck. Though he replied in jest, “I am more good-looking!” he must have been secretly pleased.
In a way, the comparison with a major Western actor hadn’t really come out of the blue. Quite early in his career, the word “Saab” had become attached to his first name. He attributed this to his Westernised image. “The films I made were modern… slightly ahead of their times, and not the usual village or small-town sagas. It might even have been because I spoke English with the accent of an ‘almost Englishman,’ a ‘Brown sahib’,” he writes in Romancing with Life.
Meanwhile, while making Afsar, he and Suraiya fell in love. Her family were openly disapproving of the match. He, born Dharamdev Pishorimal Anand, was a Hindu; Suraiya, a Muslim. She was also the family’s golden goose. Eventually, it ended. He was heartbroken.
Soon after, he fell in love with Kalpana Kartik, his co-star in Taxi Driver. They married in secret in 1954, during a break on the film’s sets. They remained married until his death, in 2011.
***
There cannot be a Dev Anand tribute without a hat-tip to Guide (1965), his most career-defining film, and a project he picked, shaped and drove. It was Dev Anand who read the novel of the same name by RK Narayan, in one sitting, while on a trip to London, and decided to turn it into an international co-production. He flew to America to discuss the idea with Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S Buck and Polish-American director Tad Danielewski, both of whom signed on.
The story — about a tourist guide named Raju who falls in love with a woman, who leaves her husband for him and then strikes out as a professional dancer — was a radical one.
The Hindi version, co-starring Waheeda Rehman and directed by Vijay Anand, would go on to become iconic. The English version sank like a stone, but this didn’t deter Dev Saab. “The most rewarding award was that I had dared to gamble on a bold subject and come away with accolades,” he writes.
When it came to the stories he chose to tell, Dev Saab tended to seize on current events and trends. His best-known film as director is probably Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971), about a group of hippies in Nepal. On a visit to Kathmandu, he saw long-haired hippies wearing marigold garlands, smoking chillums, huddled together in groups, kissing and dancing. An attractive Indian girl in the group caught his eye. She was from Canada, and called herself Janice (originally Jasbir). Dev Anand had found his story.
Hare Rama Hare Krishna was a big hit and gave audiences an exciting new star in Zeenat Aman, and a sizzling Asha Bhosle number that endures: Dum Maro Dum.
This was Dev Anand’s heyday, with Jewel Thief (1967) and Johny Mera Naam (1970) among his biggest successes.
By the 1970s, his scarves, jackets and buttoned-up shirts were beginning to look outdated. There were still films that did reasonably well, such as Heera Panna (1973; a story of theft, intrigue and love, co-starring Zeenat Aman); and Des Pardes (1978; a story of immigrants to the UK). He was still a force in the Hindi film industry. But his films had started to fail far more than they succeeded.
***
Off screen, the 1970s brought to the fore — as it did for so many artists — a whole other aspect of Dev Saab’s persona. When Emergency was declared, he was asked to appear on television to speak about the Youth Congress. He refused. The result: “Not only were all my pictures banned from being screened on television, but also any mention of or reference to my name on an official media was forbidden.”
When Emergency was lifted and elections declared, he was asked to participate in a large Janata Party rally against Indira Gandhi. If he attended and the party lost, he knew he would be a marked man. But after a sleepless night, in what he calls one of the most difficult decisions of his life, he decided to go to the rally.
He was elated by the election results, only to face sharp disappointment when the Janata government fell in just a few years, having “delivered nothing of the promises held out in their manifesto”.
So he came up with what he thought was an epic idea: a party of his own: The National Party of India, with Dev Anand as its president. The first rally, in Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, drew a large crowd. He was convinced he could win a national election that was then six weeks away. Instead, the party couldn’t finalise its candidates. It folded, and this dream of his was laid to rest.
***
Through the 1990s and early 2000s, Dev Anand continued to churn out movies. These included Gangster (1994), Main Solah Baras Ki (1998), Censor (2001), Love at Times Square (2003). They came and went without anyone noticing.
Criticism did not diminish his zeal. He loved making films, he would say, regardless of whether they were, “a hit or a flop, accepted or discarded, condemned, ridiculed or praised.” His last film, in fact, was released in the year of his death.
In the end, it was just as he had sung in his days of black-and-white glory: “Main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya…”
