Main zindagi ka saath...

When I first broached the subject of writing a book on Navketan three or so years ago, Dev Anand immediately agreed. I found that a pleasant surprise, because it is not as if I was his friend. He was implicitly trusting an unknown writer. He had one condition though: “Let my own book come out.” He said he was working on his memoirs and would like me to wait till it was released. I felt discouraged because this sounded like a gentle way of fobbing me off.

But sure enough, his book was released a few months later and he was ready to talk to me. Over the next few months, I interviewed him several times. These were long, detailed conversations going over each and every small detail. Often I had to go back to him to cross check a fact — his memory was prodigious. He pointed out mistakes in my own research. And he spoke candidly and frankly, even when talking about parting of ways with his brothers Vijay Anand and Goldie, whom he loved immensely.
The interviews with Dev Anand were peppered with watching his films. I told him that I wanted to watch some of his great films with him. We began with Taxi Driver, an all-time favourite of mine and very close to his heart because that is when he married Kalpana Kartik. I saw that he had tears in his eyes but I kept discreetly quiet.
He told me how Guide was shot and why it was shot in two versions. Vijay Anand did not want to make it, thinking that adultery was a very risky subject. The brothers discussed it for a long time till Goldie was persuaded; the final result was a masterpiece. Dev Anand recalled the reaction the premier got: nobody said a word at the end because what they had seen was so unusual — the hero dies and the heroine leaves two men. When had that happened in a Hindi film before?
It became clear that Dev Anand was not just another film actor — he represented a historical continuum, starting from the 1940s and going well into the 1980s and beyond. He had acted with every major female star over four decades, from Geeta Bali to Madhubala to Kalpana Kartik to Waheeda Rahman to Nutan to Zeenat Aman and right down to Tina Munim and everyone in between. He was too diplomatic to mention whom he liked the most but did say that he felt most comfortable with Nutan, with whom he did comedies like Tere Ghar Ke Saamne and Paying Guest. They just clicked on the screen. He recalled that Madhubala had the habit of giggling all the time and couldn’t stop once it began.
Dev Anand’s films were all about a certain modernity and style — the Hollywood influence was visible in the way they were scripted and shot. The female characters were strong and unconventional — there was no rona dhona. He was an urban man and his films had an urban sensibility, even if they focused on the underbelly of city life — the gamblers, thieves and grifters. By the Sixties though he had begun playing suave romantic heroes.

In 2009, I travelled with him to Delhi for a show of his films which had been arranged by the I&B ministry on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Navketan. The Siri Fort auditorium, which can hold 2,500 people, was packed and a mob of people, young and old, waited to be let in. Dev Anand walked in and a huge cheer went up. We sat in the front row and watched the film; in the interval he was mobbed by people whose parents were probably not born when he began his career in the mid-1940s. Yet they repeated his dialogues, sang his songs, hugged and kissed him.
When I met people to talk about him, they were effusive in their praise for his gentlemanliness and style. Naseeruddin Shah said he would say yes every time Dev Anand offered him a role because he was such a fan it didn’t occur to him to say no. He was universally liked by the industry. For me, working with him closely for two years and to learn so much about him, about filmmaking and about the history of Hindi cinema, was a privilege. Even today he must be up there planning his next film, because for Dev Anand, movies were all that he lived for.