“Sitaroan ke aage jahan aur bhi hain, abhi ishq ke imtihan aur bhi hain” (There is a world beyond stars, there are many more tests of love to come) and “Main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya, Har fikr ko dhuen me udata chala gaya” (I moved on with life and blew my troubles up in smoke).

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh read out these lines at a function at his residence on Wednesday while releasing Dev Anand’s autobiography Romancing with Life, he chose the perfect phrases to describe the life’s philosophy of the evergreen actor-director.

But as is his wont, the actor, who celebrated his 84th birthday on a day when the prime minister also celebrated his 75th birthday, is already planning to write another book as “Dev Anand cannot be contained in one single book”. “This book is as complete about Dev Anand as it can be, but my life will go on,” he said after cutting a birthday cake at the Press club of India.

Releasing the book, Dr Singh said, “Many talented young men and women  make their mark thanks to the creativity and enterprise of filmmakers like Dev Anand,” he said.

The function was also attended by Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

In return, Anand, dressed in parrot green suede shirt and pants with a matching scarf with just a hint of a bright yellow shirt peeping from behind it, praised both Ms Gandhi and Dr Singh for their “capacity to take the country skywards so that it becomes an envy of the world”.

The actor seemed quite excited about the fact that his superhit film Hum Dono is being colourised. “When they (the people who made the proposal to colourise one of his films) asked me which film of mine should be colourised, I said Hum Dono. The result looks excellent,” he said.

Describing the book, he said: “From an ordinary boy, a non-entity, to now, as I stand here in front of you today, this book is about 62 years of my struggles... about my joys, my sorrows, my highs and my lows. It is an honest depiction of a man with all his strengths and weaknesses”.