Dev Anand: Forever young

LEGENDS OF INDIAN CINEMA

The expression ''As young as Dev Anand'' may well be a part of a future English language textbook. The enthusiasm in his voice, the charged passion in his words and the spring in his steps as he escorts us down the office stairs could well propel a thousand rockets into space. But then, that’s what Devdutt Bishorimal Anand has always been all about.

Just look back at Dev Anand’s immediate past: he has written a rap song at 83, that too in both Hindi and English with the same meanings, composed its basic tune and recorded it in his own voice for his last film Mr Prime Minister. At 85, he wrote one of the most successful autobiographies ever from film artistes, Romancing With Life, published by Penguin. And today, he is busy completing his latest film, a thriller with a topical slant as his films have always had since the early 70s — Chargesheet.

“I will reveal more about the film when I start its marketing! It’s a film that stars young new faces and has a bevy of young names jointly composing the music!” says the actor-writer-filmmaker whose mind is probably younger than theirs. All his statements need an exclamation mark, sometimes more, since they are all made with passion and striking emphasis.

Ask what makes him what he is and he simply says, “When I wake up every morning I am charged, because I know I am going to grow as a human being that little bit more. I landed at Victoria Terminus, as the rail terminal was then called, around 66 years ago with two very big assets with me — a good education and tremendous self-confidence. My brother Chetan was here making films, almost established, but I chose to forge my own path! We only joined up professionally when I later launched Navketan, my banner, in 1949 and he directed my first film Afsar (1950) which we remade later as Sahib Bahadur under his banner.”

And the man who once worked as a censor in the post-office during World War II goes on, “I always feel a tremendous sense of optimism. Yesterday is dead! Today is living! Tomorrow is your rebirth! The future is always rosy! I keep making films irrespective of their box-office fate, because that’s my calling. If I have not had a hit for a long while, maybe the world did not understand them, or maybe they were faulty, but no one can ever fault my sincerity and honesty.”

Dev enjoys his work and the excitement that this attitude generates, he tells you, “is a sign of youth. Otherwise you become a block of wood. And I am in a beautiful profession.” A look at the man’s incredible track-record since his acting debut in Pyarelal Santoshi’s 1944 Hum Ek Hain shows that Dev was always ahead of his times, and more importantly, different from his breed. His films, like his songs, radiated freshness, huge variety and amazing cheerfulness in an era known for stark melodrama, cloying emotions, underdogs and ‘tragedy kings’.

Dev never went in either for village-based subjects and characters or for Chennai-based films, with a few exceptions proving these rules. Rom-coms, thrillers and dramas formed his oeuvre, with the occasional social like Guide, and then began his foray into both films with a topical social message and writing and direction with Prem Pujari (1970) and Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1972). Dev recalls how he started out on a salary of Rs 400 with Prabhat, the famous company, and could “save a lot from that princely sum for those days. I bought a house and even called my sisters down from Punjab.”

Dev’s romantic leading ladies ranged from Suraiya, Madhubala and Kamini Kaushal to Tabu and other starlets that he discovered like Sabrina (Main Solah Baras Ki) in the 80s to the millennium phase. In keeping with his innate habit of blending roots and modernity, Dev kept a balance between singers Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar, had a strong rapport with S D Burman, followed by R D Burman, and resonated best with lyricists whose forte was depth with simplicity like Shailendra, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Anand Bakshi.

In all the sustained stardom that earned Dev the coveted Dadasaheb Phalke award in 2003, there were a couple of sore notes: one, that since he fearlessly spoke against the Emergency, he was deprived of other deserving National honours (the Phalke came during BJP’s rule) by all the Congress regimes and two, that closer home he was never rated high as an actor despite his diversity in range and performances like in Munimji, Hum Dono, Guide, Tere Mere Sapne, Prem Shastra (India’s first A-grade film on sex) and many others. Why was this so?

“That’s because 0.1 per cent are opinion-makers and the remaining 99.9 per cent are a flock of sheep!” says Dev Anand with intensity. “But I think that a non-actor is the best actor because unless you are doing a bio-pic you should perform at ease and be yourself, or the strain will show. Goldie (Vijay Anand) brought out the best in me. But I rarely worked with top directors. As an actor, I had to accept that cinema was finally a director’s medium. So when I thought that I had learnt something about acting, I decided to take to scripting and directing films. Of course, the learning process never ends.”

Citing an essential difference in the working environment over the years, he says that while today’s youngsters are very energetic and smart, they lack the sincerity of the older artistes. “The tempo and restlessness are high, but in an era in which filmmaking is even tougher than it was, one cannot afford to be insincere.”

Asked which he would term his most satisfying film, he answers with tangential meaningfulness, “When you write down my interview and think you have done a good job, you will always find that it could be improved when you look at it two years later.
When the mind progresses, it keeps improving, so even something done with full sincerity looks just okay down the line. And that’s healthy — that’s the way it should be!” And his motto is? “Always be in love. As my book is named, I have always been romancing with life. Love has no age!”