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).”

(HT Illustration: Mohit Suneja)

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

With Sheila Ramani in Taxi Driver (1954). While working on the film, Dev Anand fell in love with and married his co-star, Kalpana Kartik.

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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.

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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.

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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…”