Veteran actor Dev Anand celebrated his 84th birthday on Wednesday and to mark the occasion he launched his autobiography titled Romancing with Life. CNN-IBN's Anuradha SenGupta caught up with the actor for a heart-to-heart conversation on love and life prior to his birthday.
Anuradha SenGupta: Dev Anand you are celebrating your 84th birthday this week and you are celebrating it with the launch of a book. Shouldn’t it have been with a film?
Dev Anand: The book is like a film. It is like an epic of my yesteryears. It is a story of how old I am. I shall be 84-years-old and I have had a screen career of more than 62 years. It is a story of that long span of life.
Auto means yourself and when I decided to do my autobiography it was a commitment with my own mind and my own conscience so it had to be true and it had to be honest.
If I am honest with my self then I have to be honest with the book then only will the world like it because my life is an open book and everybody knows about it. If they don’t find any chapter, which they know about, they will be disappointed and yet it hurts nobody because in my whole life I have hurt nobody.
Anuradha SenGupta: You have spoilt everything for me because I kept thinking that the men I meet would behave like you.
Dev Anand: You had an image of me and I was your idol. I feel flattered.
Anuradha SenGupta: You have defined romance for a lot of us. What should romance be? Is it the films, the songs that you have done, the way you dressed and the way you behaved?
Dev Anand: Romance is when you fall in love with whatever you do. It is when you fall in love with a girl and even your wife. It is when you fall in love with a book and you do not want to leave it.
Romance is when you fall in love with your writing and the idea starts flowing so much so that you do not want to be disturbed.
Anuradha SenGupta: None of the man I met behaved like you Dev saheb.
Dev Anand: Why? What is so special about me?
Anuradha SenGupta: In Kaala Baazar, in the train when you sing a song with Waheeda Rehman on the upper deck. I kept hoping in all my train and bus journeys somebody would sing something like that. But they never did.
Dev Anand: If the audience starts finding then they will see for themselves that what they see in the screen is a good film.
Anuradha SenGupta: It is quite clear that there is a difference between the films that you did as an actor and the films that you did as a director. As a director you did very contemporary issues and as an actor you did romantic issues.
Dev Anand: As an actor I also did very modern and contemporary issues. The audience had given me an image and I loved it.
Anuradha SenGupta: What would be one of your favourite love stories out of all the various love stories that you gave us to see?
Dev Anand: It is very difficult to say because every aspect of love that you tackle on the screen has a different genre. Take Jewel Thief, Guide, Hare Rama Hare Krishna, Des Pardes, Taxi Driver, Baazi and Jaan for instance, they are all different.
It is difficult to say as long as it strikes a chord of reality somewhere inside. Romance is what people love and live for. You are born with it.
Anuradha SenGupta: Kaala Baazar is my favourite love story because of the whole thing about how love manages to make a boy going off the right track to get on the right track.
Dev Anand: Love reforms him. Do you like the sequence when it rains and there is wind in the street? It is a very good scene. It touched you and it touched everyone.
Anuradha SenGupta: Kaala Baazar made me hang on to a very romanticised notion of romance and Guide made me grow up and say that one cannot hang on to a romanticised notion of romance.
Dev Anand: The films however, did their job well. The audience liked them.
Anuradha SenGupta: In your life has your experiences been borne out romance and love as what we saw in Kaala Baazar or what we saw in Guide , which means staying in the rose-tinted glasses or taking them off and seeing love and romance in the harsh afternoon light?
Dev Anand: Love in different forms and different stages depends upon what age group the leading man is. It depends upon what phase of experience he is going through that moment whether it is a sad moment or a very happy moment or he is even frustrated in terms of his own work and he goes back to his beloved or is lusty at that moment. It varies.
Anuradha SenGupta: In your life who are the women who have inspired you to be better than yourself?
Dev Anand: When I say a woman inspires you I don’t necessarily mean they are inspiring you to a physical relationship. I think the very thought of the opposite sex is itself an inspiration. And it is how marriages are made. It is about writing a beautiful note to your girlfriend and not being able to get her.
Anuradha SenGupta: So are you not going to tell me of any of the women who inspired you?
Dev Anand: No, why should I talk about individuals.
Anuradha SenGupta: Have you not talked about them in your book?
Dev Anand: Yes, I have because they were my leading ladies and they were people that I interacted with on an intellectual level and on a professional level. If a leading lady is praised in a film and I have directed the film, I feel great because I feel that she belongs to me at that moment. I feel sensible and possessive. It is a great feeling.
Anuradha SenGupta: Who were you the most possessive about?
Dev Anand: I don’t know what I am most possessive about as I am moving all the time. I have never been static.
Anuradha SenGupta: For many, you symbolise and epitomise romance. When you look back at heartbreaks…
Dev Anand: Heartbreaks are painful but the pain is beautiful. They leave a tinge of pleasure. But you must leave the heartbreaks behind and you mustn’t hang on to them. I am not the kind of person who hangs on to them, as I would proceed further. Heartbreaks left impressions and the impressions meant knowledge, which added to my own growth.
You should take heartbreaks from that point of view. I am not the Majnu type of a person who would commit a suicide if he doesn’t get his love.
Anuradha SenGupta: If a person is going through a heartbreak today, and you after having experienced life for 84 years and having symbolised romance, what would you tell that person?
Dev Anand: I would tell him to proceed further and to move on or else he will die. And I am sure that nobody wants to die as life is worth living.
Anuradha SenGupta: But shouldn’t we hang on to that grand romance and the great passion?
Dev Anand: Why should you? If you do that than you would die and you would be good for nothing. That happens only in the books.
Anuradha SenGupta: Playback singers including Kishore Kumar, Hemant Kumar and Mohammad Rafi all sang for you. All of them gave you big hits.
Dev Anand: Rafi, Kishore, Hemant and even the modern singers who are singing today have sung for me in different films.
Anuradha SenGupta: Out of these three singers whose voice do you think fit you like a glove?
Dev Anand: Kishore had a wonderful resonant voice and when he sang at his best then he was superb. He was not a trained singer. Rafi was a trained singer and sang classical songs and gahazals very well. Hemant’s voice was also very melodious.
Anuradha SenGupta: Yeh raat, yeh chandni phir kahan, right?
Dev Anand: Yes, tuned in Bengali music style. I am fond of Bengali music. S D Burman also used to compose great notes. I think ultimately it is the composition that matters. I go in for melody more than rhythm. Rhythm is of course there all the time but melody survives and stays longer in your mind.
Anuradha SenGupta: I have all your music and whatever is available in the public domain. The moment we realised that were going to meet you, I have been listening to your music with utmost pleasure. Do you listen to your own music?
Dev Anand: No, only for a simple reason. It is rarely with a sense of nostalgia that I listen to my songs. Things are happening for me and there is no time to listen to the songs.
Anuradha SenGupta: You are missing out on a lot if you are not listening to the music of your films.
Dev Anand: Why should I be missing out on them as I given them to the world.
Anuradha SenGupta: Can you tell me of a couple of songs that you listen to from your own films?
Dev Anand: The songs from Guide, Hare Rama Hare Krishna, Jewel Thief, Amir Garib and Swami Dada.
Anuradha SenGupta: What could you leave out?
Dev Anand: There is a lot left out because I have suddenly realised that I have sung so much on screen.
Anuradha SenGupta: You do not have time to listen to your own film songs because you are focused on the present as you have said this before. Do you resent it when people like me come with all the nostalgia and the image of you some 30 years ago?
Dev Anand: I like it more as the whole thing gets confirmed in my mind that the songs are good.
Anuradha SenGupta: It is not just the songs. The fact is that you have your eyes on the future, but we meet you and want to take you back into the past, do you resent us?
Dev Anand: I don’t resent that as it is my inspiration. I want it more and more to happen this way. That is my inspiration, which adds on to a better future for me.
Anuradha SenGupta: You once told me that the best thing about being a star is the fact that you can do what you want to do. You don’t have to do what others tell you do.
Dev Anand:You must realise that in a long span of career if an actor or a star, or anybody from any walk of life can achieve a status where he or she can say something or do something entirely on his/ her shoulders without anybody’s dictation is the ultimate.
Anuradha SenGupta: Even at 84 today you are still making films the way you feel like, is it because you are still reaping the benefits of that stardom?
Dev Anand: Why shouldn’t I reap the benefits of stardom when the whole world knows me for my work and the whole world wants to find out, ‘abhi kya karne wala hai, isko watch to kare’ or ‘abhi kya karega, isko watch to kare.’
You will not know the feeling unless you are Dev Anand. It is a constant question that has been asked to me. You have to be me to be able to get the beautiful feeling. I want to do something that is bigger and better than what I have already done.
To do it or receive is besides the point the point but the effort is there, the effort backed by my bigger maturity, bigger experience, enthusiasm and of course a great audience behind me sitting quietly watching me and saying, “Let’s watch him to see what he does.” It is a beautiful feeling and nobody can realise this unless they come to the stage that I am in.
Anuradha SenGupta: With this philosophy where you are looking ahead, it’s the way you are, the point is don’t you get annoyed with people like me who constantly want to talk you back.
Dev Anand: It is not a philosophy it is a reality. No, on the contrary I feel good. There is another fan and another girl who likes me. It’s a great feeling.
Anuradha SenGupta: There are lots of women who liked you.
Dev Anand: You tell me… I am sure there must be that’s why I am there.
Anuradha SenGupta: When you hear about great stars, I am quoting Hollywood Greta Garbo, someone who decided to go away from the public gaze.
Dev Anand: Because she was not creative. She was just a beautiful doll. When she had her days she was finished. She was scared of coming into the world because of getting old. Even old is beautiful as long as you are working and you know your work. In old age when you are not working and they are seeing you as an old man with an image of 50 years ago it’s not good. But when they see you even as an old man and doing something and your work is recent then it is fantastic. You should be functioning all the time.
Anuradha SenGupta: I think so too.
Dev Anand: You should be functioning if you are creative. If you are not creative then you can’t function. You are piece of audio finished.
Anuradha SenGupta: Do you think as a society we need to understand…
Dev Anand: I outgrew, I outgrew a certain stage of glamour, The glamour given to me was a physical glamour. I probably had the intellect. I had the mind, knowledge and education and I wanted to be more educated. I am still being educated. I read, I watch you, I watch everybody else on television. I have started becoming your fan all of a sudden. If you are taking a good interview I watch you and I start thinking ‘my God this girl is so beautiful when she is interviewing’. I am not like her I want to be like her. So the sense of competition starts coming into my mind and that’s a great sign. It’s a good thing. My feet are very much on the ground. I am not the ultimate and nobody is the ultimate.
Anuradha SenGupta: All artists and all creative people have to be driven by this feeling of competitiveness of wanting to do something new, of wanting to be better than they can be.
Dev Anand: You should be driven by that type of feeling all the time no matter what status you achieve.
Anuradha SenGupta: No matter even if people laugh at you sometimes, people question you?
Dev Anand: Who are the people who laugh at you, they are jokers because they are laughing at you. They don’t realise as they don’t know what it is like to be me because they would not be there in my shoes.
I don’t laugh at people. I should not laugh at people because I start thinking he is trying to do something may be he is not successful but he has the guts he has the knowledge, he can and may be one day he will.
Anuradha SenGupta: Are you disappointed anywhere that Navketan, which was this big glorious banner which is even today producing the films that you produced, is not a big production house, it is not a studio like the way may be Yash Raj has become today.
Dev Anand: Because I think he has made some good pictures that brought him money and he has used it well. May be my pictures could have done the same may be tomorrow they will.
Anuradha SenGupta: But may be if you produce for other people other creative people.
Dev Anand: Other people can walk into my banner and make films if they have a good script then my doors are open.
Anuradha SenGupta: But no one has ever done it.
Dev Anand: Because nobody has brought the script. They hold me in awe. That’s my disadvantage at times. They have certain image of me as to Dev saheb ke paas kaise jayenge. But they don’t realise they can come to Dev.
Anuradha SenGupta: When do you go back to making a film?
Dev Anand: In November Chargesheet was announced. I was doing the casting. I was meeting the actors and suddenly this programme popped up. My mind was not with the film at that moment.
Lets keep it aside finish this first and you never know I am going to meet you people, your set of people, young faces, younger crowd, bigger crowd, greater crowd, men, women, daughters, mothers fathers sons from different part of the world. You never know I am very fast because ultimately I am a filmmaker. Let us see even I am not sure what future holds for me?
Anuradha SenGupta: Dev saheb we will take as much of you as we can get.
Dev Anand: Thank you very much. |
