Obituary: Eternal sunshine of a timeless star

The year is 2008. Vijay Anand’s ‘Guide’ is being screened in the Classics section of the Cannes Film Festival. The producer and lead actor of the film, Dev Anand, is in the French Riviera town in flesh and blood to savour the moment.

But the evergreen Mumbai movie star isn’t thinking only of the well-ahead-of-its-time film that he had made 42 years ago. The irrepressible Dev Anand is already looking ahead and talking aloud about returning to Cannes soon with a brand new film.

“This recognition,” he says with boyish enthusiasm, “will spur me on to greater heights. Don’t be surprised if I’m back here next year with a film in the main Competition.”

The gung-ho spirit spills over to the lawns of a luncheon hosted by the Hindujas on the sidelines of the festival. A young star-struck Indian-origin beauty traipses up to the charismatic actor-producer-director. She is understandably effusive and a tad incoherent.

The ever-charming Dev Anand, then all of 85, grabs her hand, flashes that famous toothy grin of his and says puckishly: “You are so pretty. You are in my next film.” The girl goes weak in the knees.

That was Dev Anand. “Your mind must stay young. Your body may age but it always ends up doing the mind’s bidding,” he told people who milled around him that balmy afternoon. It was indeed the mantra that he lived by.

He never rested on his oars. Dev and death were always antithetical concepts. The legendary movie personality may have moved on, but his perennially youthful aura will survive forever.

Dev Anand was in many ways like the movie industry that he served with unparalleled distinction for 65 years: blessed with energy unbound, a never-ending spirit of optimism and a zest for life that could surmount setbacks and reverses without the slightest wobble.

The star of such memorable entertainers as Baazi, C.I.D., Kala Pani, Kala Bazar, Tere Ghar Ke Samne, Hum Dono and Jewel Thief, among countless other hits, never slowed down, let alone stopped.

As a director, he always worked with topical themes yanked out of newspaper headlines. His 1970 directorial debut, Prem Pujari, an espionage drama that alluded to India’s hostilities with China and Pakistan, ran into a raging row and failed to click at the box office. But the film has since acquired something akin to a cult status.

His directorial credits include runaway hits like Hare Rama Hare Krishna, Des Pardes and Man Pasand, a loose adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.

Dev Anand made his last middling box office hit in the early 1980s (Swami Dada), but he continued to churn out one film after another. Big time success may have eluded after the 1980s, but he did not let that vagaries of the box office deflect him away from his path.

Making films wasn’t a mere calling for Dev Anand: it was as important as breathing. So he clutched at every straw that flew his way. Every film was a sigh of joy and satisfaction. Few understood his compulsion. He had to respond to his Muse every time she beckoned. Sadly, his Muse could not probably keep pace with Dev Anand. 

The other two pillars of the golden era triumvirate, Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar, had either graduated to playing elderly characters or were preparing to go into semi-retirement. But Dev Anand never let his advancing years and changing audience fads impinge upon his approach to the medium.

He died with his boots on. Literally. Dev Anand was in the midst of plans to direct an American film with himself in the lead alongside a cast of actors from the US when ill health forced him to go in for a medical check-up in London. He died of a cardiac arrest when India was sleeping. He chose a Sunday to go. There was a karmic connection here. For a man who never looked back, death could not possibly have come at high noon on a working day.