Daily Times

The news that matinee hero Dev Anand died in London on December 3 as a result of cardiac arrest saddened fans all over the world. A very large number among them are Pakistanis. Dev Anand was born on September 26, 1923, not in Lahore, but less than 50 miles from. His ancestral village, Gharota, was in tehsil (now district) Pathankot, district Gurdaspur, but he grew up in Gurdaspur where his father maintained a successful practice at the district courts.

Like many other Punjabi families who wanted to give their children the best education of those times, his father sent him to Lahore for higher education. He studied at the Government College. Exposure to Lahore surely helped polish his personality and thus stood him in good stead all his life.

In his autobiography, Romancing with Life (New Delhi, Viking, 2007), we learnt that Dev Anand was first smitten with love, unfilled and undeclared, for a classmate, Usha Chopra. However, he left Lahore in 1943 after obtaining a BA honours degree in English Literature. He could never return to Lahore until 1999 as part of a peace delegation, because in mid-August 1947, Lahore had become the capital of the Pakistani Punjab, which was no longer safe for Hindus and Sikhs.

Dev Anand successfully established his credentials as one of the three most sought after heroes in the Bombay film industry; the other two being Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor. He was undoubtedly the favourite of college girls. His films, ‘Ziddi’, ‘Shair’, ‘Baazi’, ‘Jaal’, ‘Aaram’, ‘Nirala’, ‘Sazaa’, ‘Taxi Driver’, ‘House No 44’ and many others continued to be shown in Lahore cinemas until the curtain was drawn on Indian films in the wake of the 1965 India-Pakistan War. It was many years later, thanks to video cassettes and later CDs and DVDS and indeed Indian television channels, that we got a chance to see him again in his later films such as ‘CID’, ‘Kala Pani’, ‘Hum Dono’, ‘Guide’ and many others.

In Bombay, the Lahore connection came back into his life in a big way. He fell in love with the Lahore-born Suraiya. On that occasion Suraiya’s grandmother overruled the match ostensibly on religious grounds — Hindu boy/Muslim girl — but the weightier consideration must have been the money Suraiya was bringing home as one of the most sought after heroines of that time.

Another half Lahore connection became part of his life when he married Kalpana Kartik (real name Mona Singh), who belonged to a well-known Christian family of Amritsar, but with many aunts and cousins living in Lahore.

On Tuesday, December 6, some of us who grew up in the Lahore of the 1950s and 60s met in Stockholm to mark the sad departure of a man to whom we all owed some beautiful memories of our own younger days. In those days the excitement of saving annas and paisas so as to be able to buy the Rs 1.60 ticket was immense. As soon as one set foot on McLeod Road and Abbot Road, where most Urdu-Hindi and Punjabi pictures were shown, transformation to a world of dreams began and was consummated by a beautiful mixture of song, dance, laughter, tragedy, for the next three hours.

My elder brother Mushtaq said, “When we wanted to experience intense drama and tragedy it was Dilip, when powerful romance and social message were on our hearts we went to see Raj Kapoor, but when we wanted to be just us — young, romantic, experimental — then the magic of Dev Anand was overwhelming.” Ahmed Faqih observed, “Dev Anand was the paragon of the non-conformist young man always willing to defy convention to be different. He was the precursor of the angry young man, that later Amitabh Bachchan came to symbolise.” No doubt some of the most memorable songs for him were penned by the arch romantic rebel Sahir Ludhianvi. Waleed Mir informed us that Kalpana Kartik’s aunts and cousins lived on Hearne Road, in the Krishan Nagar locality, and that the family stayed on in Pakistan.

Dev Anand remained devoted to Lahore all his life. He was also an ardent supporter of India-Pakistan peace and reconciliation. Therefore, he was one of the most prominent passengers in the bus that brought Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Lahore. The scenes and moments he spent in Lahore are vividly described in his autobiography. About the visit to Government College, he says: “I was transported back to my years in Lahore. I saw my college mates and friends…I saw Hamidullah Khan Burki, standing out as the best hockey player in college…I saw Usha Chopra in the college corridor on the first floor, crossing me, books in hand, in a sari that shimmered with elegance, innocent as ever as I said a very shy hello to her, to which she blushed…But she wasn’t there. And yet, I could hear the sound of her high-heeled shoes resounding in the empty corridor” (page 368).

Many Ravians (students of Government College) and others turned up at the college, and someone started playing a song on his flute from his immortal ‘Taxi Driver’. They told him that Government College was as much his as theirs. He describes with great emotion his meeting with Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif who showered Punjabi hospitality on him and other Indian guests in a true Lahori manner. Both had studied at the same college, so that was a special bonding between them.

I was greatly impressed when Nawaz Sharif issued condolences upon learning about the demise of Dev Anand. He called him a personal friend and a dedicated champion of India-Pakistan friendship. That was truly a befitting compliment. I must say I was deeply disappointed that Imran Khan did not have the courtesy to express some sadness on this occasion. Considering that Bollywood actors and actresses went out of their way to help him with donations for his Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital, he should have made some statement on the departure of a Bollywood legend. I read somewhere that Dev Anand wanted Imran Khan to play the lead role in one of his films, so the two must have known each other in some way. I dread Imran Khan becoming a victim of opportunism and populism that has in the past ruined so many gifted Pakistanis who enter politics and forfeit their humanity.

The Lahore and Punjab connections of Bollywood are a theme on which I am going to write a number of articles in future. In one way, that series has already begun with this tribute to Dev Anand.

The writer is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University. He is also Honorary Senior Fellow of the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He can be reached at billumian@gmail.com