Late in those evenings, when the studious students were busy with their books, we, unlike the diligent lot, used to sit in the sand pit that was adjacent to the road leading to the hostels … and to the left of the basketball court … watching the avenue trees all around the playground swaying in the breeze … occasionally staring at the sky and counting the stars … often talking, of course, not about the next day’s slip test, but more about trivia … such as about Cecil B Demille … his films, or about filming of Ben-Hur and the specially designed MGM cameras for filming the race … spraying dust from above the sets to impart reality to the shot … suddenly hooked by the melody ... we would stop talking and instantly stay glued to Radio Ceylon … attentively listening to the wooing lyrics brought by the evening breeze from the distant speakers located in the pavilion located at the opposite corner... behind the chemistry lab—Jeevan ke safar mei rahi / miltey hei bichhad janey ko / Aur de jatey hei yaadein / tanhai mei tadpaney ko (In life’s journey, you meet companions only to part, who leave behind memories that haunt you in your solitude)—unconsciously visualizing Dev Anand … wondering … so many of us … coming together from different places … different backgrounds … to stay in the campus … in the hostels together for four years … once final-year exams are over, our ways will part … may be never to meet again … what will remain is, of course, yaadein … sweet yaadein.
How true! That’s what sprang to my mind when my wife, while watching TV on Sunday morning, shouted …. “Ayyo! Devanad chanipoyadu”(Oh God! Dev Anand is dead) …
I rushed to the TV and stared in astonishment at the scroll … “Dev Anand died of massive cardiac arrest in a London hotel”…. Undefined silence encircled us … It’s only a couple of months back all the channels beamed his interview … watched him so passionately, marveling at his exuberance … his zest for life … and now so suddenly… but lucky guy! Lived as he wanted … as eternal romantic … keeping his dating with acting and producing movies till his last breath and in gay abandon gone … gone on a dating with death….
Dev Anand is no more with us. But his yaadein will remain with us forever … whenever we think of him … his yaadein … his movies—Taxi Driver, Paying Guest, Kalapani, Kalabazar, Novdo Gyara, Guide, Jewel Thief, Prem Pujari … his mannerisms, his haircut, his wonderful wardrobe—flowing scarf/muffler around the neck, striped shirts with stiff collars, jacket, pants exhibiting the socks that would sure look absurd on any other body … his romancing with beautiful heroines … roaming around girls in his careening gait with an odd drawl in his rapid fire delivery of dialogue … his unique way of nodding his head … twitched lips … singing and swaying all around the heroine in his own inimitable style … passionately romancing with eyes … Aankho hi aankhon mei ishara ho gaya … all these sweet yaadein … like a cinema reel in our mind … pushing us into the past … the past in which we all romanced in youth alongside Dev Anand and his songs …
Can we ever forget Dev Anand who sang to us Hum bekhudi mei tum ko pukarey chaley gaye…. those pathos still haunt us … even today whenever the song is heard, we get to wonder how, of all the heroes … how Dev Anand, putting aside his signature bubbling energy, crib like that subjecting every spectator … his fans … to bekhudi …
Or, when the beseeching and contrite Madhubala gives up in Kalapani and seeks pardon … Achha ji main hari chalo maan jaao na … the hurt lover in Dev teasingly expresses his masti thus … dekhi sab ki yaari mera dil jalaao na … no amount of her wooing … dekho dil na todo could lure him … so goes on he … chhodo haath chhodo …
Or, putting on the military uniform… walking in the jungle, half skip and jumping from one stone to the other … puffing cigarettes … and intermittently romancing with two heroines in Hum Dono … Sadhana and Nanda pleadingly … with such ease and concern, concern for the yaar to whom gave a promise … yet with guilt at heart.. all in shades of grey … his urbanity never failing him in cooeeing … Abhi na jao chhodkar / ke dil abhi bhara nahi (Do not leave me now, the heart remains unsatiated) …
Or when Dev Anand, with blazer on the shoulders … serially nodding his head …winking his sparkling eyes … steps down the Qutub Minar, caressingly hiding Nutan’s charming face from others’ stares, who could refrain from joining him to hum … Dil ka bhanwar kare pukar / Pyar ka rag suno... or, who could forget the scene where he, stylishly leaving the Lambretta on the road and with tweaked legs, walks on Shimla roads … calling for Nutan … Tu Kahaan, Ye Bata, Is Nasheelee Raat Mein , Maane Na Mera Dil Deewaana, Haay Re, Maane Na Mera Dil Deewaana … throwing the hat into air—another hallmark of Dev, to vent out his depression or to let his elation known—and running after it to catch …
How could anyone forget his running in wilderness on the moon-lit hills … ...
all his limbs … why the whole body … swinging in its own harmonic disharmony … ...
but in sync with spectators’ expectations … ..... throwing his hat all around in
gay abandon and singing liltingly … O ho ho ho, khoya khoya chaand, khula aasmaan
/ Aankhon mein saari raat jaayegi / Tumko bhi kaise neend aayegi … or... ...
his sitting in the lower berth of the Ooty-bound train and questioning Waheeda .....
teasingly ...Uparwala jaan ke bhi anjan hai, to the accompanying hissing
and whistling of the steam engine amidst the night's silence ......
When Kishore pours out his heart longingly in Gaata rahe mera dil and Dev Anand lip-syncs, while Waheeda crawls behind him leaning on his shoulder, every spectator lived the rapacious … youthful … romantic moment for himself or herself … along with Dev Anand … and when he cried … Kya se kya ho gaya tere pyar me, every spectator’s quivering heart rocked in his/her throat … who knows if the weak-hearted sobbed too …
All these yaadein … fill the heart with pleasure … but when you realize that the hero is no more around you … when droves of his memories hover around you … envelopes you in merciless darkness … pleasure gets seasoned with pain … Din dhal jaaye but raat na jaye….
And that’s, of course, life … and we must learn to live it out like Dev Anand … Mei zindagika saath nibhata chala gaya, Jo mil gaya usi ko mukaddar samajh liya / Jo kho gaya mei usko bhulata chala gaya (Whatever I got, I embraced as my destiny / what was lost was erased from memory) … difficult to erase? … of course … that’s life and the beauty of its bekhudi!
GRK Murty
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