DEV ANAND WAS CLEAR ABOUT EVERYTHING IN LIFE, BUT WAS CONFUSED ABOUT DEATH

By - Ali Peter John.

In all the thirty five years of my fond and now everlasting relationship with Dev Anand, who was more than a father to me ( a rare honour) I had understood many things about his life, his moods and his reactions to certain situations in life. But try as much as I could, I failed to understand why he was confused about his attitude towards death. To a very large extent , he even showed his hate for the misery of death...

I had to go through all his films in which he was the hero to realise that he had died only in one film and that was "Guide" in which he dies after going through a long fast unto death for the rains to bliss the people in whose village he had landed as Raju, the scoundrel who was mistaken for a saint by the drought - stricken people and his conscience was aroused and he was forced to believe in the belief of the villagers that if he fasted, it would certainly rain .

And the climax of the film shows him dead while the rain pours outside. There was no other film in which he even suffered , was sick, was blind or handicapped. In many ways he did not like the feeling of death and misery and pain.

The one time he fell in his own bathroom, he called me out of all people and said that he had fallen and had injured himself and the doctor was coming and if the doctor said that he would have to be hospitalized or be bed ridden, he would commit suicide.

I went to see him at his home at Iris Park and by the time it was eleven, he was all dressed up as his dapper self and called me and said, " Ali, let's go, there is so much to do in life than to cry over an accident." To add to his own confidence, he took over the steering from his very personal driver, Prem, and drove his own car to his office. " Anand" on Pali Hill.

On another occasion, he was shooting a scene of a cricket match between the teams of Aamir Khan and Aditya Pancholi being played at the Brabourne stadium from the twenty sixth floor of the express towers which was the walking ground of Mr. Ramnath Goenka, the founder of the Indian Express and who had nevergiven permission to anyone to use his working space for any reason but had made an exception on the case of Dev Anand for whom he had great respect, even though he had never seen a film starring him or anyone else. His respect for Dev was strictly as a politically thinking person.

 

If you ask me, I think the scene in real life in which I saw Dev Anand literally running on the parapet of the twenty sixth floor to get his shot right was more daring than Edmund Hillary or Tenzin Norway climbing Mount Everest. I have my mind in the right place when I am saying this because one little slip from that parapet could be the end of the eternally excited Dev Anand, but he did not rest till he got all his scenes shot for the day. When I asked him whether he was not scared, he said," cowards die a million deaths and Dev was not born to be a coward in any way".

He did not like attending funerals and the only times I saw him at funerals was when his friend Raj Kapoor died, then when his heroine of seven films, Nutan died and then only when his two brothers, Chetan Anand and Vijay Anand died. He was totally lost when Vijay Anand who had given the name Goldie because of his golden locks when he was a young man and who had given him some of his best films. He told me that he would not cry at Goldie's funeral and kept being a stoic for two days, but on the day of the condolence meeting for Goldie .

He hated attending condolence meetings and prayer meetings for the dead as he believed that it was all "a show with no meaning whatsoever". He forgot his promise not to cry and when he started crying, it was like the bursting of a dam and he cried for the next two days. He said,he couldn't think of a life without Goldie, even though they had some major differences towards the last stages of their lives.

He made a very anguished face whenever someone in his staff died and frankly told his colleagues and the bereaved family that he would make all the arrangements for the funeral, but should be excused for not attending the funeral. He however was, I think the first industry employer who made all arrangements to take care of the family of the dead, especially if there was a widow and her little children.

He was very philosophical about growing old and being disabled.He believed that any man should not live if he is not capable of being active and was becoming a burden on the family and on society.

He once told me and repeated the same to Sime Gerewal on her show that death could not be the end and there was no heaven or hell and all that happened had to happen during a lifetime. And he once stumped me when asked me , " why do people always cry and be so pessimistic when someone dies. Why can't they be optimistic and imagine that there could be a better life waiting for them after there passing away from this life. Life is such a great gift then why should death which is a part of life be treated with so much of sadness and sorrow ?".

I believe this profound statement made by Dev Sahab to all those Gurus Acharayas, Popes, Mullahs and all the fake godmen, sadhvis and Sadhguru to answer this question of the eternal Dev.

He couldn't take the sufferings of his dear friend and those he used to admire, like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who he and his two contemporaries Raj Kapoor and Dilip kumar used to meet regularly or were sent for by the Prime Minister himself. He was also a great friend of V.K. Krishna Menon, the first Defence minister of India and had openly come out in support of him when he stood for the elections to the Lok sabha as a candidate from the North East Bombay constituency which he had won inspite of the Shiv Sena carrying out a massive and malevolent vilification campaign against him. But, Menon lost the election, the second time and that was the beginning of his fall from grace.

Dev Sahab once told me about how he had seen a very old and dishevelled looking man standing outside his gate. He said he had to go close to the man only to know that he was Krishna Menon. Dev gave him shelter for a few days after which he vanished and then came the shocking news of his death as a penniless and homeless man.

Dev had his own plans for the way he would have liked to die," like a bubble flowing down the river and then being lost". Dev was not in the best of the health ever since his son, Suneil had sold of his studio and his office for a staggering sum of money and had pushed him into a one room apartment with his best photographs, negatives and the best of books being thrown into a dark corner where the only photograph that stood out was the one as him in the last scene of " Guide " in which he speaks those enlightened lines, " Na Sukh hai,Na dukh hai, Na deen hai na duniya..."

He was taken to London by Suneil where they were living at Dev Sahab's favourite hotel, The Dorchester. Dev Sahab felt thirsty in the middle of the night and asked Suneil to get him a glass of water. According to Suneil,he had gone "down" to fetch him what was to be the last glass of water in his life and when he came back. " Dad was gone". He had gone just the way he wanted to.

There were no funeral rights or massive crowds lining the road for his funeral, there were just five people including Suneil and Subroto Roy, the infamous chief of Sahara at his funeral and he was buried in some unknown corner of London while millions of people in India kept waiting for his body to land in India. Where his body, soul and mind belonged and will always belong.