DEV LOVED, RESPECTED AND EVEN CRIED WITH AND FOR HIS FANS

I had the privilege of being asked by the Mangeshkar family to invite Amitabh Bachchan as a chief guest and to present Lata Mangeshkar with the prestigious Hridayesh Award named after her younger brother, Pandit Hridaynath Mangeshkar and Amitabh didn't even ask one question before he gladly agreed and only asked him to remind him about the function on the morning it was to happen. The day dawned, evening came and it was time for Amitabh to arrive at the Shanmukhananda Auditorium and I knew for sure that he would not come late even though he had to come all the way from film city, where he was shooting all day. I stood waiting for him at the entrance and he was there 10 minutes before 6:30 p.m. , the time fixed for the function to start. I was too excited even though I was receiving him add a function for the umpteenth time. I rushed towards him to welcome him, but before I could reach him, he made a sign asking me to stop as his security guards in black tried to surround me and he murmured,“take care Ali, they may harm you". It was the first time I got scared meeting Amitabh. I had many other occasions to face similar situations with stars, big and small, here and nowhere for whom having a wall of security guards had become a prestige issue and a way of life and everytime this happened, I don't know why I always remembered my all-time favourite human being who was a living legend and more, Dev Anand....

I had spent some of the best years of my life with him and in accompanying him to several places in and around India (he also wanted me to be with him during his various trips abroad, but I had my own reasons not to go with him, the main reason being that I never even applied for a passport after the Passport Office in Bombay created a ruckus about my name).

It was during my days with Dev (as he loved calling himself and loved others calling him the same, even though very few could call him Dev and everyone, even the young ended up calling him Dev Sahab, which became like his real name).

Dev Saheb had his own ways of treating his legions of fans. He never gave any reason to any of his fans to have a grouse against him. Even when he had his office in Khira Nagar in Santacruz, he had issued standing instructions to all his staff to see that no one who came to meet him as a fan was stopped and was allowed to walk up to his cabin which was at the other end of the floor on which all the navketan offices were. He made everyone feel comfortable in his presence and gave them all a patient hearing and let them leave with huge sighs of joy and relief, because they couldn't believe that it would be so easy to meet and talk to Dev Anand, one of the three major legends of Hindi cinema, Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor being the other two.

Soon, Dev Sahab shifted to ‘Anand', the bungalow on Pali Hill which was gifted to him by Mr Larsen of Larsen & Turbo before he left India. Dev Saheb had his own penthouse on the second floor of the bungalow, which he had personally designed and decorated. It was the same when it came to his fans. They could come right up to the gate and just tell the ordinary security guards that they wanted to see Dev Sahab and the security guards would call him and he would instantly say,“mat Roko, mat Roko unhe. Vah mere log Hain, unke Bina main kuchh bhi nahin hun". The fans would find it difficult to believe that the Dev Anand would invite them to meet him personally so soon and Dev Sahab continued to be the loving and caring human being he was more than the superstar and the legend he was. He often apologized to his fans for not being able to serve them any snacks,tea, coffee or cold drinks because he did not hide the fact from them that he never ate or drank anything, not even a glass of water when he was working at his penthouse or when he was shooting. All he could offer them was some dry chanas, which he kept popping into his mouth whenever he felt hungry and his most delicious meal of the day was an apple which he bit into once in a way.

He did not even stop the very sick and needy people who came from far away places in the hope and belief that they could be healed if he just give them a few minutes and just touched him. He kept telling his fans that he was not a miracle man or a magician and that he was just another ordinary human being like them, who was a little more lucky than them. On one occasion, I remember how four men had carried a young woman who was suffering from multiple ailments and was weighing 500 kilos. She was carried on a stretcher by the men, who claimed to be her sons and nephews. Dev Sahab was horrified when he saw the woman in the condition she was in and after a while I saw tears rolling down his cheeks. He couldn't take pain, suffering and death. They only funerals he attended were those of Raj Kapoor, Nutan who was his leading lady in seven major films and the funerals of his brothers, Chetan Anand and Vijay Anand, about whose death he said he would not cry, but once he started crying at the condolence meeting for his brother, Vijay, he never stopped crying for the next two days.

It was the 60th anniversary of his making his debut as an actor in Prabhat's “Ham Ek Hain", directed by P.L Santoshi, the father of Rajkumar Santoshi. He decided to observe the occasion in a very unique way. He knew he had first travelled to Poona to start shooting for the film in the then third class compartment of the the Deccan Queen which went to Poona. 60 years later, he decided to take the same Deccan Queen at the same time, 7:30 a.m. and took with him a whole lot of his friends and a selected number of the media. The entire train was decorated with flowers and Dev Sahab was sitting in the same kind of 3rd class compartment which was now elevated to be called a second class compartment. And was as excited or more than he must have been when he traveled to Poona 60 years ago. The train had to stop at almost every small and big stations because word had spread that Dev was on train. Hundreds of people gathered at all the stations and Dev Sahab who was 80 then, stood on the footboard off the train waived out to his fans, threw flowers at them and thanks them for all the love they had showered on him during all the years. The people were so ecstatic that they didn't let the train move, till Dev Sahab appealed to them to make way and they did very reluctantly. It was the same scene at every station where the train stopped or was forced to stop by his fans. The scene outside the Poona station made many believe that it was some kind of a public holiday in Poona. Dev Sahab spent the whole day travelling to all the places he had lived in and spent time in during the shooting of “Hum Ek Hain" and wherever he went, there were crowds following and he requested the police not to stop them or come close to him or let them touch him or shake his hand. His attitude towards his fans made the crowd go into a frenzy till the police decided to control the situation, but Dev Sahab called the police commissioner and asked him to see that his fans were not put into any kind of discomfort and that no harm would come to those thousands who were only showing their affection and love for him.

It was a memorable occasion which Dev Sahab could not easily forget...

I had travelled with Dev Sahab to other places like Goa, Coorg, where he had made the veteran General of the Army, K.M Cariappa, to Bhopal where we flew by a private aircraft arranged by the then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and his brother, all because Dev Sahab wanted to keep a promise he had made to one of his most crazy and dedicated fans who named himself ‘Raju guide'. We travelled to places like Lucknow, Kalyan near Bombay, Delhi when he went to receive the Dada Saheb Phalke award from president APJ Kalam and Chennai and it was a story like a believe it or not story to see major parts of the cities almost shutting down and the people working out into the streets to have a glimpse of of evergreen Dev Sahab.

In all the years that I knew him or rather he gave me the privilege to know him, never once did he ask for any security or any guards from any of the government agencies. He walked the streets through the thick of men, women and children trying their best to touch him, he sat in open restaurants without any security arrangements made for him. He never asked for security during any of his shooting and he once told me, “how can I get scared of the people who love me so much and who have literally made that boy from Gurdaspur the Dev Anand he is today? I will be insulting their love for me if I do anything to stop them from loving me and I know the day my fans stop loving me. I will be a nobody".

Dev Sahab had his own ways of captivating and capturing the hearts of his fans? Can you imagine actresses like Hema Malini, Raakhee and Tabu offering special prayers for him on his birthdays and the day his films were released? Can you imagine an actor like Naseeruddin Shah saying that the only star he was ever a fan of was Dev Anand and which he proved by doing 2 films for Dev Anand, “Swami Dada" and and “Sau Crore" without charging him a rupee and not even allowing his staff to charge Dev Sahab their usual fee? Can you imagine the entire Cine Artists Association trying to gang up against him and threatening to ban his recording studio all because of his raising his voice in favour of a gossip journalist called Troy Rebeiro as he believed in the freedom of expression. The CAA which had members like Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty and many others who used to once fall at his feet and ask him for work were now trying to grill him in the most insulting manner and all he had to do was to remind them when they climbed to his penthouse to cry and get them some work. That one admonishment of the so-called stars silenced them for good and the ban on Anand recording studios was recently lifted.

Towards the last years of his life, he was a little worried about how age had started telling in his face. And he made it a rule that he would not attend any public functions as he once told me, “ a star has to be a star at all times. If he doesn't look good and he cannot live up to the expectations of his fans, he has no right to be seen in public". It was this rule that he made for himself that made him turn down most invitations and some of his fans even misunderstood him, but he had another explanation for them and said, “if they are my true fans, they will understand me or they were never my true fans. Age has to catch up with Emperor, Kings and Popes then who is Dev?"

Dev never asked for security even in the most dire circumstances he was caught in. The government offered him security when he formed the national party. He turned it down. He was offered security even after the emergency was lifted because many felt that he could be a victim of vengeance by some political parties who were his vicious critics only because he had opposed Mrs Indira Gandhi and her Emergency, but he refused all kinds of security arrangements made for him.

The best part to illustrate what he believed about people in general was when a thief entered his bedroom at Iris Park and fled when Dev Sahib woke up. Every senior police officer in the City requested Dev Sahab to accept some security from the police, but Dev Sahab was Dev Sahab till the very end. He politely turned down all such arrangements and his classic statement was the one he made against the thief who entered his bedroom. He said, “he must be upset, he could have been angry about something I said, but I have never been angry with anyone and I will never be angry with people who I believe can never be angry with me."

The sad thing about the man who was undoubtedly one of the most loved men had to spend the last days of his life in a hole of a room into which he was pushed by his son, Suniel and the builders who had taken over his dream bungalow ‘Anand' from him after making very tall promises to him.

And the worst thing was when he had to fly to London for his fading health and died alone after a massive heart attack and for reasons which are still sinisterly mysterious, his body was kept in the morgue for more than 16 days and was finally cremated in a private cemetery and the man who was always surrounded by thousands and even lakhs of his fans had just 5 or 6 mourners when he was given the final farewell in a land far away from where lakhs and even millions of his fans were waiting for his body to be brought home to bid their last fond farewell to a man who was so close to the Dev above and who was a symbol of that Dev's anand which he was a symbol of and a messenger and a missionary who spread that almighty Dev's anand (joy).2 lakhs and millions of people who can never ever forget a messenger of peace and joy who did not need black commandos and scary-looking hounds to protect him, because he was always protected by the Dev above and the boundless love of billions of his fans all over the world. Am I lucky to be a part of this great man's life? I have been asking this question to myself every night after listening to some of his lilting and life-giving songs and I am extremely happy to know that I have still not found the answer.