No, My Dev Sahab Can Never Die

My dear Dev Sahab, I am sorry if I have disturbed you in your heaven which you must have created because you didn’t believe in the heaven created by the other Dev, I have woken up to one more Dev which is Dev Day for me every day- Ali Peter John

And the first thing I have seen on my mobile (the instrument you had a dislike for as you said that it was an obstruction to any kind of personal contacts) are some of your most memorable songs (wasn’t every song with you in it a memorable song ?) and I am transported into the land which was Dev Land, the land where love was the only law of life, a land where there was only one Dev and his name was Dev Anand.

God bless all those who believe and think that you have died, but how can me and millions like me who have experienced you ever believe that you are dead?

No , it is some years since the word spread the rumour that you are dead somewhere in London.

But I refused to believe the rumour then and I still refuse to believe that you had died in your favourite hotel and those who were with you too couldn’t believe that you had died and waited to cremate you for more than two weeks.

In their hearts they couldn’t believe that they were cremating you, but poor minds, they had to follow the rituals of the world.

But if they felt that they had bid farewell to you, what a mistake they were making , if they believed that it was all over with you and Dev Anand had become the past or some pages in history.

they were sadly mistaken, they didn’t know the truth about Dev Anand, they didn’t know that Dev Sahab would come to life in a more positive way than many others holy saints have risen to life or their followers have claimed.

You are present in everything that has life in it , you are present in every one who loves and lives in love, you are present in the “anand”( Joy) of life.

The kind of anand of which you were the Dev, the prophet and the messiah, you are present in the difference between what is good and what is not good.

You are present whenever love triumphs over hatred, you are present when wild politicians take the country and its people for a ride,

You are more present than all the gods who are called Devs, there was only and will be only one Dev.

How many times should I repeat this claim I hold dear to my heart? I will cling to this believe about you till my existence on this earth is the wish of you more than any other Dev.

As I am writing this letter to you ( they don’t write letters anymore, they sent messages or emails these days and I remember how you never got any of you letters typed by Mrs Farnandes.

But wrote every letter in your own hand, like you wrote on your scripts and your autobiography, “Romancing with life”).

I can hear your songs being played by the younger generation and deriving great pleasure out of them.

I am sure this generation and many other generations will be listening to your songs with the same pleasure and even as food for thought.

And if I can see you present in India today, I shudder to think of what you would have said and done when you saw how some of the most illiterate and ignorant leaders are leading this your great country to nowhere.

I have many other things to say to you, my dear Dev Sahab, but all that for another time, because I know wherever you are and in whichever heaven you must be in.

You must not be sitting idle and I can visualize you leading a group or a country in your heaven to fight for the rights of the most common people.