WOH DEV SAHAAB KAA OFFICE THA YAA MAHAL ?

Ever since I crushed my foot on a November morning, I have been forced to cut down on all my gallivanting and going around places and meeting people who luckily for me were always willing to welcome me -Ali Peter John

It was some kind of rule with me to spend every Tuesday with Dev Anand first in his bungalow and then driving with him in his blue Fiat (6105) to his pent house at Anand in Pali Hill.

It was only last week that I had the opportunity or rather the misfortune to pass through the Iris House bungalow of Dev Anand and I could feel my heart break.

There were no signs of any life around the house of the man whose name itself meant LIFE.

The old Impala car in which he drove when he was a big and young star had vanished. There was a rare kind of darkness even before the sun could set in the nearby sea.

I kept waiting to see someone I could have known and finally I saw Dev Sahab's right hand man coming out from a corner of the bungalow.

He must have been in his eighties, but he recognised me and I don't know why he started crying.

I asked him who was inside the bungalow and he said there was only meimsahab (Kalpana Karthik or Mona as Dev Sahab called her, who he said had become a holy woman who had turned into a complete Christian and was conducting religious sessions with some of her close friends.

I asked him where Suneil was and he looked disgusted and said, “itne ache baap ko Bhagwan ne itna nalayak beta kaise diya, maloom nahi?

"Suneil was out of the house and the country for more than a year and the police in different countries were looking out for him on a complaint made by his producer-partner Dean Bakshi as he had cheated him of a huge sum of money while making a film called “Vagator Mixer".

He had come to Mumbai only for two days some months ago and then vanished and had not been seen or heard of since then.

The old man had his last say when he said, “Dev Sahab the toh yahan janaat thi,aajkal yahan sirf jahanoom hai.

Main bhi thode din mein nikal jaaunga, phir na jaane woh naalayak beta iss shandaar bangle ko kiske haath bech dega".

I walked away from the bungalow and realised that my heart was not beating in the regular way.

My heart always beat abnormally whenever I think about Dev Sahab or anything to do with him.

Fifty years ago, there was only one bungalow in this area with the army cantonment as the only other known place.

Dev Anand who had come from Gurdaspur in Punjab with a degree in English Literature had come to Bombay like many other young men like him. He too wanted to be an actor and succeeded before many others could even start.
A stage came when there were only three legends in the industry, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand was so much in demand that he could have signed all the films that came his way and make lakhs of rupees those days, but he made it a rule to work in only five films in a year and who years later said, 'if I had signed all the films that came to me, I could have bought atleast half of Bombay'.

The other two legends built their own bungalows, Dilip Kumar on Pali Hill and Raj Kapoor in Deonar, Chembur where he also built RK Studios(now gone to the Godrejs).

Dev Anand had always wanted to be away from the crowd and so selected a spot in Juhu which was only known for its beach and the local people who were known as East Indians and were mostly Roman Catholics. Dev Anand built his bungalow like one of the bungalows in some holiday resort and lived with his actress-wife Kalpana Kartik and their two children, Suneil and Devina.

He was at peace for several years till some sharks saw in Juhu the ideal place to come up with bungalows, hotels and soon Juhu was one of the many crowded localities and Dev's bungalow stood in a corner with an identity of its own.

He was shocked when buildings came up all around his house and there were several smaller stars who took the cue from Dev Anand and built their own homes, well-known names like Manoj Kumar Dharmendra, Dara Singh, Jeetendra, Dimple Kapadia, Danny Dangzonpa and Amitabh Bachchan who has four bungalows in Juhu now.

These are besides the any number of filmmakers, writers and composers who either built their own homes or lived in posh apartments that came up all over and ruined the beauty of Juhu.

Other bungalows came up like the bungalow of Ajay Devgn opposite the bungalow of Dharmendra and there were three multiplexes which came up and so did several malls and department stores.

The traffic had grown beyond control and Dev Anand was feeling sick living in the bungalow he had built with so much love and care in which he had a library, a dining hall, a place for visitors who had to wait and a huge ground behind the bungalow where he use to have his grand parties once and used it for his regular morning walks.

Now, he had neighbours like Madhuri Dixit and Dimple Kapadia living in apartments which were also known as Iris Park which was once the exclusive address of Dev Anand.

Dev Anand who was not facing the best of financial times as a filmmaker sold his office-cum recording studio, 'Anand' on Pali Hill on the advice of his son, Suneil and his health deteriorated as soon as his office and studio made way for a multi-storeyed building which looked ugly when compared to the bungalow in which he had his pent house where he did most of his planning, thinking and writing (he wrote every page of his autobiography in his own handwriting in the same pent house).

He however was never the same Dev after he lost his pent house and was literally pushed into a one-room apartment in a building called ‘Riddhi' where he sat alone after three pm and looked forty years older and it was a painful experience meeting a man who was a special creation of the Dev (God) above and was always so full of life.

He celebrated his eighty-sixth birthday at the same Sun n Sand hotel where he lived in a suite (number 339), but he was not the enthusiast Dev was and even as people were coming together for the party he was to have, he sent for me and I was with him for almost an hour when he kept repeating, “maza nahi aa raha Ali, bilkul maza nahi aa raha hai.

How can a free bird like Dev live in a cage and be controlled by other people (he meant his son, Suniel, who was now taking all the major decisions for Navketan, his sixty year old company and some managers he had appointed).

"I cannot forget that one minute when he just held me close to him and I could see tears flowing down his eyes and he said, “Ali, I want to tell you something that I have not told you before.

You are more than my son and I have always taken you as my son."Our meeting ended on a very solemn and sad note, but once he came down to the lawns and the swimming pool, he was back to being the Dev Anand he always was.

A few days later, his son Suniel and Dev flew to London without letting anyone know the reason. They were living in Dev's favourite hotel in London, The Dorchester.

One night he asked Suniel for a glass of water (in all my years that I knew him, I had never seen him drinking water or eating a proper meal during any time of the day).

Suniel says he went up (?) to get him the water and that when he came back with a water, Dev had gone away forever, just the way he wanted to go when his time was up, as he had written in his autobiography.

My fascination, love and absolute worship for this Dev on earth makes me go mad when I think about him and write above him and I have never needed any excuse to remember him or write about him.

Believe it or not, another legend like Manoj Kumar who knows about my love for 'Dev Sahab' sent me a video of some of the best songs of Dev Sahab which I have made it a rule to listen to at least five of his songs before I finally go to sleep.

But why am I writing about dev Sahab now? it is out of sheer agony that I am forced to write this piece for at least some sensible people to listen to and seriously do something about.

right opposite dev Sahab's bungalow where his wife the eighty-six years old Kalpana Kartik lives all alone is the open JVPD ground where grand wedding receptions and political and cultural events are held and attended by so called civilised and educated people.

They are civilised till they have to urinate and the ground and the committee that runs the everyday working have not had the sense to think of having facilities for this very important function of every human being.

and so the civilised people use the space opposite Dev Sahab's bungalow as an open urinal at a time when we have the first ever prime minister who has made urinating or defecation almost a crime.

but who cares! he is busy being in his election mode again and others are too busy doing their own meaningful and mostly meaningless things and who had the time to cast a look on the open insult being done to one of the greatest legends of Indian cinema and one of the greatest Indians.

Will the Bombay municipal cooperation or any other power do something about this crime which has now also to be faced by Madhuri, Dimple, so many other families and above all the soldiers of our army who protect us against any enemy but find themselves helpless and hopeless before these enemies who spread dirt all over the place in spite of a notice being put up to keep away these urinating criminals to commit their crimes in the open and without any shame or respect for not only the memory of Dev Anand, but all human being.

What is the Prime Minister Swachhata Abhiyaan doing about this shame?