PICTURE TALK
I met Dev Anand for the first time at a party in 1975, but it would take me seven years to sit down and talk to him.
I remember one evening we spoke at length about his film Swami Dada and his ambitious plans surrounding the film’s release. It was at the Oberoi, a five-star hotel, at a party hosted by Dev for the preview of a different film, whose name I do not recall.
But my real meeting with him took place in Bombay (now Mumbai) on the sets of Swami Dada.
Those days all the photographers working for The Indian Express, Screen, its film weekly, and other publications were on strike, and the newspapers were getting published from Ahmedabad. I was asked by the editor of Screen to take pictures of Dev’s Swami Dada shoot.
The pictures of that shoot were published as a double-page centerspread. The pictures really came out nice and were very different from the usual shoots done by staffers. The editor told me that Dev was very happy with the pictures and wanted to meet me.
I called up Dev one day on the number the editor had given me, which happened to be Dev’s personal number. After pleasantries and thankyous, he invited me to his office on my convenient day after checking with him in the morning of his availability in office. I went and met him in his office, had a long chat with him, basically he asking about me and my work and at the end asking me if I would be willing and available to accompany his unit for his other film out of Bombay or out of India for a location shoot.
The trip was fully paid so I agreed, and Dev felt quite happy promising me to inform me well in advance, the place and dates of the shoot when finalised. That never materialised as after a few days I had to return to Delhi for some reason and the shooting schedule of the said movie was still not decided.
But during my Bombay stay a little while after the Swami Dada episode, Dev invited me home for some exclusive pictures of him with his son Sunil whom he was going to launch in a film as a hero.
At Dev’s residence I saw a very old big car parked right in front of the entrance door to his bungalow with flat tyres. On asking him why an old big car with flat tyres was parked so prominently, Dev replied it was his first car and he had an emotional attachment with it albeit it was no more in use.
There was this great quality in Dev Anand. He was an eternal optimist, and not once did I see him depressed because a film didn’t work out. If a film didn’t perform well at the box office, he would immediately pick up the pieces and start working on his next. I have never seen a man who could wipe off his slate so easily. But Swami Dada changed Dev Anand.
It didn’t change Dev Anand’s eternal optimism, but it did change the way he looked at filmmaking.
The views expressed here are the author’s own and The News Porter bears no responsibility.
