The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Dev Anand’s romance of a lifetime

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Thursday, Oct 04, 2007
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Dev Anand’s romance of a lifetime

Special Correspondent

The dapper star proved to an admiring audience half his age why he rocks

– Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

First copy: Actor Dev Anand with members of the Kannada film industry at a function to release his autobiography in Bangalore on Wednesday.

Bangalore: Once a star, always a star. No one else, perhaps, epitomises this axiom better than the evergreen hero of Hindi cinema Dev Anand.

Dev Anand is now 84. But he strode into The Park on Wednesday in Bangalore to release his autobiography Romancing with Life with the same swagger his admirers have associated with him. He is a little more frail, but seems to have kept alive in him the same blithe Raju from the iconic 1965 Guide, his personal favourite.

“Excitement is what youth is all about,” said Dev Anand with an absolutely youthful flourish, and went on to treat his fans (including many big names from the Kannada film industry) with his experiences and the philosophy he has derived from them.

He was 20 when he came to Bombay from Lahore with nothing but dreams of stardom, he said. Those were years of hard struggle, but they were the years when he learnt what he did not back in his college as a literature student.

“I was rubbing shoulders with humanity, the greatest teacher,” he said.

There was no looking back once the hits start coming: “Baazi”, “Taxi Driver”, “CID”, “Jewel Thief” and many more.

“It’s been a long, long, long journey,” said Dev Anand. “I always believe in moving forward… If a film fails, it’s still a hit for me because it has come straight from my heart. You need a little madness, a little passion to create.”

His autobiography, he promised, is honest and truly himself.

“It’s all me. You will find me in the book,” he said. That includes his struggling years, his films, and of course those leading ladies, on and off screen. It’s a book completely candid and without any sense of shame, he tantalisingly said.

The spirit of his life and the book are contained in the wonderful Sahir Ludhianvi number from Guide, said Dev Anand: “Main zindagi ka saath nibhaata chala gaya…”

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