Waster Of Film

1. Shekhar Gupta wrote a very warm tribute to Dev Anand after the latter's death last month (I stumbled on the piece only last week). Gupta writes that Dev loved talking to him, listening to anecdotes from Gupta's story-ful career as a journalist. This is unique; we wouldn't normally associate such curiosity with a man of Bollywood. It shows that Dev was a better person than our average Bollywood star.

Once, Gupta writes, the star told him that he was a going to make a film with journalist as its hero. The hero, like Gupta, would be witness to many of the big events that roiled India post-1975: insurgencies in the North East, Bhindranwale, Indira Gandhi's assassination, rise of LTTE, etc, etc.

I asked him, cheekily, who will play me?

"For the younger phase, Shekhar, we will have to find somebody. Lekin thoda senior hone ke baad," he said, of course he would be playing that lead role himself.

As the sans serif blog points out,  Gupta was then 46,  Dev 80.

2. Gupta's anecdote  surely makes for a good laugh, and some warm feeling for the departed star. But what it actually should highlight is a pathetic side of Dev Anand the man. It was great that he was curious about things witnessed by one of the best  living journalists of India. It was also great that he dreamed of  using those grand situations as settings in a film. The pathetic part is that he refused to accept, to his last day on the planet earth, that 1. he was too old for too long to play even a man in his 50s  2. he was, from the start, a non-actor, and a talentless filmmaker..

One of the reasons I think very harshly of Dev Anand is Guide. It was based on R K Narayan's novel.  It, believe me, is Narayan's best work. I love Narayan for his plots, and Guide takes the cake. And I believe that any Narayan fan should hold a life-long grudge against Dev and Vijay Anand for what they created.  Guide the films has wonderful songs,  with both Lata and musician S D Buman at their respective bests. But what about the story that, in the novel, captured the essence of an eccentric country called India? What about essaying of Raju, Rosy, Marco? It was a tough challenge, and a far better lead actor, a better director were needed, not the divine music. Guide has a grand narrative, and Guide the film shows both Dev's virtue and his failing. Virtue: he recognised the ambition behind Narayan's book. Failing: he himself had the ambition to be an auteur, but no talent at all.

At least, Guide wasn't directed by Dev Anand. His brother could make a somewhat respectable film out of the book. In the later years, they fell out. Marathi columnist Shirish Kanekar has narrated this exchange somewhere: Dev was asked, as the films directed by him were all bombing spectacularly, why he didn't let Goldie direct the Navketan films. The reply: If Goldie directs, what would be there for me to do? This, Kanekar writes, was like saying what would Dev do if S D Burman was to compose the music.

Comparisons are odious, but when I think of Hollywood, I feel aggrieved: they have very old and very creative Woody Allen. Or Clint Eastwood, who left his western days far behind to become a respectable director. 

 We got Dev Anand. A very decent man by Bollywood standards, the people who know him say.