DEV ANAND

DEV’S PENTHOUSE WAS MORE LIKE THE PALACE OF A KING ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD

BY ALI PETER JOHN

Now that the world has finally let him go, go up in flames making the flames as dynamic as he was and even making them holy……
My mind is still filled with hundreds of memories of the man who I know I will never see alive again but who will always be alive for me, I can only call him and he will be there for me, I know
I can write books on every meeting I have had with him and all that he had shared with me, some secrets which the world will never know because I will never let the world know
But if there is one thing I would like to share with the world, it is the description of his penthouse in a bungalow appropriately called “Anand”, Dev’s Pent House the house of endless enthusiasm, limitless joy and brimming with ideas which ran ahead of his time
The story goes that the bungalow was presented to him by Mr. Holmes Larsen of Larsen & Toubro; it was out of his admiration for the man with the unbelievable zest for life that the man had parted with his favorite bungalow and handed it over to his best friend…

The bungalow on Pali Hill coincidentally was just two bungalows away from a bungalow where some of the greatest minds of the early fifties met and planned out ideas for a better India, minds like his brother Chetan Anand, KA Abbas, Balraj Sahni, Zohra Sehgal and her writer –husband, Sahir Ludhianvi, Rajinder Singh Bedi and Dev was just a struggler waiting to catch the attention of one or all of those great minds…
It was exactly the kind of bungalow he had dreamt of having when he was just another dreamer with no work on hand, he ran around the entire bungalow and the garden and knew that this was the place for him to live out all his dreams….

Dev had become a major star and had a sprawling bungalow of his own, Iris Park in Juhu where he could live like a star but he wanted a place of his own where he could fly like a king who had the amazing wings to fly and reach out all over the world…..

He thought of having a Pent House of his own in the new bungalow now called “Anand” and he let his fancy fly free when he designed the Pent House which was going to be his house of creatively for more than eighteen hours a day when he was not shooting, come Sunday, any holiday, come any strike in Mumbai or any bomb blast in the city, he was there every day from two in the afternoon till past midnight when he mostly drove his own car with his son Suneil or his chauffeur Prem sitting by his side, he was still in action and went to bed only after it was past midnight and he had seen the last bulletin of BBC….
And what a Pent House it was, I have seen many places where people in power and in all their glory live in but I have still to see a Pent House like the one designed by Dev Sahab…..

How does one describe his Pent House which was beyond description? Where does one start and with what? Let me first tell you about the special “throne” on which he sat, it was nothing less than the throne of any king or emperor, it was in this chair that he sat and thought out all his ideas, it was in this chair where he sat and scribbled out all his dreams all the time, there were other “royal” chairs and sofas just placed randomly on which he made his guests, big and small sit while he talked to them, it was in this chair that he sat and met all the most important people who came looking for him like they came looking for a miracle……

There were huge racks stacked with some of the best and the most expensive books and magazines and maps and other kinds of books which he placed according to his own thinking, in these racks were thousands of negatives of photographs presented to him and what was magical about him was that he could point out exactly where he had placed a particular book or under which rack he had placed one of the thousands of his negatives or some note he had made once upon a time….
There was a table which looked as if it belonged to the time when civilization began and on that table too there were the best of the latest books mingled with the latest awards he had won, some fruits, specially apples and grams (chanaas) which were sometimes his only lunch which he popped into his mouth whenever he felt the need and when I once asked him what was so special about those “channas” (grams) he said “they are the secret of Dev’s energy” and winked his famous wink…
It was in this Pent House that I had most of my meetings with him for the last thirty years, it was here that he talked to me about what he was doing or what he was planning to do, never talking about the past and even if it was necessary he excused himself and went into his wash room from where he did not emerge till the thought about the past was wiped away from his face and mind…

It was this Pent House where he met politicians, presidents, kings, poets, musicians, painters and even the most common fans and strugglers, his security and reception had strict instructions not to stop any one and once he met the most ordinary man he neither forgot his face, his name or his voice…
This Pent House was also his battle ground where he fought his own inner battles before he could take decision on any subject, it was the only place where he could be free to be what he really was, the only place which gave him all that he wanted in life…….
And I sometimes wondered what he would do if he did not have this empire of his own and one morning my fear came true, a man who I had first sent to him for a job because he said he was dying to serve Dev Sahab broke the news to me about “Anand”, the best recording studio in Asia Dev had built and above all his Pent House coming down under the bull-dozer, “Anand” was sold for a whopping price for a multi-storey building to come up and the “king” was shifted to a “hole” of a room in some corner where I saw the “king” literally crumbling, he could not be the “king” he was in his Pent House, from afternoon to midnight he just sat in an ordinary chair before an ordinary table, he tried avoiding meeting people as far as he could, he acted like the Dev Anand who was the real Dev Anand when he was in his Pent House, he was growing weak and he talked to me about how he was feeling restless and stifled and even suffocated in that “hole” and he was waiting for the builders to give him possession of a floor which they had promised to build into an exact replica of his Pent House, I don’t know why I feel the beginning of the end for the endless Dev started soon after he had to leave his Pent House on the advice of some friends and fake admirers, one man specially who comes to my mind like a curse every time I think of a world without Dev, that man was the same man who used to hang around Vijay Anand and when he suddenly died switched over to Dev Anand and made the best of life because of his association with a great, simply great man like Dev who I believe was innocent of the wild and materialistic ways of the world…

And what I feared week after week took a very dangerous turn when on the eve of the release of “Charge Sheet” he had a large press conference in the morning but asked me to come an hour earlier because he wanted to spend some “quality time” with me, it was the suite at the Sun N Sand Hotel where he had lived for more than twenty years once, that morning I met a very different Dev Anand, I could feel the change when he embraced me and I could feel every rib in his body and I looked into his eyes and there was a certain deep sadness in them, but he tried being the same Dev, but he could not hide this new Dev from me, it was the first time he spoke about fear, the fear of not being able to go to his Pent House, the fear of not being able to work the way he wanted, the fear of not being able to fulfill all his dreams, it was painful to know this new Dev and yet when he came out to meet the massive crowd of the media he was full of optimism and talked about starting a new innings in a new Pent House which he said would be ready soon, but the builders were like any other builders, sharks, they kept delaying their promise made to him and he had to leave for London after the release of “Charge Sheet” he wanted to be alone, he was granted his wish and spent his times with the “Dev” above being very happy about what his Dev on earth had achieved and wanted him to come back home to Him to receive his applause, when last heard I came to know from reliable sources that the “Dev” above was planning to build a special Pent House in heaven where Dev would find eternal happiness as the king of happiness where there would be no problems, no worries, only anand, anand and more anand………