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Among the many greats and legends of Bollywood, some names stand head and shoulders above the rest, and Dev Anand is one of them. The charming actor continues to be one of the most celebrated actors of Indian cinema and was part of some of the most iconic films of Bollywood. His nephew, director Shekhar Kapur, recently talked about how his off-screen persona was nothing short of inspiring and how the man dealt with the failure of the most ambitious project of his career.
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The Bandit Queen director made an appearance on Filmfare’s YouTube channel and shared how anyone around Dev could learn so much about life by just observing him. He said, “You learn from seeing someone like that deal with his life. I remember that Ishk Ishk Ishk had just been released, and he had put his own money into it. I went to the premiere because I had a small part in it. We came back to the Oberoi hotel, and I sat in his room while he was getting calls from everyone in the industry. Naturally people congratulated him and told him what a fantastic film he had made, but soon reality started setting in. Someone told him over the phone that people got up and left the theatres while his film was still playing.”
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Shekhar recalled how the film completely broke Anand financially, and yet the actor was unfazed and took the loss in his stride. “It was his most ambitious film ever, and he had put all of his money into it. Naturally, when the film didn’t do well, he lost it all. I saw how his facial expressions changed in those 15 minutes as he realised that his money was gone and his film had failed. He went to the bathroom, and he must have been gone for hardly 5 minutes when he came back out and said, ‘Shekhar! ‘Chal ek nayi film banate hai; abhi idea socha maine.’ (Let’s make a new film; I just thought of an idea). He just wiped all of it away, and I wanted to learn that skill from him, and you might have found that in some of my films,” said Shekhar.
Shekhar shared another small anecdote with the viewers about Anand’s carefree attitude and said, “I remember having breakfast with Dev uncle, and the producer was there too. He asked the producer if he had to sell anything to make his latest film, and the producer narrated a long list of items he had to let go of, including his wife’s jewellery and his home. Without skipping a beat, Dev’s uncle said, ‘Acha hai, aise hi banti hai filmein‘ (That’s good. This is how you make films.”
Directed by Dev Anand himself in 1974, the film had an all-star cast including Anand, Shabana Azmi, Zeenat Aman, Zarina Wahab, Jeevan, and Kabir Bedi. The music had been composed by RD Burman.
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