Opinion Dev Anand and Bombay — a love affair for the ages

After the initial euphoria ebbed a bit, Anand began scouting for work and shifted to a room in a chawl, opposite King Edward Memorial Hospital, in Parel. Despite being the son of an advocate and a graduate from one of the most prestigious colleges of Lahore Anand had no qualms about living in such conditions.

Like many a struggler who came to the city to make a career, Anand, too, was ready to rough it out. “It didn’t bother me that I was living in a chawl because I was always very excited and full of dreams,” he explained. There were days when he would be penniless, even having to sell his precious collection of stamps to a man on the pavement of Hornby Road, but he continued undaunted.

Exploring the city, travelling in buses and trams, the young Anand imbibed the never-say-die spirit of the city and continued to dream. But he was also practical. As a stop-gap measure, he took up a job in the Military Censor’s office. Now, he could afford to go beyond mere window-shopping in the stylish Fort area and treat himself to an occasional cup of coffee at the popular Parisian Dairy. It was at the latter that he heard of a break in Prabhat Studios, Poona. The confident youngster applied and was signed on for a three-year contract as an actor. There was no looking back thereafter.

When Anand relocated to Bombay, he stayed at 41, Pali Hill, with his brother, who had by then shifted to Bombay. This time, the actor took in the sights and sounds of his favourite city with his friend from Poona, Guru Dutt, an aspiring director.

Continuing to travel in Bombay’s famed BEST buses and local trains, Anand watched Hollywood films with his friend in swanky theatres. “Guru and I would roam around, watch a film, dissect it over a cup of coffee and return home, elated. Sometimes, we’d walk to the Golf Links of Pali Hill. It was beautiful and serene… I have walked the streets of Bombay, travelled its length and breadth. It is in my bones. The city grows on you. No matter where you are, in whichever part of the world, you eventually want to come back here,” exulted the actor, his eyes sparkling with memories of a different time.

There is an interesting story about how he became a star in the city of his dreams. “One day, I was at a local train station, about to board a train, when someone called out to me from within. I jumped in to find it was director Shaheed Latif and his writer-wife Ismat Chugtai. Latif asked me if I would like to work in his next film for Bombay Talkies. Of course, I would!” recounted the actor, when I was working on his biography. Fortuitous encounters like these in a modest local train could happen only in a city that was proud of its working-class culture which the actor admired and
identified with.

The next day, full of beans, Anand took a train to Malad, a distant suburb, and then a tonga to Bombay Talkies, where he signed Ziddi (1948). After a few more hits, Anand built a home for himself on a plot of land, on the outskirts of Juhu, where he continued to live till the end.
Through this meteoric rise, Anand’s love for Bombay grew stronger and it began to get reflected in his films. In Taxi Driver (1954), the city was even given a mention in the credits. Playing the titular character, as Anand cruises down Marine Drive, past the stately Art Déco buildings, or down the seafront near Gateway of India, past elegant bungalows and the grand Taj Mahal hotel, or along the sweep of Worli sea-face and then on to the palm-fringed Juhu beach, you see a glorious city, beautifully captured on film, in black and white, by the talented V Ratra.

“There is no place like Bombay anywhere in the country!” exclaimed the actor. “The best thing about it is that it doesn’t have a small-town mentality, being totally cosmopolitan. It was a beautiful city once, where people came to earn a living.”

But Anand’s understanding of the city was not just a rose-tinted one, aware as he was of its dark underbelly that got depicted in films like Kala Bazar (1960), written and directed by his younger brother Vijay Anand.

Over the years, as politicians and short-sighted administrators made a mess of running the city, it broke the actor’s heart to see it rapidly deteriorate. “Every few years a new lot of people come to power to introduce narrow-minded measures, do irreparable damage and disappear. It is depressing to watch the character of the city being changed like this,” he told me in an interview in 1987.

For those, like Anand, disheartened by the changing character of the city, his black and white films might be a good way to rewind to the city’s pristine past, when Bombay was what Anand described as “an international city, a clean city, a sophisticated city, unpolluted by parochial sentiments”.

Chowdhury is the author of Dev Anand: Dashing, Debonair (2004)