Dev Anand's Demise

On the 4th of December2011, early in the morning, Dev Anand left this world. The death did not take place in India but in London. The news spread like wild fire. I do not know about people of the present generation but for those of an earlier generation Dev saab was indestructible and a perpetual mascot  of agelessness with whose screen role every man, young or old, liked to identify himself  and every woman, again young or old, loved to romance with.. A columnist described  beautifully how every woman in the audience imagined  that Dev, while expressing his love for the heroine on the screen ,seemed to  love her also.I believe that having such incredible charm is a decisive proof that God created the person as someone special. And Dev Saab was indeed someone special. Otherwise, how would you explain a petty clerk working in an army office rising to be the heart throb of the millions, not only for  a year or two but perhaps for decades! Of the troika of that age, viz. Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and DevAnand, the first two, perhaps,  were rated as better actors. But the actor whose entry on the screen raced the heartbeat of the spectators was Dev Anand. For many he represented the ne plus ultra of the male beauty which was not only physical but ehereal too.
Yes, this was that ethereal quality of his persona that made him a legend. I suspect that reason for Dev Anand becoming what he became was that his love for his heroines was not just screen love. It was genuine.He really fell in love with his female co-stars, although for obvious reasons he could not admit that publically.I do not think most of his heroines reciprocated the same way. His failure to get married to Surraiya is too well known but he  was more than  disappointed when Zeenat Aman bolted into Raj Kapoor's camp for getting a role in Satyam Shivam Sundaram..However, he never stopped in his tracks. It was not in his nature to wallow in his failures and disappointments. Therefore,he would launch another movie with another heroine, newer and younger, not bothering about the fate of the previous ones.Although everybody says today that he was an evergreen personalty the fact remains that , after the Eighties he failed to read the changing tastes and thus can be said to have failed to keep pace with the time. Otherwise,  flop after flop would not come out from the Navketan. But it is a fact that he had what  for want of  a better expression can be called 'star power'. Jug Suraiya, the Times of India columnist describes how Dev Anand transformed a hostile atmosphere in Nepal  when Hare Rama Hare Krishna was being shot at Kasht mandap into a friendly one just by holding a press conference at which every person in the audience felt that he was in fact a participant instead of being a mere spectator  or a passive listener. .
Dev Anand's life tells us once again, if there is a need to tell that Time is bigger than even the biggest in this world.Of course, there would not be another Dev Anand.