Dev Anand in his autobiography romancing
with life unhesitatingly reveals his affairs. According to him, he was not a
skirt chaser in real life. It was the women who took the initiative and dev
simply responded. But it was his four-year-long (1948-51) affair with suraiya,
the singing sensation and superstar of the hindi/urdu cinema, that left an
indelible impact on him. The two wanted to tie the knot but became victims of
religious bigotry. While dev eventually overcame the trauma of a broken
relationship and moved on, suraiya decided not to get married.
Dev’s childhood and teens were spent in his
hometown gurdaspur, amritsar, dalhousie, dharamsala and lahore. After
completing graduation with honours in english from government college, lahore,
he decided to move to bombay to pursue a career in films. But in bombay, the
going was not so smooth for the first three years. His first break was a
prabhat studios production p.l. santoshi's hum ek hain, a film on hindu/muslim
ties. The film was being shot in pune. Since he was based in bombay, he often
travelled by train to reach pune. During one of the journeys at night, he had a
memorable encounter. He was alone in his compartment. At one station, an
attractive woman in her mid-thirties, along with a fair-skinned man, entered
the compartment. Both of them climbed the upper berth and became intimate. Soon
the man left but the woman stayed on. She then seduced dev. Dev anand had many
romantic associations, but his affair with suraiya was special.
Suraiya was petite, sensuous and a natural
singer. She was already a superstar when dev entered the industry. Suraiya
travelled in american sedans. Her entourage reflected a regal aura. It included
several servants and members of her family. Dev was fascinated by suraiya. He
would keep complimenting her. Later, the admiration grew mutual. Suraiya, too,
showered praises on dev. The two did seven films together — vidya (1948),jeet
(1949), shair (1949), afsar (1950), nili (1950), do sitare (1951) andsanam
(1951). Till their first three films no one suspected a romance between them.
However, after 1951, suraiya’s orthodox family members started dictating her
life. It was during the shooting of afsar that their romance became public and
the opposition to their relationship became much more intense.
According to music director s. Mohinder,
while he was composing the music for nili in 1949, he developed a good rapport
with both suraiya and dev anand since all of them were from lahore. While he
would be busy composing music, both dev anand and suraiya would come
unannounced to the studio. Mohinder could see love brimming in their eyes. They
would huddle together and often smiled mischievously. Their affair did a lot of
good to suraiya’s singing. Her vocal chords turned softer and her voice become
sweeter. While suraiya’s maternal uncle, also a friend of s. Mohinder, was
sympathetic towards the lovebirds, suraiya’s maternal grandmother was against
their relationship. Suraiya was so much hurt by her family’s uncalled for
interference and stubbornness that her acting and singing career started taking
a nosedive from 1951 onwards.
According to dev, their romance was at its
zenith when they were paired in lead role for afsar (1950). The music for this
film was composed by s.d. burman. The soulful "man-mor hua matwala, yeh
kisne jadoo dala, re yeh kisne jadoo dala" is among suraiya’s best. While
shooting for the movie, their affair became a hot topic for the bombay
tabloids. Suraiya’s grandmother, too, started opposing their affair openly. She
went to the extent of not allowing them to shoot even innocent love scenes like
kissing on the eyelashes etc. More than once she disrupted the shooting of a
love sequence. Suraiya’s mother was more reasonable, but she was snubbed every
time she tried to side with them. Whenever dev came to visit suraiya at her
apartment, he found his detractors already sitting in the drawing room. For
dev, this torture was becoming unbearable.
He tried to speak to suraiya several times,
but each time her grandmother picked up the phone and warned dev to stay away
from suraiya. She also threatened dev with filing a complaint against him. One
day, while suraiya’s grandmother was asleep, her mother answered dev’s phone
and assured a meeting between them. The time fixed was at 11.30 pm. At first
dev suspected it to be a trap. But he decided to go ahead. One of his friends
from punjab, tara singh (tara chand), a police officer in bombay, decided to
accompany him. Tara had a pistol in his pocket and a couple of torches. He gave
one torch to dev to flash towards him, if there was any trouble. The other
torch was with tara which was to be flashed back as a signal that help was on
its way. The meeting place was at the roof of the six-storey building, where
suraiya lived on the ground floor. When dev reached the meeting place at the
scheduled time he found suraiya standing behind the water tank. They embraced
each other and for several minutes kept crying. After about half an hour they
parted company to never meet each other again.
Dev anand narrated the entire episode to
tara. Later, he told this to his elder brother chetan anand on whose advice he decided
to part ways with suraiya and pursued his film career. But for suraiya, this
setback was the beginning of her downslide. Meanwhile, lata mangeshkar had
already emerged as a phenomenon in playback singing. Her shrill voice suited
every actress and she kept churning out song after song. According to s.
Mohinder, had suraiya-dev anand romance culminated into marriage, suraiya could
have survived as a first- grade singer actress longer. Dev anand too could have
benefited out of the relationship. After the break-up, suraiya did not act and
sing in too many movies. According to s. Mohinder, suraiya’s later masterpiece
performances were given in bilwa mangal, mirza ghalib, shama parwana and rustam
sohrab. She was offered many singing assignments which she declined.
Zeenat aman
Departing from suraiya,Dev was completely
shattered and wanted to end his life but was saved by his brother Chetan
Anand.He made him realize the importance of his career more than his
love.Further moving ahead towards his career,Dev found hot and sexy actress
ZEENAT AMAN.Influenced by her talent and beauty,he gave another chance to his
heart to beat for another lady.He was all set to propose her.One night,he asked
her to go out on a date with him,she agreed but insisted to go to a party the
same very night before going on a date and both went to the party.But in the
party,Zeenat's real face became visible to Dev.Actually,he saw actor -director
Raj Kapoor flirting with Zeenat in a drunken mood and embracing her greedly.But
the worst part of this incident was that Zeenat also responded to him in the
same fashion infront of Dev.This struck Dev a lot and he said good-bye to this
relation with a heavy heart.
Marriage with Kalpana Kartik
In one midnight in 1954,on the sets of film
'Taxi Driver',the cameraman was told to shut off the lights.Suddenly,the hero
of the film holding the hand of the heroine,took her to the art room and they
both exchanged their rings in the presence of marriage registrar and became
husband-wife forever.This incident was not a part of that film but a real life
story and the man who created this whole
unplanned scenario was evergreen actor Dev Anand and the lady was legend
actress Kalpana Kartik.Her real name is Mona Singh.They kept their marriage
secret for about a week and her parents came to know about it after 10-12
days.But they responded positively to their marriage.Afterwards,their marriage
faced a lot of ups and downs but both managed to live together
Other Affairs
Apart from two serious love affairs with two
reknowned actresses,Dev Anand had gone through many crushes on so many
ladies.His first ever crush of his life in his teen ages was on his history
professor's daughter whom he never dared to propose.Another was his almost
affair with a Czech interpreter which made her wife furious.There was also an
on-off relation with an Irish student at Cambridge while she was working as a
cleaner in his Swiss Hotel.He also shared a room with Marlon Brando's assistant
in France.The news of his long-standing affair with niece of a famous star was
also rumoured.Another was with Air India
Stewardess and many more like this.
Please Check out the affairs and biographies of other Bollywood actors also before leaving , and dont forget to share the page with with your friends who love Bollywood . And yeah please bookmark this page so that you can find this blog easily later ---- thanks .
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