When Dev Anand wrote his autobiography Romancing with Life in 2011, the actor shared an almost unabridged version of his life that could appear exaggerated to a lay person. Dev was a man who fell in love at the drop of a hat, and even when he wasn’t in love, he enjoyed being loved. He wasn’t the kind who wouldn’t kiss and tell but in fact, he was the kind of man who loved to ponder about that what-ifs of an encounter, and wondered if that moment of feeling a certain kind of spark could change. the trajectory of his romantic life.
Many film journalists have written about Dev’s life over the years but who could better explain it than the man himself. Dev had the gift of the gab and he wasn’t shy of flirting with the opposite sex so when he met a woman at a local train in Mumbai (Bombay in those days), he knew that even if this wasn’t love for the ages, it was a spark that he wanted to explore, even after being told that she had a boyfriend. When Dev had his first sexual encounter of his life during a film shoot, he just gave in and when he later found out that the woman he was with was married to someone else, it didn’t really shock him. But what truly shook his world was when the first love of his life, Suraiya, left him heartbroken.
Dev Anand with wife Kalpana Kartik aka Mona Singha. (Photo: Express Archives)
Suraiya: The woman who left him heartbroken
Dev Anand and Suraiya fell in love on the set of Afsar and after that, there wasn’t a day when they didn’t see each other or talk on the phone. “I was in love,” he declared in his memoir and added, “This time it was as if two eligible beings, suited for each other, had got together, lighting a torch for young love, openly in the public eye, with the approval of their admiring fans.” Here were two film celebrities who were madly in love, and just as much as they loved each other, their fans did too. Dev visited her house in Marine Drive almost every day and this was now starting to become a “thorny issue” for those who thought of themselves as suitors of the actress. Problems arose when these so-called suitors started gossiping about the possible Hindu-Muslim union that could take place if Dev and Suraiya were not separated, and her family reacted strongly to this. “A Hindu marrying their Muslim daughter was sacrilegious,” he wrote. Dev felt that Suraiya’s grandmother was the biggest opponent of their love story and soon after, he wasn’t welcome at their house anymore. He was now an “unwanted visitor.”
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Dev Anand with Suraiya: Their love story faced strong opposition from her grandmother. (Photo: Express Archives)
While shooting for Afsar, Suraiya’s grandmother watched her like a hawk. In fact, to shoot a kissing scene where Dev’s character gave her character a slight peck on her eyes, the unit had to engage in a full song and dance but through it all Suraiya watched it all happen, but didn’t say a word. “Suraiya had no say in her own life; its sole arbiter was her granny,” Dev knew. He called her Nosey and she called him Steve lovingly and amid such policing by her family members, they met for the last time. It was during this meeting that he asked her to marry her but she could only respond with “I love you.” Dev bought a ring and sent it to her through a friend, she accepted it but was then given an ultimatum by her family members. In the end, she left him because the family pressure was overwhelming. “My heart sank and my whole world shattered. There was no meaning to existence without her,” he wrote.
Kalpana Kartik (Mona): The woman who became his anchor
Just as quickly as Dev had fallen in love with Suraiya, he was out of it. After Afsar’s release, he met Mona Singha for his next film Baazi. Mona was renamed Kalpana Kartik by Dev’s brother Chetan who was launching her in the film. On their first date, when they were just starting to become friends, the two ran around on the beach and splashed water at each other. As they played hide and seek, Dev started to fall in love. Before he knew it, he started seeing her everyday. He would wait for her under her building and honk to let her know that he had arrived. She waited for him with bated breath and lovingly accompanied him on those long drives. He knew Mona was a keeper as he wrote, “I started finding in Mona an anchor, which I so badly needed.”
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Dev Anand with Kalpana Kartik on the set of Taxi Driver. (Photo: Express Archives)
When Dev was in a near-fatal car crash with Geeta Bali, Mona rushed to be by his side and he knew that this was a relationship that could last through thick and thin. After they had been together for a while, Mona wanted him to commit and when she could sense that Dev was shirking away, she almost gave him an ultimatum. At that moment, Dev decided that he would marry her but there would be no frills to the affair. They would marry secretly and be together for the rest of their lives. They also decided not to tell anyone but their close confidantes about their union. “No fuss in our marriage. No music except that of the dancing on our hearts. No guests and no parties,” they decided.
This was an interfaith marriage as Mona was a Christian and Dev was a Hindu. But unlike his relationship with Suraiya, there were no objections here. Mona didn’t convert either as many years later, Dev declared in Simi Garewal’s talk shot that Mona was a devout Christian who spent her time with her religion. The wedding itself was like a scene out of a movie. “We registered a date for our marriage with the Registrar of Marriages. The notice hung on the wall of the court for two weeks. Exactly after two weeks, we were on the sets of Taxi Driver, and there was a small break in-between for the cameraman Ratra to light the shot. I looked at my watch and winked at Mona. She got the hint and walked out. I followed a few seconds later, into the art department’s room, where she was waiting. We walked across to the Registrar of Marriages. I took out the ring, put it around her finger. She hugged me shyly. Then we both signed the register and were husband and wife.”
Dev’s father did not approve him marrying a Christian girl. (Photo: Express Archives)
Religion did not matter to Dev but his father was hurt by his decision to marry a Christian woman. He didn’t even share the news of his marriage with his father who only found out when he was visiting. “You never told your father about your marriage,” his father said and expressed his shock by adding “With a Christian girl?” His father predicted that he would have clashes with Mona because they came from different faiths but for Dev, the clashes could happen with anyone for a variety of reasons. “We are two human beings—and a bond of love has similar values,” he declared to his father.
As much as Dev stood up for the woman he loved, he also loved to enjoy the attention he got from other women, and this was sometimes a subject of contention between him and Mona. A couple of weeks after his son Suniel’s birth, when he was traveling with Mona and his son to Czechoslovakia, Mona and him had a huge showdown as she objected to his flirtatious ways. She even went on to say that she didn’t trust him anymore. Dev had exchanged a few letters with a woman he had met during his travels but insisted that there was nothing between them. Mona, a new mother at the time, yelled and sobbed and wanted to come back, but he was scared that she would create a scene. In the later years of their marriage, Mona stepped away from the spotlight.
Zeenat Aman: The one-sided love
Dev continued to live the life of a movie star. It was all he wanted. He was so busy romancing himself that it almost felt like the women who became a part of his life were purely incidental. He shared flirtatious relationships with many of his actresses but when he would travel abroad he wouldn’t shy away from personifying his on-screen avatar of a stylish lover. Many years later, his relationship with Zeenat Aman, which he saw as something romantic, also became a significant chapter in his life. He had launched her with Hare Rama Hare Krishna and was clearly smitten. “Zeenat and I started being linked with each other in the magazines and newspapers that people hungry for gossip love to read. Whenever and wherever she was talked about glowingly, I loved it; and whenever and wherever I was discussed in the same vein, she was jubilant. In the subconscious, we had become emotionally attached to each other,” he wrote and declared that he loved her.
Zeenat Aman made her debut in Dev Anand’s Hare Rama Hare Krishna. (Photo: Zeenat Aman/Instagram)
In her case, Dev expected Zeenat to stay loyal to him and his company so when she wanted to explore a work opportunity with Raj Kapoor, Dev felt betrayed. “Time moved on. Suddenly, one day, I felt I was desperately in love with Zeenat—and wanted to say so to her” but life had other plans. Zeenat, by this time, had moved on in her professional endeavors but his heart was “bleeding.” Zeenat, however, termed this episode of her life as a “misunderstanding”. “I was livid. I felt humiliated, hurt and disconcerted that Dev saab, my much older mentor, a person I loved and admired platonically, would not only believe such a story devoid of a shred of truth, but would then go on to publish it for the world to read,” she shared on her social media thus putting an end to the rumored Dev-Zeenat relationship. The relationship might not have been mutual, or even real, but his admiration for her was undeniable.
Dev loved to love, and he loved love, but above all, he loved himself. He was never dependent on anyone else’s love for validation and understood pretty early on in his life that he was a romantic, and he never stopped being one.