“Dev kaise ho,” Chetan Anand asked his younger brother over the telephone prior to the latter’s golden jubilee as an actor in 1995. “Tumhare awaz ko kya hua,” an anxious Dev Anand asked his elder brother hearing him speaking with a sore throat. A smiling Chetan Anand replied he had just caught a seasonal cold and confirmed he would attend his beloved brother’s birthday celebrations which coincided with his 50 years as an actor.
This is only one testimony of the affection both the Anand brothers shared. Though it is popularly known that they had separated due to creative differences and did not have good relations, the truth was exactly the opposite. After directing Dev Anand in four films – Afsar, Aandhiyan, Taxi Driver and Funtoosh – Chetan Anand himself understood that he and Dev Anand would not make an ideal combination. The kind of cinema the senior Anand was interested in creating did not exactly suit Dev Anand’s image and acting style. So he handed over the reins of Navketan to younger brother Vijay Anand who extracted the best out of Dev Anand as an actor.
Not that Chetan Anand was unable to get commendable work out of Dev Anand. He was out of work after directing the award winning classic Neecha Nagar as it flopped bitterly. So in 1949, Dev Anand along with his elder brother started their own production company Navketan. In their very first film Afsar, based on Nikolai Gogol’s Inspector General, Chetan Anand extracted commendable performances from the lead pair Dev Anand and Suraiya. He shot the climax song on the entire cast in one take – a feat unknown to directors of that era.
In their second film Aandhiyan, Chetan Anand introduced Ustad Ali Akbar Khan as a music director after working very successfully with S.D.Burman in Afsar. For the international film festival of Venice and Moscow, Chetan Anand wanted to edit the court scene to shorten the film’s length. Dev Anand strongly objected to this as he had put in his best performance of the film in the same scene. From here the conflict between the brothers started. Prior to this, Dev Anand literally worshipped his elder brother and after his separation from Suraiya, wept bitterly keeping his head on Chetan Anand’s shoulders.
Afsar was just average, Aandhiyan bit the dust. Yet Dev Anand never lost confidence in his brother’s abilities. The two bounced back in 1954 with Taxi Driver which had a beautiful script by Uma Anand (Chetan Anand’s wife) and Vijay Anand. Chetan Anand wrote the scenario of the film and directed it mainly tying a movie camera behind a taxi on the streets of Mumbai. Taxi Driver was a raging hit and established the Dev Anand-Kalpana Kartik pair as the first ever husband wife team of the Indian screen.
It was during the shooting of Funtoosh in 1956 that Chetan Anand started loosing interest in direction for Navketan and asked Vijay Anand to shoot the ‘Aye Mere Topi’ song sequence. He himself showed his brilliance in shooting the ‘Dene Wala Jab Bhi Deta’ song in which Dev Anand appeared in five different make ups. In no other film did Dev Anand display so much of abundance.
As an actor Chetan Anand followed the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts School and outclassed Dev Anand in both Humsafar and Kalabazar. In fact, so natural was Chetan Anand as an asthama patient in Humsafar that Dev Anand after one shot literally asked him, “Bhaiji, do you require a doctor?” Chetan Anand simply smiled and said, “No Dev.”
They did not work together for long yet never lost contact or admiration for each other. Bhaiji was always Dev Anand’s idol, a true hero. He never shied from confessing Chetan Anand was the most reflexive of all the three Anands. One still remembers Dev Anand weeping like a child after Chetan Anand’s sad demise in 1997. Though Dev Anand is also no more in this world, it is sure if he was alive on his 90th birthday, today he would have shed a tear in privacy crying, “Bhaiji.”
