Dev Anand: A musical interview (Part 2)

Updated (links): 17 June 2022

Interviewing Dev Saab is not an easy task! Once part 1 of the interview was done, I was certain that part 2 would only take me a couple of hours. I hadn’t, of course, taken into account one thing – every time I tried asking him a question, he’d just belt out one of his intoxicatingly romantic numbers, and I would be umm… distracted.

Sach kehta hun bohut haseen ho – Jaali Note (1960)

It took a herculean effort in exercising my will power to continue our chat on a normal plane. That is why this part has taken so long to come to you…

Inspector (1956) – a thrilling family drama!

It was the lovely song – Dil chhed koi aisa nagma – on youtube, that put me on track of this film. Geeta Bali singing of heartbreak and Ashok Kumar looking guilty as charged of said heartbreak? I HAD to see the film! Fortunately for me, friend Shalini was able to send me this hard-to-find film. Experience has taught me not to have very high expectations when watching a film on the strength of one song and its star cast. So, I began with modest expectations and the first 20 min of the film did not look too promising. But just when I settled in to watch a family drama complete with predictably misplaced children and sad families, the film took a masala-noirish turn and soon developed into one of the most enjoyable films I’ve seen for a while!