AN EVERGREEN AFFAIR
Romancing With Life by Dev Anand
(Penguin/Viking )
He is 80-plus and still going strong. His creativity finds new outlets of expression and his biography, Romancing With Life, is yet another example of the evergreen hero’s youthful zest for life. Born Dharam Dev Anand – known to the world as Dev Anand – he is the man who has straddled the silver screen from the days of black and white movies to the age of Technicolour – the actor writes of moments known to countless fans and unknown to a new generation of readers.

Rumoured to be a ladies’ man (on screen and off it) Anand writes in an easy manner about the several women who crossed his path – from Usha and Florence in his early years to the mature women and personal friends of his later time…. Yet, in spite of the many characters that flit in and out of his book, the biography that hit the stands on his birthday, September 26, has cast him in the stellar role. For, as he had admitted, “The book is about me and only me” when he had launched it officially earlier.

Naturally, he has perhaps glossed over several details – that is to be expected in an autobiography of a public figure. He gives us his version of what happened. But the story of the boy who graduated in English literature from the Government College, Lahore (now in Pakistan) and whose love for acting made him leave his hometown for the centre of the Hindi film industry, Mumbai, makes for an interesting read. Little anecdotes pepper the story to bring it alive. Interestingly Anand began his career in the military censor office at Churchgate, Mumbai, for a salary of Rs 160. And today, hits and flops notwithstanding, after so many decades, his romance with life… and the silver screen continues.

FAMILY ALBUM
Mr and Mrs Dutt Memories Of Our Parents by Namrata Dutt Kumar and Priya Dutt
(Lustre Press/Roli Books)
Not knowing more than what the paparazzi had chronicled over the years about the golden couple of Hindi cinema, Nargis and Sunil Dutt – and honestly not having followed their real life experiences closely – I picked up their daughters’ tribute with a degree of anticipation. Mr and Mrs Dutt – Memories of Our Parents by Priya Dutt and Namrata Dutt Kumar did not fail to disappoint, even though it perhaps did not throw much new light on what is already known.

The journey is down the road of their personal lives in the voice of Namrata. So, if, as the writers say in the Foreword, ‘the reader is looking for an understanding of the films Mom and Dad were involved with, or an analysis of their politics, this isn’t the book to provide that view’. It is based instead on the reminiscences of the three children – letters and pages from carefully preserved childhood albums, countless old photographs that vividly paint the picture of loving parents. That is the strength of the work. So, even though some events are not thrust too obviously into the harsh glare of the public eye (like the Dutt Srs’ reaction to ‘Sanju baba’s’ repeated indiscretions) and are just emotionally narrated, the tome is a collector’s edition.

The glimpses into their universe, the umpteen photographs – of different occasions, moods and moments – the narration that traces the growth of the offspring and the bonds that tied them through thick and thin…all these deserve a closer look.