Dev Anand’s tryst as a doctor
Dev Anand’s 100th birth anniversary has aroused much nostalgia about him and his work. Everyone of a certain vintage identifies with some of his films and his inimitable facial expressions allegedly inspired by Gregory Peck.
For many of us, Dev Anand is a part of old memories of younger days. The impact of films on our lives has been huge. We often locate events in our childhood and younger days to movies, scenes dialogues and songs from films
Sanjay Nagral
Sept 25, 2023, Hindustan Times
I was a kid when I watched Hare Rama Hare Krishna. But the image of Zeenat Aman passing a joint around to a group of hippies while swaying to Dum Maro Dum, is somehow etched in my mind. It could be the novelty of the scene at that age or the sheer rhythm of the song. Or even the chutzpah of Zeenat Aman and the lyrics ‘Hum Sab Ki Parwa Kare Kyon?’ - rare for those times. Incidentally, Dev Anand, her brother in the movie, watching his sister anxiously from the shadows sings ‘Dekho oh deewano tum ye kaam na karo, Ram ka naam badnaam na karo’. One can’t but help think whether more unintended prophetic words were ever sung in our films.
Dev Anand’s 100th birth anniversary has aroused much nostalgia about him and his work. Everyone of a certain vintage identifies with some of his films and his inimitable facial expressions allegedly inspired by Gregory Peck.
Dev Anand’s 100th birth anniversary has aroused much nostalgia about him and his work. Everyone of a certain vintage identifies with some of his films and his inimitable facial expressions allegedly inspired by Gregory Peck.
I can’t say I am a Dev Anand fan. But for anyone growing up in the 80’s, his swagger, style and ability to defy ageing was folklore. On a lazy Sunday morning, as I leaf through newspapers, Dev Anand is all over. His 100th birth anniversary has aroused much nostalgia about him and his work. Everyone of a certain vintage identifies with some of his films and his inimitable facial expressions allegedly inspired by Gregory Peck. Who can forget the slightly angled stance, the closed neck shirts and the slight movement of the neck?
Much after it was released, one of Dev Anand’s films struck a personal chord. Nothing to do with Dev Anand. In the same year as Hare Rama Har Krishna, Tere Mere Sapne was also released. Some may remember it for its songs like Hey Maine Kasam Li, where he rides double seat on a bicycle with Mumtaz. I saw the movie on YouTube years later. I arrived at it from a circuitous route. The film is an adaptation of a 1937 novel by British doctor writer AJ Cronin called Citadel, which I read in medical college. And since then, I have recommended it to several medical students and trainees. Have even reread parts of it. I doubt whether anyone reads Cronin now. Certainly not medical students. But it’s a story that anyone practising medicine in India can identify with. Even ordinary citizens who access healthcare can find echoes of their own experiences.
The Citadel is based on a doctor’s career in the UK in the 1930s and is a mirror to the issues facing British healthcare of that time. The central character Dr Andrew Manson’s story is based on Cronin’s own life. The story begins with his arriving in a Welsh mining town as a new graduate from medical school. He works among coal mine workers. In addition to caring for patients, he also researches into diseases of the lung, specifically its correlation with mining. However, he soon antagonises local interests and moves to London. Here he encounters what he calls fashionable doctors, who specialise in conditions which cost a lot of money to treat and knows are treated with inflated bills and dubious treatments. The book is critical of the then for-profit system of doctors’ practices. The events in Manson’s career as a doctor highlight the trials, tribulations and contradictions of working in the medicine market. Cronin was a close friend of Aneurin Bevan the Labor Health Minister. It seems the novel and the public response to it spurred Bevan to conceptualise the National Health Service which till today is a nationalised tax funded free-at-point-of-care model of healthcare.
There are three film adaptations of the novel in Indian languages - Tere Mere Sapne, Jiban Saikate in Bengali and Madura Swapnam in Telugu. In Tere Mere Sapne, Dr Anand Kumar played by Dev Anand moves to a small village after his medical degree. He treats the poor especially coal mine workers. But soon, a local moneybag starts harassing him. And he finds it hard to make two ends meet. He decides to relocate to Bombay. He struggles for a few years since he sticks to his principles. But soon realises that he needs a change in his approach. Anand soon establishes himself as a leading doctor, is honoured for his thesis and gets to be the personal doctor of a leading Bollywood actress. He is a changed individual, who has no time for friends, family or poor patients. His focus becomes money and fame. The film ends Bollywood style with Anand realising his mistake and saving Mumtaz’s life by giving her his own blood for childbirth. Bollywood offers a personal solution to a political problem.
It is said that films don’t change society. But maybe they can provide the reassurance of narratives which reflect our existential dilemmas. The fact that others have been there before. Bimal Roy, Gurudutt, Raj Kapoor and Chetan Anand reflected the churning of the post-independence period. The films of Navketan, the film company of the Anand family, like those of Raj Kapoor changed with the times to become more mainstream and in a sense more entertaining with happy endings. In later years, parallel cinema took up the space to mirror reality. Perhaps books have had more political and social influence. The Citadel was one of those rare books which seems to have actually impacted the creation of an institution like the NHS. Rare in history.
For many of us, Dev Anand is a part of old memories of younger days. The impact of films on our lives has been huge. We often locate events in our childhood and younger days to movies, scenes dialogues and songs from films. Maybe because it was a time without other distractions of the current age. Maybe because it was from a time to dream.