You may keep your Hrithik Roshans and Abhishek Bachchans in Bollywood’s book of romance, the asli hero is Dev Anand. At 84, he is energy-plus and utterly in love with life, everything about it charges him with a zesty enthusiasm that is difficult to match or even contain.

He was telling me about it yesterday. His autobiography is being released later this month. By Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, no less, at 7, Race Course Road in Delhi, an address given to far less glamourous events than this. Dev Saab, such as he is known, chose September 26 as the release date.

“It’s Dr Manmohan Singh’s birthday and also mine,” he revealed, unburdening his excitement onto me. “He will celebrate me, and I will celebrate him, that’s the plan.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “I also invited Sonia Gandhi, and she has agreed to come, she will be the chief guest.”

The autobiography is called Romancing With Life, a hardcover book of 465 pages. Yes, he agreed, that’s a lot of reading material. “But it covers a lifespan. It’s about 62 years of my life here in this city. What was I when I came from Pakistan, a non-entity with nothing in my pockets, today I am talking to you,” Dev Saab argued, ever the charmer. He intended this to be a book for the people.

Through it, he wants to give back to his fans, his friends, to everyone who ever sat through a Dev Anand movie, some of the love they gave him over 62 years. Which is why, Dev Saab will not tarry with the Prime Minister in New Delhi. The next day, on September 27, he will be back in Mumbai to celebrate his birthday and release the autobiography here. “Everybody is welcome,” he said magnanimously. “My guests are the entire country, I can’t avoid anybody. I want to throw the book into the air and see a million hands reaching up to grab it.”

This sudden rush of life, the thrill of writing his autobiography, forced Dev Saab to put two movies on hold. Incredibly, he is still engaged with the business of movie-making. One he is making in Croatia, called When Heartbeats Are The Same; the other is called Chargesheet, and this movie is on police corruption.

“I couldn’t concentrate on them,” he regretted. “The book took my time. It’s a true and honest effort. And it’s by me, not ghost written, I scripted it by hand. No computer. My only condition to my publishers was that not a line was to be changed. They agreed. Now it’s ready for release. After Delhi and Mumbai, the rest of the country (he counted one Indian city after another), then at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October, and Stockholm, where they will also show Hare Rama Hare Krishna, and thereafter London, plus New York, LA, San Francisco, Atlanta in the US, also Canada. I have been invited to the Far East, to Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and China.”

Of his whistlestop tour for the worldwide release of Romancing With Life, the launch in London promises to be a big event. Dev Saab explained: “Do you remember in 1978-79, I launched Tina Munim in Des Pardes that was made in London? Well, I called Tina and said I’m releasing the book there on October 13. ‘Why don’t you come,’ I asked. And she’s coming, with Anil Ambani!” Dev Saab is delighted, he’s up and about and ready to go. To him, romance is taking life as it comes, it’s not something that is sexually motivated. “A good poem, a good book, thinking of a girl, making a movie, that’s romance,” he said earnestly.

“And as to where I get the energy for all this, why, it’s my career, my work, I could go on for a 100 years. Don’t you forget the world when you are busy writing an article, well that’s what happens to me, you understand?” Well, somewhat.