He is called the ‘Evergreen’ superstar of Indian Cinema. Dev Anand started his film career in the 40’s and today, even after six decades, he’s still active and busy working on his films. In his autobiography, ‘Romancing With Life’, Dev Anand shares how the events in his life made a boy from Gurdaspur a star of the Indian Cinema.
“Ziddi was a milestone in my career, since it was the first film that brought me in to the limelight as an actor to reckon with. It brought me very close to Ashok Kumar and his youngest brother, Kishore Kumar, who had just arrived from his hometown Khandwa, clad in his kurta-pajamas, with a phenomenal singing voice that years later was going to hypnotize the world with its resonance. The very first song of his career was sung by me on screen in Ziddi; it was a ghazal composed by a renowned poet, Prem Dhavan:

Marne ki duayen kyun mangoon

Jeene ki tamanna kaun kare

Yeh duniya ho yaa woh duniya

Ab kwahish-e-duniya kaun kare

Why should I wish to die

And who wishes to live

Whether it’s this world, or whether it’s that

What is left in worlds to desire

The song became a hit, and people started associating Kishore’s voice with mine, and his playback singing with my acting on screen. We complemented each other. He always sang my songs with an eye on how I would perform them, and gave the necessary nuances to his voice with my acting style in mind. His famous yodelling, which he pioneered in Indian films, was encouraged by me; it sounded like the cry of a solitary voice in the loneliness of the hills, a call for romance. After he became a star-actor, and the artist in him grew in great measure, Kishore never sang for anybody except for me, barring ready to play Dev Anand in front of the microphones in the recording studios. He always asked me in what particular way I wanted to style his singing accordingly. And I would always say, ‘Do it with all the pep you want, and I shall follow your way.’ There was that kind of rapport between the two of us.”