The Dev Anand Story by Dr. Govind Sharma (Book Review: 3*/5) !!!

There are few authors whom you see in a certain image as per the kind of books that they write. One such author whose journey as a writer I have experienced myself since his 1^st book is Dr. Govind Sharma IAS Retd. I have read only his fiction books before his recent book that is a non-fictional attempt- a biography on the life of Bollywood Superstar, Dev Anand. The title of the book is “The Dev Anand Story” published by Notion Press in around 150 pages and is very different from all the books author has written till date.

Author calls himself a big fan of Dev Anand which inspired him to write this biography. The book is divided into 11 chapters where author starts with his early life and initial years in Mumbai. Then author directly jumps to the start of his career and the way he gets successful and how girls started giving their hearts to him and went crazy for him. One of his movies, “Guide” is discussed in a complete chapter dedicated to the movie and I must say, it deserves when the book is about Dev Anand and the 1^st movie we remember whenever his name comes out is this.

Author talks about both good and bad phase in the film career of Dev Anand and stays unbiased completely. It is definitely not written like a fan where even his failures are talked as successes. This is something that makes this book credible. Author discusses actor’s relationship with different directors and film studios and how he himself started a Production house but still continued working with few other studios. Little about his relationship with his wife is also discussed on how he met her, worked together in a movie and then married each other.

Another great point is that author discusses Dev Anand’s two brothers- Chetan Anand and Vijay Anand as much as he talks about Dev Anand which is a good decision as it has made this biography more interesting to understand the career graph of all the 3 brothers. I, personally, didn’t know about Dev Anand’s other two brothers and I only got to know through this book. In fact, a chapter is dedicated to Vijay Anand.

I liked the research by the author that he made on the actor without being someone who worked with him very closely or being from a journalism background. As I am just 30 years old hence knowing nothing about the era of Dev Anand which I have only heard here and there in Award functions, this book was a great opportunity to know about him and his movies which did well. I even made the To-Be-Watched list of his movies while reading the book as some movies are very vividly described by the author.

Now talking about the drawbacks:- The major problem with this book is that being a biography you get to know very less about Dev Anand as a person, the timelines in his life, the way he approached certain things, how he managed his routine with continuous work etc. Author majorly focuses only on his movies which also makes the book monotonous after a point of time as chapter after chapter, there is no change in gear and book continues talking in the same manner throughout. Secondly, there should have been uncountable quotes mentioned in the book as said by Dev Anand but there are very few of them that also mainly picked up directly from his autobiography. Author should have tried to pick these from newspapers, interviews etc. Last point- The cover page of the book could have been too dynamic considering the charming personality and looks of Dev Anand but it seems from the cover page that the book is more about Sharmila Tagore than Dev Anand.

Overall, this is a feel-good book and a great attempt if you want to know about Dev Anand’s movies. I have given following ratings to the last 3 books I read of Dr. Govind Sharma- 3.75*, 3.25* and 2.75* respectively. This book gets 3 stars out of 5 from my side. I wished little more from the biography as per my experience with this genre otherwise the book is a fine read.

Thanks.

WRITING BUDDHA