In the month of July, twenty one years ago, one of India’s most brilliant filmmakers-Chetan Anand-breathed his last, leaving a great vacuum in the world of art and films and leaving behind works of a wondrous cinematic quality. His films like Haqeeqat, Hindustan ki Kasam, Heer Ranjha and Aakhri Khat are classics of our film industry.
Dehradun feels privileged to have been an important part of this film maker’s life in the 1940s as it was during the early forties that Anand worked as a teacher of history at the famous Doon School. While he taught young Doscos, Anand also kept working on film scripts. His heart lay in the challenging field of cinema. Chetan’s stint at the Doon School (1940-44) was not the only link he had with this hill region. As a young boy, he had been sent by his mother to study at the Gurukul Kangri .He was at Gurukul Kangri near Haridwar from the age of seven to twelve.
When he returned to Gurdaspur at the age of 12, he was put in a local school, given English coaching and after he adapted well and passed his Matriculation in the first division, he was sent to lahore Government College where Chetan had his first trysts with writing and directing plays. And after completing his Bachelors in Arts (BA) there, he left for london to qualify for the Indian Civil Service examinations, as per his father’s wish.
Instead of doing that however, Chetan studied theatre there, saw films, visited museums and galleries and participated in the Indian programmes of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Back in India, he joined the famous Doon School in 1940 (after a brief stint at All India Radio, New Delhi) and taught History, English, theatre and tennis here. He spent his free time writing plays and also set up an open-air theatre in the campus. When Dev Anand visited him and stayed with him at the beautiful house provided to him in the sprawling Chandbagh (Garden of the Moon) campus, he was not an actor yet.He had just ventured out towards Bombay from lahore after completing his honours in English from the Government College there. He was received in Bombay by Chetan who was there during the school vacation. In his autobiography “Romancing with life”, Dev Anand fondly recalls the times he visited Chetan at the Doon School.
During his visits to the school, he came to learn “the manners of a proper Englishman”. He writes that Chetan taught him table manners as “he put me amongst the affluent, pick-of-the-upper class students at Doon School, with their spick–and span-manners-breakfasting and dining on tables laid out for them by uniformed khansamas.”(Raj Days!) His fascination for English manners and education can be clearly felt while reading his autobiography.
Chetan Anand’s dream took him to Mumbai (then Bombay) during the school’s winter break in the year 1943.There he met Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Phani Majumdar, Kishore Sahu and some other filmmakers. He sold a film script to Kishore Sahu. Majumdar cast the young Chetan as the hero opposite Nargis in “Rajkumar” which was not a success. In 1944, he gave up his job at The Doon School.
In 1946, he made “Neecha Nagar”, starring Kamini Kaushal and famous radio artist Rafi Peer. The film won him accolades and bagged the Palme d'Or (Best Film) award at the Cannes Film Festival. The rise of Dev Anand, Chetan’s younger brother, to stardom, synchronised with the desire in the two brothers to tell a different kind of story and create a different kind of cinema. Navketan was born in 1949.
Unfortunately, the first Navketan film, Afsar, starring Dev Anand and Suraiya, later to be made as “Sahib Bahadur”, is lost. The negative burnt in a laboratory fire. The 1954 Navketan film–Taxi Driver-saw unprecedented success. The film was directed by Chetan Anand and stars his brother Dev, Dev’s wife- to- be Kalpana Kartik, and Johny Walker. The film “Haqeeqat” (1964) won Chetan Anand the 1965 National Film Award.
His range as a filmmaker was stunning. We can see this from the austerity of Haqeeqat, the visual beauty of Heer Ranjha, the poignance of “Aakhri Khat” and the complexity of Kudrat which won Anand the Filmfare Award for the best story. Anand’s Heer Ranjha remains the quintessential interpretation of Waris Shah’s Heer. Screenplay written by Kaifi Azmi, the film is delivered in poetical verse, making it one of the unique and original pieces of cinematic work. It is a poem on celluloid.
So many years after his death on July 6, 1997, Chetan Anand is remembered by his admirers as one of the most sensitive writers and directors in the history of Indian cinema. Those who can see the rare beauty of his work will never forget him and his cinema. And Dehradun will always remember his days as a student and then as a teacher spent in the hills and dales of Uttarakhand.