Recall Dev Anand's 'open' stand when Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor led the boycott against Stardust and magazines of its ilk. As public figures, declared Dev Anand in bold print, stars should understand that their private lives would be, willy-nilly, discussed in the media. Dev Anand thus was among the earliest to identify gossip in journalism as the emerging trend. He even welcomed it.
After all that gossip about them, what if Dev Anand had wed Suraiya? What course would his screen life have taken then? Tough to tell, seeing how Americanised and forward-looking, in outlook, Dev Anand turned out to be.
Suraiya ("I'm very, very Indian") even said she was prepared to give up films on the spot, to wed Dev. But her family stood sturdily in the way, arguing that Suraiya was among the topmost heroines by then (1949-1950), in fact the only genuine singing star left in our films.
By contrast, 'Woh Hindu' Dev Anand, they pointed out, was still struggling for a toe-hold in the slippery sands of stardom. All that could be noted here is that, to the end, Suraiya (called 'Nosey' by Dev) remained stuck on her 'Steve' (Dev). While not being enamoured of even Dilip Kumar after she encountered the Tragedy King on the sets of K Asif's never-completed Janwar. Suraiya thus was perhaps the only prime heroine of the time to display little enthusiasm for pairing with Dilip Kumar.
Also Read: Censoring Dev Anand
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