26/09/2026
Birth anniversary of the style guru of my childhood...
Flashback to 1964...
Life had become a hectic mix of adventure in the open and free environment of S&C colony which was a dream world for anyone in the dirty old city of Bareilly… folks from rubber factory Synthetics were looked upon with awe by the city people, because for the times, this was a better posh living environment compared to even Rampur Bagh of those days in the city, considered to belong to the elite. And wherever Synthetics buses went people craned their neck to look…
Our bus journeys to the city schools and back was no less than a roadie adventure trip daily. And in the middle of this came one day the first roadie movie from Bollywood, Nau Do Gyarah, to be screened in the guest house.
All hell broke loose in the school bus with anticipation for the iconic suspense thriller movie of Dev Anand which most of us had not seen except the Jhurrani clan which had seen the movie during their times in Bombay from where they had come. Ashok went berserk trying to tell us the story of the runaway bride played by Kalpana Karthik and how she was Dev Anand’s secret wife…
Dev Anand was the ultimate hero for all those days, though I was more fond of Raj Kapoor movies and Mukesh songs. But Nau Do Gyarah screening in the guest house hall changed all that. Everyone wanted to become as dashing as Dev Anand and there was a competition of sorts to get his puffed up hairstyle set in place with shining oil.
Every morning all the boys would check out one another’s hair style, ‘yeh dekh, yeh dekh… mera jyada sahi hai…’ was the argument generally. That was time I guess we all started carrying a comb in the pocket to ensure the Dev Anand hair style doesn’t get disturbed. Ashok wanted to beat everyone at this style game but finally gave up to Bappan, who became our own style icon thereafter. I would spend hours in front of the mirror to get the puff right, much to my mother’s irritation…
Nau Do Gyarah also changed my singer preference from Mukesh to Kishore Kumar, with his hummable melody ‘Hum hain rahi pyaar ke, hum se kuch na boliye…’ filmed on our style guru Dev Anand. Group singing of this song as an anthem bec
