DEVIKA RANI – THE FIRST LADY WHO GAVE LIFE TO CINEMA

By Ali Peter John

I had the unique and if I may say so the most extraordinary experience of meeting Devika Rani,“The first lady of Hindi cinema in Ooty in the eighties at her second husband, the Russian painter, Swetslov Roerich’s museum tucked away somewhere in the interiors of Ooty. She was old but was still at her elegant and beautiful best. She did not have much to say, but she remembered Ashok Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor who were all her discoveries when she founded Bombay Talkies in Malad which was far away from civilization and she had together with her first husband Himanshi Rai made a number of Hindi films which are still remembered as classics…
She was in charge of the casting and besides herself playing the lead role, she had other actors who worked with her and went on to become legends…

Bombay Talkies was making“Achoot Kaniya”with Devika Rani and a hero who was a Muslim, but who vanished from the day the shooting was to start. Devika and Himanshu were in a fix, when Devika suddenly remembered a young boy from Calcutta called Ashok Kumar Ganguly who worked as a laboratory assistant in the studio and she called for him and asked him to play her hero. Ashok Kumar was shocked and did not know what to tell his‘boss’. He told her that he had not even acted in a school play, but Devika Rani persisted and Ashok Kumar had to agree to play her hero and that was the beginning of one of the longest careers of one man as an actor.

Mohammad Yusuf Khan had come from Poona after working in a military canteen as a manager. Like many other young men, he too wanted to try his luck as an actor and he was advised to go to Bombay Talkies and meet Devika Rani. He followed the advice and met Devika Rani. She liked him, but told him that he would have to change his name and was given a few days to make up his mind. When Yusuf Khan went back to Devika Rani, she had written the names on a piece of paper, Jahangir, Vasudev and Dilip Kumar. Yusuf decided to opt for Dilip Kumar and was cast in his first film,“Jwar Bhatta”in which Agha was the hero and Dilip Kumar was in the supporting cast. Dilip Kumar was not confident and the biggest flaw in him was that he stammered and took time to speak his lines. Devika Rani kept encouraging him and he gradually got out of his complexes and even made his way of speaking his own style which ultimately made him the ultimate legend and the emperor of acting.

Dev Anand, a student of English Literature from Gurdaspur in pre-partition India had already made his debut as a hero in Prabhat’s“Him Ek Hain”which did not do well and he had to start his struggle all over again. Shaheed Latif, a well-known director and his writer-wife Ismat Chugtai saw the young and dashing Dev Anand walking alone on the platform of the Churchgate Station, which was in Colaba those days. They had seen Dev Anand in“Hum Ek Hain”and asked him to come to Bombay Talkies the next morning and faced an interview with Devika Rani and was cast as the hero of“Ziddi”and Dev Anand went on to be a very important part of Indian film history.

Raj Kapoor was taken on as a general assistant in the studio because he was the son of Prithviraj Kapoor. Raj learnt all the basics of film making at Bombay Talkies and then worked as an assistant with one of the writers of Bombay Talkies,Kirar Sharma who saw no future for him and had even slapped him once for not holding the clapper board in the right way. At twenty-three, Raj Kapoor became a director on his own and became the legendary Showman of India.

There have been several writers, directors, composers and technicians who owe their careers to Devika Rani who gave up all interest in film making after serving the industry for more than thirty-five years.

The government of India issued a stamp in her honour and conferred the first Dada Sahaab Phalke Award on her and also with the Padmashri.
She died in Ooty soon and there was nobody from the industry

to bid farewell to the lady who had changed the lives of so many. Her bungalow in Ooty was under litigation with one one of her lady servants staking her claim to the vast property of Devika Rani which was a gift given to her by Russian painter-husband.

How many in this great industry remember her, especially today when it is her birth anniversary today? And how many know that what was Bombay Talkies once is now a vast industrial estate and the entrance is marked out by a dancing bar called Bombay Talkies?