“They really came like an expeditionary force,” says Karthak, now 75-years-old. Over the next few days, Karthak saw the cameramen, cast and crew going about as, Dev Anand, speaking a mix of Hindi and English, hollered instructions, waving his hand, his head tilted, a bright silk scarf tied around his neck, with a cap at a rakish angle-all in his iconic style. Photo: Bimal Paudel FacebookĪuthor Peter J Karthak was 27 and working at Hotel Soaltee’s Casino Nepal when he first saw a film crew arrive on giant buses with camera sets, stands, generators, lighting equipment and large boxes containing other shooting equipment. Energised by the king’s backing, Dev Anand, surrounded by hordes of Kathmandu locals, would work for the next 10 weeks creating magic.Ī screen shot from 'Ghungroo Ka Bole'. King Mahendra had a cabinet minister partake in the film’s mahurat ceremony organised at Hotel Soaltee, writes Anand in his memoir. He will know where to take you, and when.”Īccording to the memoir, Dev Anand returned to Bombay with the script, and came back to Kathmandu with an 84-member shooting crew. “I shall give you an inspector of police as your bodyguard and guide, a real Gurkha. It will be ideal for your writing,’ King Mahendra said. “There is a very stylish hotel there, owned by my younger brother, Prince Basundhara, called The Fish Tail, against the backdrop of the majestic snow-capped Annapurna range. ‘Would you like to extend your stay and visit it ? It is very quiet and peaceful there, good for your type of work.’ Dev Anand recreates the conversation in his memoir: Receiving Dev Anand in the visiting room of the Narayanhiti Royal Palace, King Mahendra not only approved of the new film concept graciously, but took a strong personal interest to see it develop instantly by inviting the actor to complete the script in Pokhara. But to accomplish a shooting of such gigantic scale would’ve been impossible without the approval of the highest authority-the king.
The film would be shot almost entirely in Kathmandu’s core historical sites.
“The moment she left, the story idea and Jasbir, its central character, had formed themselves in my mind,” Dev Anand recollects in the memoir. The next day, the actor met with the girl-Jasbir turned Janice-who’d run away from her family following her parents’ divorce in Canada, and finding solace in the carefree world of hippies, followed herself in Kathmandu. In his memoir, Dev Anand says that in February 1970, he was attending Crown Prince Birendra’s wedding as a royal guest when, one evening, he chanced upon an Indian girl in the midst of hippies at The Bakery, an iconic hippie commune in Swayambhu. This was 70s Kathmandu, and such a spectacle could only take place because Hare Rama Hare Krishna won the heart of none other than King Mahendra.
Dev Anand (right) with King Mahendra (left).
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