Saira Banu shared clips from her movies with Dev Anand. (courtesy: sairabanu)

New Delhi:

Veteran actress Saira Banu has stored her promise and shared a “funny incident” with Dev Anand on Instagram. Saira Banu, on Dev Anand’s birth centenary on Tuesday, mentioned, “There’s another funny incident with Dev Saab, I will write about it tomorrow.” She has dropped some movies from Shankar Mukherjee’s Pyaar Mohabbat and wrote, “We were shooting in a small, dingy boat in the middle of the sea, Dev [Anand] Saab was getting uncomfortable with the swinging boat and once he toppled out of the boat and fell right into the sea water. At that time, I had this terrible habit of giggling and laughing uncontrollably for minutes together. We pulled him out of the water into the dingy boat and my laughter wouldn’t stop. Dev [Anand] Saab for the first time looked so angrily at me that I could’ve frozen!” 

In one other anecdote, Saira Banu shared how the group in Baalbek, Lebanon, misunderstood Dev Anand for Shammi Kapoor. She recalled, “Another incident happened at Baalbek, Lebanon, where I was singing a song in the resplendent ruins and a huge crowd of foreigners gathered around to watch the shoot. Apparently, Junglee had been popularly released over there and the crowd was shouting out to us “Shammi Kapoor… Shammi Kapoor” Oh God- — that they had mistaken Dev [Anand] Saab for Shammi Kapoor. Just think about the big-heartedness of Dev [Anand] Saab that he performed round to them, waving his arms, smiling at them and saying Yes…Yes…Hello…Hello. I’m Shammi Kapoor. How big-hearted he was.”

Saira Banu added that all through their out of doors journey for Pyaar Mohabbat, Dev Anand was busy engaged on Prem Pujari’s script. The movie, launched in 1970, starred Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman. However, Saira Banu claimed that she was Dev Anand’s first selection for Prem Pujari. “All along this outdoor trip, Dev [Anand] Saab was busy writing his script for Prem Pujari which he was going to direct for himself. Every day he narrated what he wrote brimming with pride and happiness “Saira….. You have to do this film with me”. And as we shot all through Europe, Dev [Anand] Saab fastened Rome as the purpose the place he would wind up the script and Dev [Anand] Saab decided that Naseemji and I’d exit in Rome and have dinner to have a good time. We did precisely that.”

Sharing yet one more incident from the units of Pyaar Mohabbat, Saira Banu added, “Back home again on the sets of ‘Pyaar Mohabbat’ where we had to show a storm happening on the ship in the same shooting, the set was tilted to such extreme levels that Dev [Anand] Saab and I both crashed through sheer Twelve Feet glass windows and were cut up badly. By the grace of God, we got away lightly.”

“These were some memories of many with Dev Saab,” she accomplished her word. 

On Dev Anand’s start centenary, Saira Banu wrote an elaborate word on Instagram. Take a glance:

Dev Anand died on December 3, 2011 in London. He suffered a cardiac arrest.