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Blasphemous!

Dev Anand. Click for bigger pic!

It is quite terrible, we tell you. A film showing a director drinking?? Could our films have sunk deeper than they already have.

Mind you, this is not one of those nice, clean cabaret numbers, those tasteful rape scenes, those artistic love scenes... No. It's a director drinking and singing, making a disgraceful spectacle of himself.

That is what Dev Anand is trying to explain away in his autobiographical venture, Main Solah Baras Ki. And is the director is peeved.

"It is very strange. What they want deleted is me as a film director holding a glass of whisky in my hand and singing. Why can't film directors be shown as drinking when they do? I have done a similar scene in Guide ages ago when I sang Din Dhal Jaaye. Dilip Kumar has done scenes like that, Amitabh Bachchan has done many scenes like that... Are these people watching films for the first time in their lives?" he explodes.

Sabrina in Main Solah Baras Ki. Click for bigger pic!

What he omits to mention is that even his last film, Gangster, a woman was shown baring her bosom frequently during a rape scene. That was passed. As were scenes of drug consumption in Hare Rama Hare Krishna back in 1971.

But this shot of him drinking suddenly even had the revising committee bristling with anger and upholding the censor board's decision.

The other scene that had the censors up in arms allegedly has Dev even more puzzled.

"That is where I tell the heroine Sabrina to relax before giving her shot. She is a newcomer and I am advising her. That's all."

Now Dev plans to approach Justice Bakhtawar Lentin again in the appellate tribunal to get justice. And if that doesn't work is even prepared to take the matter to the courts.

"Why should this scene be deleted?" he asks. "I find it all so strange."

In search of stardom