Vasant Dev (lyricist)

Vasant Dev (lyricist) Biography

Vasant Dev is a great lyricist associated with Bollywood, best known for the songs of Utsav. Man kyon behka re behka aadi raat ko – pictured on actress Rekha and Anuradha Patel still remains his memorable song. This song is noted for being one of those rare songs sung by Mangeshkar sisters – Lata mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle. He won the Filmfare Award for Best Lyricist for this song for the year 1984. He has been a hot favourite of directors belonging to new wave Indian cinema in the 1980s, also known as parallel cinema, with the leading names being Shyam Benegal, Jabbar Patel, Govind Nihalani and Mahesh Bhatt. "Saanjh Dhale Gagan Tale" sung by Suresh Wadkar is another popular song penned by Dev. He received National Film Award for Best Lyrics in the year 1984 for Saaransh, one of the best known works of Mahesh bhatt.

Vasant has been a teacher by profession and he taught Hindi at Parle College in Mumbai. Apart from being a successful lyricist, he has also written screenplays and dialogues of a few Hindi movies. He was associated with the popular series on Doordarshan in the late 1980s – Bharat ek khoj, based on the book The Discovery of India (1946) by Jawaharlal Nehru. It was scripted and directed by Shyam Benegal and dialogues were written by Vasant. He has also been associated with Benegal’s Bollywood projects also.

Vasant wrote the dialogues of Bollywood movies of 1980s like Arth Sathya, Umbartha, Kamla, Nasoor, Party and Andha Yug. As a lyricist his best known works are Bhumika, Utsav, Saaransh and Aakrosh. He has worked with Bollywood directors - Govind Nihalani, Jabbar Patel, Girish Karnad, Mahesh bhatt and Jagmohan Mundhra.

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Updated: July 09, 2014