Hindi film actor-director Dev Anand’s funeral will be held at Putney in southwest London on Saturday morning. Anand, who had turned 88 this September, had died of a sudden cardiac arrest at his Mayfair hotel in his sleep on Saturday night.
The funeral and cremation will be held at 11.40 am on December 10 at Putney Vale Crematorium and this will be followed by two-hour memorial meeting in honour of the actor-director at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, starting at 2 pm.
The funeral will be a private one, with only family in attendance. The sources close to the family indicated that there is no information as yet whether anyone from Hindi film industry is attending the funeral.
The Putney Vale cemetery and crematorium is in one of the most beautiful parts of London, surrounded by Wimbledon Common, which covers 47 acres of green area. Film producer David Lean, British Prime Minister Clement Atlee and Sir Winston Churchill’s wife are among the famous people who have been cremated here.
Sir Ronald Ross, discoverer of malaria, sculptor Jacob Epstein, and archaeologist Howard Carter, the discoverer of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen, are buried in the cemetery.
“The funeral will be a private one as the crematorium is a small one and the family is keen to keep it simple and private,” a friend of the family and music director Raja Kaasheef said. The memorial at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan is a public one and can be attended by anyone wishing to take part.
Dev Anand’s son Suneil, his nephew Tony Sarin, British-Indian businessman Kartar Lalvani, a close friend of the actor-director, and Lord Karan Bilimoria will speak at the funeral.
The funeral is being organised by Chelsea Funeral Directors, who have a fleet of Mercedes hearses and make horse-drawn hearses available too.
It is expected that the actor-director’s body will be handed over to his family sometime on Thursday. The actor-director’s death was, according to the rules, reported to the coroner.
A remembrance ceremony will also be held in Mumbai, the venue of which has been decided.