Years ago, I had asked Dilip Kumar if he was looking forward to his birthday, to celebrations and receiving gifts. With a smile, the actor had admitted that it was his wife who liked to surprise him with gifts. Saira Banu was the one who ticked off the days to December 11. She was the one who went out of her way to make the day special for him. The house would be decked up with flowers, guests from all professions and across nations would bring in more. And everyone would be treated to a sumptuous feast.
Last year was an exception. Sairaji had not wanted any celebrations because they had lost his two younger brothers, Ehsaan Khan and Aslam Khan, to Covid. Dilip saab himself hadn’t been keeping too well, and worried about his weak immunity, she had prudently decided to bring in his birthday quietly.
Had death not stolen him away on July 7 this year, there might have been flowers and visitors at their Pali Hill residence as he turned 99. If I close my eyes, I can hear Dilip saab saying with that laughing lilt in his voice, “99… Then a century is just a run away.”
Everyone had expected him to complete a century because Dilip saab himself was an avid cricketer. I remember once when I had insisted on doing an interview with him in the middle of a Test match which India was playing, I got only monosyllables and curt one-line answers.
Another actor who is a cricket enthusiast is Manoj Kumar, who at the age of 10, after seeing Dilip sahab in Jugnu and Shaheed, had decided he wanted to become a farishta like him. And even after he understood that while in the movies a man could die and live again, in real life the actor playing these roles was as human as him, Manoj saab did not change his mind. In fact, Harikrishan Goswami, as he was christened by his aunt, decided to call himself Manoj Kumar on screen, borrowing the name Manoj from Dilip saab’s character in Shabnam.
Dilip saab himself had grown up answering to the name of Muhammad Yusuf Khan. It was at the age of 22, just before the release of his debut film Jwar Bhata in 1944, that he was given a new name on his insistence. Talking to Mahendranath Kaul in an interview to BBC in 1970, Dilip saab had admitted that his father, Lala Ghulam Sarwar, who was a fruit merchant with orchards in Peshawar and Devlali, had frowned upon the make believe world of movies and considered acting a waste of time. Afraid of his father’s anger and the transhing that could follow, he begged the producers of Jwar Bhata to change his name for the screen. They were juggling between Basudev and Dilip Kumar. He learnt that they had decided to go for the latter only when he saw the first advertisement announcing the film.
He went unnoticed in Jawar Bhata, Pratima and Naukabandi. But Jugnu and Shaheed, the first two films of Manoj saab’s life, were big hits and Dilip Kumar went on to rule Bollywood as the ‘King of Tragedy’ who was equally proficient in comedy, romance, action and character roles.
Manoj saab’s birthplace is Abbottabad, a small town in the North-Western Frontier Province, now a part of Pakistan. Dilip saab was born in Peshawar which is an hour’s drive from Abbottabad. Undoubtedly, it was this that cemented the bond between the ‘Pathan’ and the ‘Pandit’ who even spoke the same language and had similar personalities.
Manoj saab had recounted how, in 1977, during a cricket match, he had introduced himself to KN Prabhu, a senior journalist who was considered an authority in sport, walking up to him and saying, “Hello, I am Manoj Kumar.” Prabhu had told him with a smile that he was the second actor to have introduced himself. Frowning, Manoj saab had asked, “Who was the first?” To his amazement, Prabhu told him it was Dilip Kumar, his co-star in Aadmi, whom he had then gone on to direct and act with in his home production Kranti.
I had spoken to Manoj saab on the eve of Dilip saab’s 90th birthday. He wished the actor he considered his muse, mentor and master in acting a great day and a wonderful year ahead, adding with a smile, “He may be 90, but he still looks 25.”
Today, I refuse to believe that Dilip sahab will never celebrate another birthday. Like Manoj saab I believe that he is a farishta and angels live forever.
