Dilip Kumar: The Substance and the Shadow

by Dilip Kumar

  Saira and I enjoyed revisiting places we both found interesting and, during one of our drives past Westminster, she mentioned to me how wonderful it would be if we could just drive into Buckingham Palace and meet Queen Elizabeth. As luck would have it, that very week I had received an invitation to attend a tea party to be hosted by the Queen. This was an annual event meant for important citizens and foreign visitors besides members of the diplomatic corps. Wanting to give Saira a surprise, I chose not to tell her about the invitation. I excited her by saying I wished to take her out to a nice place I knew for tea and, as expected, she was delighted and got dressed. She was rather surprised to see me in formal attire but she did not ask why I was so dressed. We got into the car and I could see the sparkle in her eyes as she quizzed me about the place we were heading for. She was quite well by then and the pallor that the illness had caused was gone and she was glowing with her natural healthy fairness and she was indeed looking beautiful and regal.

  The chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce took the route to the palace and you could have knocked Saira down with a feather when the car entered the gates of Buckingham Palace, which were thrown open for the invitees. She couldn’t believe it when I told her we were going to meet the Queen and have the tea served in her garden.

  We walked through the awesome halls and passages of the breath-taking, many-splendoured palace, to the sprawling gardens where Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, the Queen Mother, Prince Charles and Princess Anne were meeting guests. As we entered and drew near Her Majesty, lots of Asian officials from our own and various other high commissions and embassies swarmed around us lovingly, seeking autographs and chatting with us, much to Queen Elizabeth’s amusement. As she graciously shook hands with us, she smiled and told me: ‘You are a very popular man! Delighted! How nice to meet you!

  On our return to India, I took the decision to now shift with Saira just across the road to her own bungalow because she needed special caretaking and also a specific diet that was prescribed by Sir Francis Avery-Jones, the essence of the treatment of ulcerative colitis. The cortisone therapy administered at London Clinic had, of course, relieved the alarming condition that she was admitted with, but we sought a complete cure from alternative medical practices. Naseem Aapa, Sultan and I took the added help of the best homoeopaths in the country such as Dr Pathak, Dr Kundert, Dr Sankaran, Dr Anil Bhatia, Dr Naidu of Poona and the cream of hakeems such as Janab Aleemuddin Sahab and Delhi’s Harbanslalji. They came and stayed with us, to treat Saira and observe her health graph and to study the reactions to their medicines. All these factors, and the care and attention bestowed by Naseem Aapa, helped Saira in making a quick recovery. Caretaking of this dimension was possible only at her newly built bungalow, which was constructed keeping in view her comforts and requirements.

  As the treatment was going on, I had to keep her away from disturbing and volatile situations because they would exacerbate her ailment and would lead to setbacks in the recovery process. In my own place, tempers ran high. That was one reason why I had myself spent more time in my outhouse. Earlier, for instance, after the premiere of Ram Aur Shyam, I remember that Manoj Kumar and his wife (Shashi) had come home, specially wanting to speak to me regarding the go-ahead for Saira to do Purab aur Pacchim. After some time, Shashi and Saira were to go upstairs from the hall to the washroom, but on the stairs, they were abruptly ticked off and rudely told to be quiet by one of my sisters. Saira, as I have said earlier, had a very happy, child-like disposition and belonged to a small, close-knit family and had been very protectively brought up. She was unbelievably timid. After a spate of unsavoury incidents, which I would not like to mention, I called in Nasir, the brother closest to my heart, and I said to him that I wanted to shift to the Sun-n-Sand Hotel or to Nasir’s empty flat (since Nasir and and his wife Para were living in the Nasik farm). Once more, my wife pleaded with me that all these were meaningless incidents and she requested me to let things be. There are so many queries from people down the years on issues regarding my life, that I felt I should take this opportunity to address them.

  Being a man, I hardly took any time to bathe and get ready, whereas Saira did everything so minutely that it took a lot of time. Her life pattern was marked by specific appointments and a particular protocol, whereas I was used to my guests just being welcome at any given time – be it a celebrity or a common man – and I had the good health to support this gregarious disposition to just casually meet my friends and visitors.

  Soon enough, Saira adapted to my lifestyle and my pace. Naseem Aapa and Ammaji made the necessary arrangements for three huge deep freezes to stock provisions enough for a cricket team, because sure enough, visiting cricket and sports teams as also others would come unannounced and would be welcomed. It was no issue for me to announce at 1.30 p.m. that lunch should be rustled up for them as soon as possible. I must mention here that Saira’s staff was wonderful. She still has the same staff of 45 years ago and their successive generations that served Ammaji and Aapa. Starting from Noorjehan and her family, to great cooks, Narmada Gawde and Kavita, there was later a line of them who thought nothing of presenting a full meal to numerous guests at very short notice on the spur of the moment. In fact, believe it or not, they even joined our family and relatives to make formidable sports teams! Saira, Sultan and a retinue of close friends and relatives such as Farida Jalal, her husband Tabrez Barmavar (who also flew kites from a building opposite our house to to take on my own kites), Baby Farida (a child actress), my nephews Amjad and Javed (Noor Sahab’s sons who used to spend most of their time with us), Al-Huma (actress Veena’s daughter) and dozens of others would form our own little teams to play and revel in good sporting fun – be it cricket or football – all day on the lawns of our house.

  I had a travelling ‘chakr’ (wheel) in my feet said the old wise men and so did Saira (her name means ‘one who travels’). A team of our staff travelled with us with the necessary mirch masalas in trunks and they cooked biriyanis, irrespective of being in far, forsaken locales with no amenities such as in Mercara (now in Karnataka), where we lived surrounded by awesome gigantic moths in a coffee plantation.

  A marriage that is for keeps, even with all the good intentions of the couple, is not easy to sustain for either partner. We have had our share of ups and downs, but apart from our outwardly contrasting personalities (to look at us, we seemed different: I would be the quiet, introspective, brooding man given much to silences and Saira the effervescent, carefree, vivacious young woman), we also had much in common. We were both the heads of our respective families, committed to our dearest ones wholeheartedly and, in essence, we shared the joy of living.

  Playing a prank on Saira.

  Despite my serious demeanour, I was always fond of playing pranks. If we were in a lonely, mysterious locale such as Panhala (a place in southern Maharashtra), where, at that time (in 1967), power supply would time and again go off, I would quietly slip away unnoticed into the compound and pelt the windows with tiny stones. The tick tick, tick of the stones in the eerie wilderness of that place, charged with the fright of an ominous, whistling wind, had Saira and her staff shrieking! We were both addicted to long walks after pack-up even in the most deserted locales. As we strolled, when there would be a lull in the conversation, I would stop mid-track, turn around to her and ask, with my most mysterious expression: ‘And the man you are walking with just now, who do you think he is? Your husband? No …’ Saira would nearly faint with the impact of this little drama!

  At other times, I scared the life out of her old maid Noorjehan. In 1968, from the airport at Bangalore, Saira and I got into our car and drove to our favourite suite at the West End Hotel, had a sumptuous breakfast and waited for Noorjehan to come join us with the luggage. Soon enough, I disappeared. Saira looked helter-skelter but in vain. No sooner did Saira and Noorjehan enter the room and move towards the tall, spacious cupboards to place the suitcases inside than I suddenly pounced on them ferociously with a roar of a lion! Noorj
ehan was down on the floor and Saira was shaking uncontrollably. After that, back home, Naseem Aapa had to ‘samjhao’ (explain to) me: ‘Yousuf beta, Saira is a very timid girl, God forbid, she will have a heart attack like this!’

  Soon, however, I toughened her up and then she started playing pranks on me! Just a few weeks ago, we have, by the grace of God, affectionately been given a memento for being the ‘Timeless Couple’ and people want to know what has gone into the lasting of a 48-year-old relationship. (Amitabh Bachchan came home to hand over the memento as Saira and I could not make it to the event.) I changed myself a lot and Saira changed herself more than I did!

  No sooner than we were married, my male friends such as Pran, Satish Bhalla and Balraj (Balli) Kohli would stop by outside my gate at 2 a.m., blow the car horn to its crescendo and expect me to come down and go for a drive. This had been our ritual as of old, and we boys were full of zest and the evening would be of wonderful food at Satish’s Bates Hill home (Pali Hill was always an address to be reckoned with). There would be some great poetry recitations and singing sessions as our group was full of joie de vivre. Pran and Satish were well versed with the works of great Urdu poets such as Mirza Ghalib, Mir Taqi Mir and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, but soon enough, our bhabhi (Satish’s wife Shalu) would draw out a big Diwaan-e-Ghalib and, in her heavily accented Urdu read out a sher (couplet) as far as she could; for the rest of the couplet she’d finish off with ‘something, something’. It was so funny that I copied this in Ram Aur Shyam.

  For a glamorous young woman to step in line with my five-minute routine of dressing up meant cutting short her time drastically. At the start of the marriage, one evening, she took an hour to get ready. Finally she emerged, looking bedecked and beautiful. She had great love and good taste for jewellery designed and made for her by Naseem Aapa and, on that occasion, she had put on a lot of ornaments. Naturally she asked me: ‘How am I looking?’ I could only reply with a smile: ‘Beautiful! But you have to carry a tokra [basket] and put all your jewellery in it, because people must know you have so much!’ After that, more often than not, Saira would restrict herself to just a string of pearls and earrings when stepping out with me.

  In short, the glamorous girl who took an hour for putting on her makeup and doing up her long hair before a grand function, suddenly, changed totally.

  I remember an occasion when we were new to each other and she was just into films, I had unexpectedly visited at her flat at Sea Belle. On ringing the doorbell, Saira had opened the door and, on seeing me, she shrieked so loudly that one could have fainted. Her hair was in well-oiled pigtails and she was wearing a simple cotton salwar kameez. She ran into her room, and did not come out, telling Naseem Aapa: ‘Now he has seen me like this, he will never work with me!’

  In contrast, soon after our marriage, if she had applied mehndi (henna) to her hair to condition her tresses and I called out to her to come with me to a friend’s place for a ceremony, she would just cover her head in a turban and think nothing of accompanying me in that state. Once when I was travelling to Hyderabad for attending a marriage, she came to see me off at the airport as usual and got to know there that her shoot for the day had been called off. I suddenly thought: ‘Why not ask her to come along and hop on to the flight with me?’ She did just that, attended the grand marriage function in the casual salwar kameez she was attired in!

  What I got to love and appreciate about Saira down the years that I have lived with her is her innate simplicity and softness of heart. Her other qualities include her quickness to say sorry to rectify a situation and not harbouring any false pride. Any spat or tiff gives her heartache and she never can rest until she has mended fences. As a man, I was used to taking time to cool down after I had been ruffled in family encounters.

  I had distanced myself from my most bright and intelligent sister Akhtar on her surprise marriage to K. Asif. I was not seeing her at all.

  One day at lunch, Saira got up to take a call. On the other line was a doctor from Bombay’s Breach Candy Hospital informing us that Akhtar wanted to see her brother and that she was critically unwell. She had lost Asif by then (he had passed away on 9 March 1971) and was living with her daughters. I told Saira emphatically: ‘I will NOT go.’ Saira requested me to go and see her, as she was after all my sister and also very unwell. I repeated that I would not see her. She had shamed me and we had distanced ourselves after a life of doting and affection.

  In her own gentle way, Saira coaxed me to just see her for now, at her behest, lest, God forbid, anything untoward happened. She took me to Breach Candy and there began a reunion of brother and sister wherein, for the first time, Akhtar (who had been very much against my marriage to Saira), got to know and understand my wife. In later years and even now, Saira is the one Akhtar is the closest to and they are constantly tuned to each other.

  By the grace of God our long relationship also endured and benefited because we both had ‘no fuss, no bloated ego’ personalities. It was painful to see couples go on relentlessly bickering over minute details and for us there was no keeping up with the Joneses either.

  Actor Richard Burton once famously proclaimed to the media: ’You have to pity poor Liz [Elizabeth Taylor the celebrated star and his wife]. She is travelling with last year’s diamonds.’ Saira and I were always content and down to earth, being so very blessed in every way. Our life has always been full of fun and laughter.

  If I said to Saira, ‘be ready to go to a function with me, wait at home’ and I quite forgot about it and went alone to the venue, Saira never picked up a quarrel. Instead, she just laughed at my forgetfulness and was done with it. I must recall here an incident that aptly illustrates this wonderful trait in her. We were invited to a grand evening to felicitate the great Oscar-winning actress Shirley Maclaine. Saira and I, amongst others, were invited to have dinner with her and, understandably, my wife was a great fan of Shirley Maclaine. The hitch was that I was in Delhi on the day of the event. Anyway, I flew back to Bombay in the evening and Saira was at the airport to receive me. She was dressed and ready for the occasion and had thoughtfully carried my necessary dark suit and the needed accessories.

  As I sat in the car with her, I gently asked her if she really wanted to be lost in such a crowd of admirers and guests circling around Shirley or would she prefer to spend some quality time between just the two of us, since we had been away from each other for a couple of days. That was it! We had a candlelight dinner, just the two of us, which we never got to do too often.

  Another sterling quality she possesses is her ability to forget the past and live in the present. Soon after our nikah (marriage), while we were staying in Madras, I received a message from Madhubala that she wished to see me urgently. I confided in Saira as soon as we returned to Bombay about the message. Saira at once insisted that I should meet Madhu since it must be something she was distressed about. When I went to Madhu’s home, I was pained to see that she was frail and looked very weak. The pallor on her face not only belied her ill health, but her magnificent, impish smile seemed such an effort. She was happy to see me and said: ‘Hamarey shehzade ko unki shehzadi mil gayi hai, main bahut khush hoon!’ (Our prince has got his princess, I am very happy!)

  She was worried about some personal matters that she needed my advice on and we discussed them until she was somewhat satisfied that they could be sorted out. She then relaxed. That was the last time I saw her. She passed away on 23 February 1969.

  On another occasion, when I was suffering from a heart ailment in 1998, Uma (Kamini Kaushal), after many years, called my office. She had some close lady friends who wanted to meet me and Saira arranged for them to come home. She also made me speak to Uma, who had come to know about my condition and that I was to undergo open heart surgery.

  Uma said that she would send some tapes of children’s films she had liked. She was writing stories in children’s magazines and some of them had been chosen for filming. She thought it would be a good idea for me to watch some entert
aining children’s films to while away my time post-surgery. She also sent lots of little toys for us to string up in our cars. Saira and I appreciated the gesture and I felt it was very thoughtful of her.

  I can never forget our sojourns in Madras, be it for work or for pleasure. As luck would have it, our first film together, Gopi (released in 1970), was set to roll, of all places, in Madras.

  22

  THE HUSBAND–WIFE TEAM

  I began to discover the capacity my wife had for hard work and the pursuit for flawless work. She was receptive to sound advice and was quick to absorb the guidance I gave her in the scenes we came together. She co-starred with me in three films and I saw her tenacity and determination to get the nuances and emotional curves of the performance right.

  GOPI (DIRECTED BY A. BHIM SINGH) WAS A DELIGHTFUL experience. It was like an extended honeymoon for me and Saira. We had a secluded house – more like a cottage – at Kodambakkam (a locality in Madras) in the midst of a lot of greenery with mango trees all over the backyard and with golden yellow sand covering the entire compound. For our recreation and exercise, Nagi Reddy had a huge, high-walled badminton court made for us close by with a thatched roof of palm leaves.

  Saira was very happy not only because we were left alone in the large house after pack-up from the shooting during the day but also because she was working with me for the first time. By now she had shed some of her shyness and the reservations of a conservative upbringing. On the sets, she enjoyed the jokes between me and Om Prakashji – a renowned comedian and character actor – and she responded warmly to the upcoming actress Farida Jalal’s attempt to befriend her. In fact, she and Farida Jalal struck up a friendship that continues to this day. Saira’s Kathak guru, Roshan Kumari, who was choreographing her song and dance numbers in the film was also a friend, who provided company in Madras. Roshan Kumari and Saira would spend hours in their rehearsal of the choreographed movements for the song picturized on both of us, Gentleman, Gentleman, Gentleman …,* which became a craze after the film was released.