by Dilip Kumar
After I had made some films, which got noticed and after the spectacular success of Sholay [1975], I thought I was ready to approach Dilip Sahab with a wish to direct him. He and my father (G. P. Sippy) were very good friends and Dilip Sahab used to acknowledge me warmly when he visited our home; he would ask [about] me but he never spoke about my work, so I did not know what he thought of me as a director.
Salim[Khan] and Javed [Akhtar], the writers of Sholay had a subject they had based on a Tamil film and they kept telling me that the film (Shakti) could be made only if Dilip Kumar agreed to play the father’s role. The producers, Mushir and Riaz, were all for the subject and they asked me if I could talk to Dilip Sahab about it.
With some trepidation I approached Sahab and he seemed aware of the story, may be because Salim Khan had told him about it. After some casual talk Sahab agreed to consider the subject and wanted the writers to meet him. I was so happy I went home with a feeling that I had conquered the world not so much because the mission was accomplished but more because Sahab gave me an indication that he was confident about my ability to do justice to the emotional conflicts inherent in the subject.
We told Sahab about the actors we intended to cast in the film and he said he was fine with anybody I thought fit to play the other characters. We mentioned Amitabh Bachchan and he said he was aware that he was a malleable and competent actor.
When you have Dilip Kumar heading the cast you don’t really have to tell the other actors much. The admiration and respect for Sahab is such that actors just want to be in the film.
The media hype surrounding the casting of Amitabh Bachchan opposite Dilip Kumar was enormous. I say opposite, because Amitabh was to play the son who grows up with a deep sense of anger and resentment and takes a hostile stand against the father, played by Sahab. The curiosity factor was whether Amitabh Bachchan had the mettle to measure up to the histrionic challenge inherent in the role pitted against the role of the father, which was the pivot of the story.
The first shot of the mahurat was taken on the sea front at Juhu with Sahab and Amitabh Bachchan featuring in the scene. There was not only Indian media but also some foreign correspondents who were eager to capture the coming together of the legendary superstar Dilip Kumar and the emerging legend and superstar Amitabh Bachchan together in one frame.
Dilip Sahab was wearing a suit from his own wardrobe and was in the room booked for him in the hotel at Juhu beach. Amitabh Bachchan, full of genuine respect and admiration for Sahab, went to his room and greeted him before going to his room for his make-up. In many of his interviews and chats he has said that he was nervous about facing the camera with the actor he idolized and revered. But certainly he did not seem so when I explained the shot to him amidst so much attention and a crowd watching from the beach. The shot was such that perfect timing and pace were expected from both. In the shot Amitabh had to alight from a chopper and walk towards Dilip Sahab with the strong wind from the sea blowing from behind and slackening the pace of his walk. Sahab had to stand where he was. As we all know from our experience Dilip Sahab does not need the spoken word to act. His mere presence in a frame is kinetic enough to make the scene come alive. All eyes were therefore on Amitabh and he was fully aware of it.
I can tell you that a lesser actor in his place would have found it hard to perform in the glare of so much attention and expectation. To Amitabh’s credit it must be said that he performed with splendid confidence and the crowd was going wild when we canned the shot without a retake.
It was the talk of the industry for weeks thereafter. All through the making of the film Amitabh was very respectful and Sahab was very affectionate, and more than once, after an intense shot was canned, Sahab quietly commented to me that he saw immense potential in Amitabh and a day would come when he would rule the industry.
Right from day one Amitabh knew the profile of his character and Dilip Sahab knew the part he had to essay. There was no ambiguity whatsoever. I am saying this because there were speculations that Amitabh Bachchan was not pleased with the way his character developed in the film. He never had any misgivings. It was a media-generated myth. On the contrary, he was extremely elated by the praise he got from knowledgeable critics for his restrained acting and the way he measured up to the histrionic level expected from him in the scenes with Dilip Sahab. Like the scene where the son comes home when he is informed of his mother’s death and sees his father inconsolable and shattered by the loss. It was a scene with no dialogue. I remember Sahab telling me after watching the rushes of the scene how interesting it was to observe the way Amitabh acted. Sahab said, ‘You know, Ramesh all the years I have spent in the industry I have not come across an actor who intelligently and sensitively performs for the camera. It is a great asset to be able to act for the camera with your subconscious attuned to its swift movements.’
For me personally it was the greatest experience I have had in my career directing Sahab. He was punctual, cooperative, jovial and totally undemanding as a star. There was no fuss about anything. His food exquisitely prepared by the cooks in Sairaji’s house came every day and we were all invited to partake of it. He himself had the wonderful habit of going to the table set for the unit and sharing the food on the table and making amusing conversation with the unit hands. They loved him and they waited every day for that moment.
Only once he asked for a change in a scene and when I explained its context with what was to come a few scenes later, he smiled and gave me a pat on my shoulder. He often rehearsed not for his own improvement but for the benefit of the other actors in the scene and he was never tired of retakes that occurred due to someone’s unwitting error. There was a scene shot with Raakhee [who plays his wife in the film] on the first day of indoor shooting. It was a scene where she is cooking in the kitchen of the police commisioner’s house and he is with her in the kitchen and the phone rings in the drawing room. He then says something and goes to answer the phone. We had to retake the scene thirty times because something kept going wrong with the telephone. As it always happens on the first day of a shoot, it took a while for the technicians and others to get the synchronization right. But Sahab was patient with all of us and he kept making jolly remarks to keep the technicians free from tension.
Shakti was made in the middle of an upheaval in Sahab’s personal life. He had got married a second time and it made sensational news. But he remained cool and unaffected on the sets and of course no one dared to ask him anything. He requested me to keep the Fourth Estate out and I did that willingly.
SHARMILA TAGORE
FEW PERSONALITIES ATTAIN A STATURE in their lifetime where they transcend comparisons. Dilip Kumar belongs to this elite club. A great thespian, an icon of icons, an actor’s actor, versatile, mercurial, charismatic – Dilip Kumar is all of these and more.
Seven decades after his first film Jwar Bhata (1944) and sixteen years after he acted in his last production, he continues to be the final word in screen acting, someone who inspires awe and respect. This is mainly due to Dilip Kumar’s appetite for perfection and a strong commitment to his craft. For example, very early in his career, he decided to do only one film at a time, devoting his entire attention to that single project. We must remember the marketing aspect of film making then was not what it is now, and that most of his contemporaries were working in multiple films at the same time, as a form of insurance. Since Dilip Kumar was not a director-producer like Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand, this strategy might have seemed foolish to many, but it speaks volumes of Yousuf Sahab’s absolute confidence in himself. He was an actor first and foremost and not a businessman. His quest for perfection is abundantly clear in so many instances – some will remember the way he trained under Ustad Abdul Halim Jaffar Khan so that he could play the sitar in the song Madhuban mein Radhika* in Kohinoor (1960). He could have easily faked it, as a lot of actors have done, but he preferred to learn the sitar before doing the scene. His desire to get things right always added credibility to his perf
ormance. His vast and devoted fan following understood this zeal and admired him even more.
Actors like Motilal and Ashok Kumar had already begun weeding out the theatrical elements from film acting by the late 1940s, but it was with Dilip Kumar that it became the norm. He demonstrated that it was not necessary to raise one’s voice to be heard. He showed how natural and nuanced body language, and sometimes, even silence, conveyed far more than a thousand theatrical gestures. He introduced novel innovations such as enacting crucial scenes with his back to the camera, using only his voice. To the audience of the era, used to high-voltage melodrama and much gesticulation, this was revolutionary. And if he was unparalleled in the portrayal of tragic emotions – sorrow and heartbreak – in films like Footpath (1953) and Devdas (1955), he was equally brilliant in bringing comic characters alive in Azaad (1955), Kohinoor and Ram Aur Shyam (1967). He gave film acting a kind of layered edge, which was marked by self-conscious histrionics till that point in time. Many actors have tried to copy his style over the years and rightfully so, as I feel there is much to learn from his school of acting.
Among the friends I made when I first came to Bombay was Ahsan, Yousuf Sahab’s younger brother. Later, I got to know his sisters, Farida and Saeeda. I often went to Yousuf Sahab’s Pali Hill residence where they all lived. But I hardly ever saw him. And if sometimes I did run into him, I was too shy to talk to him. Years later, when I was better established as an actor, and I was shooting in Khandala for the song Kuchh dil ne kaha* from Anupama (1966), Hrishi-da (Hrishikesh Mukherjee, the director of the film) invited Tiger (the ace cricketer and captain of the Indian team, the Nawab of Pataudi, Mansur Ali Khan) to join us at the location. There, in the same hotel as ours were Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu. It was too good an opportunity to miss. Tiger sent him a note requesting a meeting. And Yousuf Sahab promptly said yes. It was a delightful evening with our conversation ranging from cinema and music to poetry, literature and sport. Tiger got slightly fed up as our host had beaten him at chess.
Yousuf Sahab was not just knowledgeable about sports but could actually play some of them quite well. I remember discovering, during the shooting of Dastaan (1972, the only film we made together, and not our best either), how good a badminton player he was. B. R. Chopra (the producer and director of Dastaan) had an indoor badminton court behind his house (which became a recording studio later) and since quite a few scenes of Dastaan were shot in his house, we often played badminton after pack-up.
This talent for badminton turned out to be quite useful for Yousuf Sahab. When his name came up for membership at the Bombay Gymkhana, many questions were asked: Why should Dilip Kumar be allowed membership? How can actors become members of such a venerated institution? Does he play any sport? Bombay Gymkhana was particular about members playing at least one game. Tiger and some of his friends batted strongly for Yousuf Sahab, How could his membership be denied? they argued. For one he was an icon, and two, he played badminton brilliantly.
For me, he also epitomizes a link to a lost era of tehzeeb – to a culture, beauty and purity of language. He has always been an exceptional speaker and could charm his audience with his mesmerizing voice and exquisite command of Urdu. In fact, he spoke many languages extremely well – it was utterly delightful to hear him speak in theth (pure) Punjabi. There was a tremendous competition between him and Raj Kapoor and yet this never affected the cordiality with which they related to each other. After all they came from the same Peshawar neighbourhood (now in Pakistan) and spoke the same language. Of course, Yousuf Sahab was a private person while Rajji was more gregarious.
After Tiger passed away (on 22 September 2011), Yousuf Sahab was one of the first to send a letter of condolence and took the trouble of even having it hand delivered. Except for the time we worked in Dastaan, we hardly ever met, and the only time we really chatted was that evening long ago in Khandala. But I have always thought of him as a well-wisher.
It is sad that after he accepted the Nishan-e-Imtiaz (in March 1998), Pakistan’s highest civilian award, he had to go through the turmoil of being branded anti-national by some self-styled nationalists and had to bear the brunt of a controversy. Icons like him are not constrained by geography. They transcend boundaries. They belong to everyone, irrespective of culture, caste and creed.
Dilip Kumar will remain forever immortal as will his unmatched contribution to Indian cinema.
*Composed by Naushad, written by Shakeel Badayuni and sung by Mohammed Rafi.
*Composed by Hemant Kumar, penned by Kaifi Azmi and sung by Lata Mangeshkar.
MANI TALATI *
KEM CHEY DIKRA’** ARE THE THREE words Dilip Sahab greets me with when he graces every family function at my home with his ever-so-charming wife Saira. His entry starts as a ripple and then resonates into a wave, or much rather like a storm, that electrifies every individual present, young and old. Swarms of admirers try to get a glimpse of this great man, greeting him and often boring him with their old memories. Dilip Sahab has a smile for everybody who greets him. This is what he has been doing for over 60 years.
I remember the funeral prayers for my mom at the Parsi fire temple. As is the practice, no non-Parsi is allowed to enter the fire temple. Dilip Sahab knew it, but, nevertheless, came with Saira and sat quietly outside the temple. For the first time, the compound gates of a Parsi temple were opened for Dilip Sahab. As the word spread that Dilip Sahab had come, everyone went to greet him, forgetting that he had come for funeral prayers and the head priest’s wife herself served tea and potato chips which he and Sairaji lovingly accepted as they kept on reviving fond memories of my mom, perhaps, the best way to bid farewell to a departed soul.
On his eighteenth wedding anniversary, when he came to know that my sister was not well, he tried to find out the right treatment for my sister by referring to his doctor and homoeopathy books, forgetting about his anniversary celebrations. When his beloved wife came into the room to tell him he should be getting dressed, he jokingly sang: ‘Saala main to doctor ban gaya’ to her. [This is a variation of the song picturized on him in the 1974 film Sagina, which begins with the line: Saala main to sahab ban gaya.]
I love to hear him talk in Parsi Gujarati. He has always remained the iconic solution to all my problems. Imagine Dilip Sahab sitting up till 2 a.m. to correct and redraft my yearly self-assessment in office, or visiting my ailing mother to bring a smile on her face, or sending his family doctor to try and cure serious medical problems of my entire family. On Bakhri Eid, he used to send many goodies. For, he is a man who believes in giving and expecting nothing. Even on his birthdays he used to jokingly taunt me about the birthday card that I got for him: ‘The best are always for my wife, and the rest is always for me, Kemre dikra bo beinsafi chey.’*
He is a true Braveheart, and I use this word for him with a little pun. After the heart operation, when I visited him at the hospital, I was expecting a surgery-weary Dilip Sahab. To my delight when I inquired how he was doing, his reply was: ‘Now I am thirty years younger at heart’, and that brought a blushing smile on Saira’s face.
At every celebration at his iconic 34B, Pali Hill bungalow, in the midst of many celebrities present, he would always care for us, inquire about our well-being in his typical Parsi Gujarati. In these celebrations he used to often state: ‘Enjoy life today for these days will never come back.’ As I look back, I recall the fun, excitement and happiness of his family and ours being together and I cherish beautiful memories.
There are about one lakh seventy thousand words in an English dictionary with around fifty thousand words that can personify the positivity of a person. I have been given a task of describing the legend of legends in less than 1000 words. There is only one thing I can say that when it comes to describing this legend: even fifty thousand positive words would fall far short in describing the one personality we know of as Dilip Kumar.
*One of Sairaji’s dearest friends.
**How are you kid?
*Kid, this is injus
tice.
VYJAYANTIMALA
IN ALL HONESTY I WOULD SAY THAT until I acted with Dilip Kumar in Devdas (1955), I was known for my dances in the earlier films I had acted in. I was not taken seriously as an actress. With Devdas, I earned acknowledgement and film makers saw my potential to blossom into a good actress because it was no mean achievement to be selected to co-star with Dilip Kumar, the tragedy king, in an intense drama directed by Bimal Roy. As a matter of fact, when Bimalda came to my house and told me that he wanted me to play Chandramukhi (a dancing girl) in Devdas and then, in his quiet manner, he told me that Dilip Kumar would be playing Devdas, I felt both happy and scared. Happy because it was every heroine’s wish to co-star with Dilip Kumar in at least one film in her career and scared because he was the most acclaimed actor of the time and enacting dramatic moments with him before the cameras demanded a certain degree of confidence.
I asked Bimalda whether I would be able to measure up to his expectations as Chandramukhi in the critical sequences with an actor of repute like Dilip Kumar. Bimalda simply smiled and replied that he had confidence in me and that was why he had come to me with the offer. That answer made me feel good. The reason was that, till that point of time, I had been reaping praises for my dancing skills and I had not really attempted serious acting. Now, when I look back it is all so amusing because I went on to co-star with Dilip Sahab in seven successful and noted films.
Well, I must describe the first scene I enacted with Dilip Sahab on the sets of Devdas. Come D day and I arrived on the sets with butterflies in my stomach but pretending to be confident and assured. The scene had a very simple dialogue for me. The line was: ‘Aur mat piyo Devdas’. (Do not drink any more Devdas.) I had to say the line when Devdas would stagger in completely inebriated. The camera was to capture Devdas and then follow him and turn its focus on me when I spoke that line with an expression of anguish and helplessness. Being a dancer, expressions came to me easily; so I thought it would be easy and I could manage it beautifully. As the technicians announced their readiness to shoot and Bimalda looked at me querulously to know if I was ready, I realized that Dilip Sahab was not on the sets.