Veteran actor Dilip Kumar is best known as Dilip Saab in Bollywood due to respect. Dilip Kumar didn’t wait for chances. He made his own. Hindi cinema is synonymous with Dilip Kumar. The legend of Hindi Cinema who symbolized, enriched, and shaped the biggest film industry in the world, passed away this morning. He was 98.
Along with Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand, the other two of the famous troika, Dilip Kumar typified the modern Indian who was putting behind the shackles of colonial rule and striding towards a new, confident nation busy creating its fate and fortune.

Historic Life of Dilip Saab:

He made his debut in Jwar Bhata, a 1944 Bombay Talkies film. A much-storied meeting with the lovely Devika Rani, one of the architects of the production house along with Ashok Kumar, convinced him to change his name, and Mohammed Yusuf Khan of Peshawar origin became Bombay’s One And Only Dilip Kumar.       

He crossed over into a newly formed nation, and blazed into our consciousness in the 1949 ‘Andaaz’, possibly Hindi cinema’s first ‘triangle’ love story. And then it was a steady stream of hits accompanied by critical acclaim and the never-ending adoration of a public hungry for stories with substance and resonance, and a star they could both revere and emulate.

In 1952 came the very different ‘Aan’, and ‘Damage’. If you want to see how a swash can be buckled, please watch Mehboob Khan’s lavish spectacle in which Dilip Kumar is a brightly costumed sword-waggler par excellence. Amiya Chakravarty’s ‘Daag’ is a very desi romantic drama which has a poor boy trying to make good and win the heart of a fair lady. Dilip Kumar’s character does a lot of drinking in it, and his leading lady, played by Nimmi, is called Parvati aka Paro.

It was almost as if he was setting up for Bimal Roy’s ‘Devdas’ in 1955, in which the most famous lover in the movies turns to the bottle whenever he gets a chance, splitting his attention between his bachpan-ki-Mohabbat Paro, Suchitra Sen, and adult fancy Chandramukhi, Vyjayanthimala and spouting dialogues still in vogue. Potential ‘Aashiqui’ all turned into Devdas, and the ‘Kaun kambhakt bardaasht Karne ke liye Peeta hai’ line became the ‘takiya kalam’ of all broken hearts.   

It’s easy to raise that thought: if Dilip Kumar hadn’t been around, would Hindi cinema be what it is today? Not for nothing is it said that each star aspirant had a little bit of Dilip Kumar in him: in Amitabh Bachchan, the star who took over the 70s and 80s, and Shah Rukh Khan, who became one of the most prominent faces of the 90s Bollywood, you can see clear traces of Dilip Kumar. Both admit candidly to the massive influence he was on them.

Dominating actor, star of stars, gentle humanist, quiet philanthropist, with a personality that lived far beyond his screen appearances, he not only established himself as a top-flight entertainer in the film business as actor and producer but impacted the styles of many others who came after him.

He was dubbed Tragedy King because he was such a wonderful crier; his face crumpled, the tears looked real, not glycerine streaks, and his voice shook. But his passes at Comedy and Drama were equally effective. He cracked us up with great natural flair and ease, and when he got into his stride, delivering those dialogues in such a clean tongue– the diction laced with Urdu and Hindustani– that it was a delight. They became such a high point of his films that his adoring fans would flock to the film just to hear him speak.         

In Naya Daur in 1957, he proved that he could ride a horse-cart while looking into his lady love’s (Vyjayanthimala) eyes, both warbling the city, with the lovely song ‘maang ke Saath tumoral. The ‘punarjanam’ reincarnation theme was brought into popular imagination with Bimal Roy’s ‘Madhumati’ in 1958, and we fell in love, all over again, with the handsome hero singing ‘suhana safar aur yeh Mausam haseen’.  Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam in 1960 provided us with one of the most potent love-making tools we had ever seen: a feather. Shaikh strokes Anarkali’s face as the background music ebbs and swells, deliberately, languorously, sensuously.

It’s not just Dilip Kumar and Madhubala who go into a trance; the audience also goes into raptures. His long-lived real-life romance with this leading lady was the stuff of many salty stories in the tabloids; he married the much younger Saira Banu, and they lived happily ever after, just like in the movies.

In 1991, he appeared in Subhash Ghai’s ‘Saudagar’, alongside Raaj Kumar. It was his last hit. Bollywood Veteran Actor Dilip Kumar didn’t wait for chances. He made his own. And doing so, he made the movies, and us, his own.

Accolades:
He won numerous Filmfare Awards for Best Actor,8 times, Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1994. He was awarded Padma Bhushan in 1991 Nishan-e-Imtiaz in 1998 Padma Vibhushan in 2015.