ABSTRACT
The great thespian Dilip Kumar (born Peshawar December 11, 1922 – died Bombay July 7, 2021) lived to the ripe old age of 98. The news of Dilip’s death came just when I was about to submit the manuscript of this book for publication. News about Dilip Sahib always figured in film magazines and newspapers. So, I had kept track of his activities even from my base in Stockholm. Thanks to YouTube I was able to watch many birthday parties of this great amazing actor. I particularly remember that at his 88th birthday among the well-wishers were veteran character actor Pran, then 90 (started his film career in Lahore in a Punjabi film), and Dharmendra (also a Punjabi). His wife, Saira Bano, once the beauty queen of Bollywood, made very gracious comments about her remarkable husband. The most touching was the warmth and feeling with which she narrated that 400 students of Khalsa College, Mumbai, where Dilip studied as a young man many, many years ago, donated 89 bottles of blood—one more than the 88 years that Dilip had completed—as a pious gesture to wish him a long life. For a very long time, Dilip sahib was Author with Dilip Kumar in Mumbai, 2001 https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781003406266/f74ca652-3be2-4df7-9b75-ffa7b15f30a1/content/fig9_57_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> actively involved in charitable and philanthropic causes. On his first visit to Pakistan in 1988 he was the guest of a blood donation organization. Later, he visited Pakistan to take part in Imran Khan’s campaign to raise funds for the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital. In India, he has constantly been involved in rendering service to movements dealing with the blind and other physically challenged human beings. He was truly a man with a golden heart.
