The death of Dilip Kumar on Wednesday draws the curtain on the Golden Age of Hindi cinema. In six decades and in over 60 films, the actor ...
The death of Dilip Kumar on Wednesday draws the curtain on the Golden Age of Hindi cinema. In six decades and in over 60 films, the actor extraordinaire played a range of characters with acute sensitivity and unmatched finesse. He is associated with some of the greatest Hindi films and the most memorable songs. His contributions to the craft of performance will reverberate for decades to come.
Dilip Kumar was felicitated with several awards, including the Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan, and Nishan-e-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s highest civilian honour. He is frequently described as the Tragedy King of Indian cinema, but his legacy is far too rich to be summarised by a single epithet.
He was born Mohammad Yusuf Khan on December 11, 1922, to Ayesha Begum and Mohammed Sarwar Khan in Peshawar in undivided India. He was the fifth of 12 children. The father was a fruit merchant who, in the 1930s, moved with his brood to Kolkata and later Mumbai.
In Mumbai, Yusuf Khan studied at Anjuman-i-Islam High School and later at Wilson College and then Khalsa College. At Khalsa College, he met Raj Kapoor, who, like him, would become one of the biggest names in Hindi cinema. The Khans and Kapoors knew each other from Peshawar. The future screen icons forged...
