Mumbai: Dilip Saab
At Winston Churchill’s funeral, there was a moment that history remembers.
As his coffin was carried out of Westminster Abbey—down ancient stone steps toward a barge waiting on the Thames—a special group of pallbearers had been chosen from across the armed services of Great Britain. Halfway down, one sailor fractured his ankle. For a split second, it seemed the coffin might fall.
Later, officials asked him, How did you manage to go on?
The sailor answered simply:
“I would have carried him all over London.”
That is how I feel about Dilip Saab.
Born Yusuf Khan, renamed by destiny when he entered cinema, he became something far larger than an actor. He emerged as the embodiment of the plural soul of India. That plurality was not asserted—it was lived. Look at his work. Prince Salim in Mughal-e-Azam. Then Ganga Jamuna—the way he says “Hey Ram” still resonates. It is not a performance. It is memory.
I often say—only half in jest—that in those days, half the actors in India tried to imitate Dilip Kumar, and the other half tried desperately not to.
Recently, while shooting a commercial with the great Amitabh Bachchan—an icon of our age—we spoke about Dilip Saab and Shakti. Alia, my daughter, listened quietly, absorbing the conversation like a student eavesdropping on history.
Amitabh recalled how Dilip Saab rehearsed incessantly—not from anxiety, but from respect. And when something in the air felt unfulfilled—within the actor, the director, or the moment—he would insist on another take. Truth mattered more than convenience.
Then Amitabh spoke of the final scene of Shakti—shot on the tarmac at Mumbai airport. The son fleeing. The father assigned to stop him. A gunshot. The son collapsing into the father’s arms. Time was short. The unit restless. Technicians murmuring.
And Dilip Saab—whose scene it was not—erupted.
He demanded silence. Absolute silence. He chided the crew, stood guard over the young actor, and insisted that Amitabh be given the space to gather himself and pour his emotions into that moment. He protected the scene as if it were sacred.
That one act spoke volumes—about the man, the actor, the giant.
He would have been 103 today. And in Dharmendraji’s words—words I choose to reaffirm—there was no one like Dilip Kumar. There will never be another.
People who live in your heart are not erased by time.
And I am left with one image.
Bradford, United Kingdom.
A lifetime achievement ceremony.
The hall is full—Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis. Faces from Iran, Iraq, Africa, the Far East. They have not come for nostalgia; they have come to see a living inheritance in flesh and blood.
I am interviewing him on stage.
I ask, “Mr. Yusuf Khan—how has it been to be Dilip Kumar in this lifetime?”
He lets the question travel through him. It sinks deep. He looks back at me—eyes open, sincere, unguarded.
Behind him, on the stage, is a giant image from Devdas—his own face, eternal, monumental.
He turns to look at it.
And quietly, almost with wonder, he says,
“I don’t know who he is.”
Then, after a pause large enough to enter,
“It doesn’t add up to anything. Nothing adds up to anything.”
He keeps staring.
That emptiness stays with me.
An emptiness that is full.
Full of him.
Full of radiance.
Full of generosity.
And that—somehow—lasts.
Happy birthday, Dilip Saab.
India remembers.
Cinema carries you on.