Dilip Kumar: The Substance and the Shadow

by Dilip Kumar

  Asif and I were temperamentally and intellectually poles apart. Though as friends we shared an informality in our interactions, he knew he was not welcome to share my thoughts unless I invited him. Frankly, I had more concerns occupying my thoughts than the love scenes in the film. I had very little textual reference to study the personal characteristics of Prince Salim. It was imperative for me to establish a mental bond with the character and I knew from the moment I agreed to play the role that it was going to be a lone journey of research and discovery from whatever material was available.

  Interestingly, Asif had wanted me to play Prince Salim in a project he had started way back when I was working in Nadiya Ke Paar (1948). He had invited me over to his house and introduced me to his wife, the Kathak danseuse Sitara Devi, with whom an instant rapport developed as we talked about classical Hindustani music and dance forms. As our conversation progressed and she had served us tea and snacks, Sitara Bhabhi hesitatingly asked me if she could call me Bhaijaan (brother) as she felt a sisterly affection for me and she had only one brother and had room in her heart for one more.

  Asif remained quiet and observant while Sitara Bhabhi talked seamlessly about dance, music, films, weather, food, servants and what have you. Finally, Asif got a chance to get in a word. He said he liked everything about me but he felt I was rather too young to play Prince Salim at that juncture. He remarked: ‘You have the royal bearing of a prince but I want an older look.’ I told him he was right. Rather prophetically, he then declared that in the future he would make a film relating the love story of Salim and Anarkali on a scale that would inspire awe and he would cast me as the romantic prince. I was somewhat amused by his overweening sense of supreme confidence but I had enough sense not to reveal my amusement. He announced the film shortly with Sapruji (D. K. Sapru. who later became a character actor) in the lead but due to financial curbs he could not go beyond a few reels.

  So when he approached me years later with the proposal of Mughal-e-Azam, it was like a dream come true for him. I had by then moved up the echelons of stardom and our friendship and my fraternal ties with Sitara Devi had continued uninterrupted despite there being no talk of work between us. Then, one day, he came to meet me with a twinkle in his eyes and, after the usual pleasantries, he began to recall our first meeting and he reminded me of the promise he had made to himself to film the story of Anarkali and Prince Salim on a scale of grandeur and opulence that would inspire awe and I would play the prince. I remembered the episode vividly and couldn’t help marvelling at the ways of Destiny.

  I worked on Salim’s personality by fine-tuning my instincts appropriately to create a screen persona who closely matched the descriptions I read in some fine books I got hold of in the Anjuman Islam school library. I could always depend on my friend Mohammad Umar Mukri (a short-statured character actor) to help me out on such occasions. He rummaged through bookshops and got me whatever he could lay his hands on. To cut the story short, I think I more or less succeeded in approximating my get-up and screen persona of Prince Salim to the picture I had formed in my mind. I knew at the very start of the project that I was not going to get much help from Asif. He had numerous concerns to deal with as the director and in his typical manner he laughed away my worries saying: ‘Just be yourself. You are Prince Yousuf.’

  *Nargis was born as Fatima Rashid on 1 June 1929.

  *The film was Malaikallan (1954), featuring M. G. Ramachandran (MGR) as the hero.

  *V. V. Purie, then a film financier, was the father of Aroon Purie of India Today fame.

  **Meena Kumari was born as Mahjabeen Bano on 1 August 1932.

  13

  MADHUBALA

  I did feel sorry for Madhu and wished she had the will to protect her interests at least on the professional front without thoughtlessly bowing to her father’s wishes all the time. Such submission had an adverse impact not only on her professional reputation but also on her health needlessly.

  MADHUBALA WAS NO DOUBT THE RIGHT CHOICE FOR THE ROLE of Anarkali. She grasped the essence of the character in no time with her agile intelligence. Yes, there was talk of our marriage while the shooting of Mughal-e-Azam was in progress in the 1950s. Contrary to popular notions, her father, Ataullah Khan, was not opposed to her marrying me. He had his own production company and he was only too glad to have two stars under the same roof. Had I not seen the whole business from my own point of view, it would have been just what he wanted, that is, Dilip Kumar and Madhubala holding hands and singing duets in his productions till the end of our careers. When I learned about his plans from Madhu, I explained to both of them that I had my own way of functioning and selecting projects and I would not show any laxity even if it were my own production house. It must have tilted the apple cart for him and he successfully convinced Madhu that I was being rude and presumptuous. I told her in all sincerity and honesty that I did not mean any offence and it was in her interest and mine as artistes to keep our professional options away from any personal considerations. She was naturally inclined to agree with her father and she persisted in trying to convince me that it would all be sorted out once we married. My instincts, however, predicted a situation in which I would be trapped and all the hard work and dedication I had invested in my career would be blown away by a hapless surrender to someone else’s dictates and strategies. I had many upfront discussions with her father and she, not surprisingly, remained neutral and unmoved by my dilemma. The scenario was not very pleasant and it was heading inevitably to a dead end. In the circumstances, therefore, it seemed best that we did not decide to marry or even give each other a chance to rethink because my resolve by then had become strongly against a union that would not be good for either of us.

  With Madhubala in a romantic scene from Mughal-e-Azam (1960).

  I was truly relieved when we parted because I had also begun to get an inkling that it was all very well to be working together as artistes but in marriage it is important for a woman to be ready to give more than receive. I had grown up seeing Amma’s steadfast devotion to the family and her flawless character as a woman. I was now increasingly seized with the feeling that I was letting myself into a relationship more on the rebound than out of a genuine need for a permanent companion. What’s more, I did not want to share a lifetime with someone whose priorities were different from mine. Besides, she certainly would have been drawn to other colleagues in the profession, as I found out, and they to her but that wasn’t an issue because I was myself surfacing from an emotional upheaval at that point of time.

  The parting of ways did not affect me as was concocted by writers in the media. Journalists were not as rash as they are now but they were just as unmindful of factual accuracy when they wrote about actors. Some of them wrote ‘authoritatively’ in their gossip magazines and attributed my choosing to remain a bachelor all my life to the assumed heartbreak of not marrying Madhubala. The story had sentimental appeal for readers. Nobody bothered to check out the facts and, at that point of time, I was far too absorbed in my work and my family responsibilities to give clarifications. Let me state categorically that I chose to remain a bachelor because I had young sisters to be married off and for me the taking care of, and ensuring the happiness of, my brothers and sisters were paramount.

  The absolute truth is that I had mentally stayed all thoughts of sharing my space with a spouse because I had taken on the responsibility of settling my sisters and brothers. As mentioned earlier, Amma was ailing with an acute respiratory disorder and Aghaji was trying hard to hide the debilitating impact of advancing age from all of us. He was not one to ask for a helping hand to rise from a chair or descend a steep staircase. He was dressed and ready every morning to visit his fruit shop. The premature death of Ayub Sahab had dealt an emotional blow, from which my parents could only pretend to recover. Another widespread canard was that the break-up between Madhu and me caused the heart condition that finally claimed her life. The heart condition that was diagnosed was congenital in her. It was unf
ortunate that she began to succumb to the condition and had to discontinue the commitments she had made to producers. Unfortunately, medical facilities then were not as advanced as they are now in the area of cardiology.

  I had become a star by the early 1950s and Aghaji was reconciled to the truth that whatever he had wished for me in all his prayers had been granted by Allah. The initial unhappiness and hurt pride that he experienced when he came to know that the son on whom he had pinned hopes of achievements as a high-ranking bureaucrat or statesman had become an entertainer had given way to grateful and humble acceptance of the will of Allah.

  Among my brothers and sisters, I knew I was the one whom both Aghaji and Amma trusted implicitly for shouldering, in ever so many unspoken and unanticipated ways, the responsibility of educating and settling the daughters and sons who were younger than I. Noor Sahab had married and moved out with his wife. My eldest sister, Sakina Aapa, remained unmarried and, as Amma often felt, it was providential that she was single as her unyielding character was not suited for a successful marriage. As she grew older, she mellowed and became softer in her relationship with Amma but wilful she still was. It was always worrying for Amma how her eldest daughter would live her life alone in the world and whenever she spoke of it, her moist eyes would search for an assuring whisper from me.

  I loved Amma deeply. She was the fountainhead of all the merits and virtues we – her children – possessed. She dealt with all the exigencies of life with a quiet poise and calmness of mind. I took pleasure even as a child in observing her when she prayed. As I grew up I began to feel that the time she took off from her chores for namaaz was her time in her own space to meditate and attain control over her mind and thoughts and achieve that nearness to the Supreme Being, which is a rare achievement. She appeared frail and delicate but she was strong and invincible inside. Aghaji and I knew it.

  Let me get back to the main narrative. Madhubala’s father, in a bid to show me his authority, got her entangled in a lawsuit with producer-director B. R. Chopra by suddenly making a fuss about the long outdoor work scheduled for Naya Daur (eventually released in 1957) giving her heart condition as a reason for her withdrawal from the film. He came up with an excuse about his daughter’s inability to work at the outdoor locations in Bhopal and Poona for the film after some reels were canned. Chopra Sahab was upset and very angry because it was made clear at the very outset, when the script narration was given to the artistes, that it was an outdoor film. There were all sorts of conclusions drawn by people who did not know the sequence of events and the true background when Chopra Sahab, who held a bachelor’s degree in law before he took to journalism in Lahore in the pre-independence period, took legal steps to challenge the whimsicality on Madhu’s part. As a fellow artiste, I could do little but fall in line with the producer’s decision to replace Madhu with Vyjayantimala, when all sincere and genuine efforts on my part to negotiate an easy compromise without making the issue public became futile. I did feel sorry for Madhu and wished she had the will to protect her interests at least on the professional front without thoughtlessly bowing to her father’s wishes all the time. Such submission had an adverse impact not only on her professional reputation but also on her health needlessly.

  All through my career I respected the producer’s right as an employer to discipline the cast and crew and demand cooperation from them once the contract was signed. Vyjayantimala and I had worked with a fair measure of respect and understanding in Bimal Roy’s Devdas (1955) and Chopra Sahab had liked her work. (She had played the role of Chandramukhi, a tender-hearted dancing girl.) He had heard from his own sources that she was hard working and malleable as an artiste. Chopra Sahab went ahead with the replacement of Madhubala by Vyjayantimala without wasting time once he accepted the situation that all the shooting done with Madhubala would have to go into cold storage and the loss of time and substantial funds would have to be reconciled with. The announcement of the renewal of the project and the start of fresh shooting for Naya Daur created a stir in the media. Much of what appeared in the media was misreporting by gossip writers who twisted and twirled facts to make them palatable to readers. Like Chopra Sahab, I took it all in my stride, though it caused anger and pain at times when I was made to appear as if I had got Madhu out of the film while the truth was that her father pulled her out of the project to demonstrate his authority.

  14

  DEVDAS, NAYA DAUR AND BEYOND

  It was during the making of Naya Daur that I noticed Vyjayanti’s ability to feign a rustic character’s mannerisms with conviction. When I was scripting Gunga Jumna, I felt she would fit the role of Dhanno if she took pains to render the Bhojpuri dialect (used in the film) with the right accent and inflexions …. It was during the production of Naya Daur that I began to form the story idea of Gunga Jumna in my mind. I decided too that if I went ahead and made Gunga Jumna, I would cast Vyjayanti in the lead.

  BEFORE I MOVE ON TO NAYA DAUR AND VYJAYANTIMALA, I MUST dwell on Devdas, the first of the seven films with her as my leading lady.

  When Bimal Roy (popularly called Bimalda) approached me sometime in 1954 with the idea of playing the title role in the film Devdas, neither had I seen the earlier 1936 K. L. Saigal starrer nor had I read Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s famous novel of the same name. In fact, Bimalda did not tell me at once, when he visited me, that his intention was to discuss the film he was so keen to make. After some pleasant talk he let our mutual friend Hiten Choudhury (basically a producer), who accompanied him, bring up the subject. It was something I had not anticipated, so I asked for a few days to think it over. He nodded and smiled. Then, as he was leaving, he said very quietly, ‘read the novel, I will send you a fine translation.’

  Bimalda was a man of few words. He left and I received the translation the next day. I won’t go into details but it troubled me initially to experiment with the rendering of a character who carried a heavy measure of pain and despondency under the skin and could mislead the more vulnerable youth to believe that alcoholism offered the best escape from the pain of losing in love. As I reflected over the subject, which had already been filmed very successfully with K. L. Saigal in the title role, I felt that it could become a memorable film and find itself a place among the iconic films of all time if I played the part with appropriate discretion.

  Today’s cinema and its audience, sadly, don’t have the kind of emotional give and take that the cinema of the 1950s had. The basic reason was that cinema was the main source of entertainment those days and, more often than not, its content was taken seriously by most viewers. I am emphasizing this aspect to give credit to the directors who shouldered serious moral responsibility in our times when they chose to make films that had deep social relevance and implications for the audience.

  With Motilal in Devdas (1955).

  I think Bimalda knew from his own sources that I was a stickler for making the writing base of a film strong. So he made it comfortable for me to participate in the writing work along with his formidable team comprising Nabendu Ghosh and Rajinder Singh Bedi, among others. The lines from Devdas, I must mention here, are some of the most responsible and sensitive ever written for a Hindi film hero.

  In fact, the dialogues of Devdas are replete with a haunting sensitivity, spontaneity and meaning. They came from the pen of Rajinder Singh Bedi, one of those rare writers whose syntax was so perfect that the simple lines he wrote inspired actors to build up deep emotions in their rendering. Being myself not given to superfluous speech, I appreciated the precision and brevity of the lines he wrote for Devdas. They were lines of profound meaning at times, but they were so simply and sensitively worded that generations of viewers have found pleasure in repeating them lovingly.

  Vyjayanti and I carried forward the professional understanding and bonhomie we had developed during Devdas to the six films we worked in thereafter. She emerged as a capable artiste and a quick learner. After Devdas, when we came together for Madhumati (released in 1958), she had
made considerable progress in her rendering of scenes and dialogue. She was diligent and took pains to grasp the pace and complexity of the situations, especially when the surrealistic and metaphysical scenes and situations were given to her for study before we went before the cameras to film Madhumati.

  It was not easy for me or, for that matter, for Pran and Johnny Walker,* my co-artistes in Madhumati, to know whether or not Bimalda liked the shots he had taken when we were shooting outdoors and indoors for that film. He was one director who never expressed his delight or approval vocally or through facial expression. If he liked the shot, he just moved on to the next shot, implicitly conveying to us that he had got what he had visualized. We, Pran and I, never gave up trying to get an exclamation of satisfaction from him when we gave a brilliant take but Bimalda just wouldn’t succumb. He would simply say: ‘Let us move the cameras for the next shot.’ Then, he would amble over to cinematographer Dilip Gupta to get the next shot going.

  With Johnny Walker and David Abraham among others.

  The wonderful trait in Bimalda was his serenity and his refusal to get excited about anything. Which was very unusual for a Bengali. His exemplary virtue was his willingness to help his artistes if they failed to understand his vision. He once told me in his own gentle manner that the pain he had endured in his personal life when he was thrown to the wolves as a youth and he had to fend for himself and his mother had been an experience that taught him not to ever inflict pain on anybody.