My meeting with legendary Dilip Kumar in Chennai when he came down to attend the shoot of Izzatdaar was mentioned in my blog published on May 30 2020, It was part of my write-up on Late Raghuvaran.(https://southfilmy.blogspot.com/2020/05/no-replacement-yet-i-belong-to.html)
1990 Hindi film ‘Izzatdaar’ had stars Govinda, Dilip Kumar, Madhuri Dixit, and Anupam Kher. South actor Raghuvaran also made his Bollywood debut with this film. Director was K Bapiah and Producer Sudhakar Bokade,
Then I was working for `Screen' the top selling film weekly from the Indian Express (Mumbai) Publications. My Editor Ms Udaya Tara Nayar was accompanying the actors coming from Mumbai. She was considered a part of Dilip Saab's group as she was a family friend. She later went on to be Dilip saab's biographer and pen a book on him.
It was after a long time that Dilip Saab was coming to Chennai. He was booked in Taj Coromandel's Presidential suite. I waited at the hotel lobby for the team to arrive, I saw Dilip Saab and Sairaji alight and come in, They were taken to the suite.
My Editor came behind and I went with her to the hotel room. It was the summer time and shoot was planned mostly indoors and that too inside the Taj Hotel. In one shoot, I saw my friend Raghuvaran taking part in it. I saw the scenes which was a confrontation between Dilip Saab and Raghuvaran. After the shot there was claps.
The shoots continued. Everyday there was a press briefing for the Mumbai press crew that came with the unit. Dilip Saab did not attend any of them.
One evening, I was told by my Editor that I was invited to join Dilip Saab for dinner, as he was going back to Mumbai. I reached the suite at 7 PM. It was a big house inside the hotel. I saw a team of cooks with a chef in the kitchen area, Many servant maids, It reminded me of the Mughalai sets that I had seen in films. The atmosphere was such. I waited in the living room.
After some time, a maid walked in and told me in flowery Urdu that Dilip Saab was ready to meet me. The way she said it sounded as if I was given the audience to meet the Emperor.
As I walked ( quite a long way) to the sitting room, I saw Dilip Saab seated wearing a night gown ( usually one sees in Hindi films). He waved me to a seat. He asked about his friend Sivaji and spoke about his taking part in a function to unveil the statue of Late N S Krishnan. He said that MGR and Karunanidhi had attended the function.
He spoke about his struggling days that he spend in Chennai. The friends who supported him. Sairaji walked in with my Editor, The conversation shifted to Vyjayanthimala and Pondy Baazar shopping.
By then a tray rolled in. It had silver utensils filled with certain deliciacies. He said it was Afghan food and rolled out the names. He ate one of them and talked to the Chef ( waiting in the wings) in chaste Urdu ( later I learnt it was Pashto).
Our conversation veered to the day's shoot and the scene with Raghuvaran. I have written about it in my earlier blog on Raghuvaran. His words that still ring a bell Excerpts - In the night, at the Presidential suite of Taj Coramandel, Dilip , myself and my Editor Taraji with Saira Banu was sitting around a table watching the TV. Dilip asked me - Raghuvaran is your friend ?. I nodded. Then what he said was something memorable. " As long as an actor is saying his dialogue , he is doing theatrics. When he does not say anything and his face , eyes and cheek muscles speak, that is acting. Your friend has that ability. Don't leave him," said Dilip.
I heard from my journalistic friends who had come from Mumbai with the crew that at one point Govinda stopped giving dates to the film and refused to shoot for the film. The producer Sudakar Bokade asked Dawood Ibrahim to call Govinda and advice him to begin the film again. Govinda fearing for his life complied and agreed to finish the film.
Saab spoke about how he came back after a few setbacks in the mid-1960s when Leader and Dil Diya Dard didn't live up to expectations. He bounced back with Tapi Chanakya's Ram Aur Shyam, which hit the screens in 1967 and emerged as a big hit. It, incidentally, was a remake of NTR's Telugu classic Ramudu Bheemudu. The Telugu version was also remade in Tamil and Malayalam as Enga Veettu Pillai and Ajayanum Vijayanum with MGR and Prem Nazir in the lead.
He did not act in any Tamil film but Mughal-e-Azam was dubbed and released in Tamil as Akbar in 1961. Similarly, the 1957 classic Naya Daur was dubbed in Tamil as Pattaliyin Sabatham in 1958.
In his biography “Dilip Kumar: The Substance and the Shadow”, he revealed that Saira Banu conceived in 1972 but developed high blood pressure in her eighth month of pregnancy and the doctors couldn’t save the baby, which had been strangulated by the umbilical cord. After that, they did not try to have children believing that it was God’s will.
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