Jugnu movie dilip kumar autobiography

By Nauman Ahmad Qureshi

Wonderful Memories of a Seven Year Old

The passing of the greatest screen legend and tragedy king, Dilip Kumar, brought back some wonderful memories of when I was seven. I snuck out with one of my cousins in the afternoon. We were in my maternal grandparents house in Quetta. All the elders were having siesta. Somehow we found our way to DELIGHT cinema which was less than a kilometer from the house and watched I my first movie TARANA,ترانہ, तराना in which Dilip Kumar plays the part of a doctor who survives a plane crash and is given refuge by an old blind man in the village. He falls in love with Madhubala, his rescuer’s daughter.

The Movie TARANA, ترانہ, तराना

TARANA,ترانہ, तराना is a romantic love story with amazing songs and music, and that was the moment  I fell in love with the movies and especially songs.

Dilip Kumar, the undisputed tragedy king of Bollywood

Dilip Kumar, the undisputed tragedy king of Bollywood was born as Muhammad Yousuf Sarwar Khan on 11 December 1922 in their family home in the QISSA KHAWANI BAZAAR of Peshawar in the present KPK. He was one of the 12 children of Lala Ghulam Sarwar Khan and Ayesha Begum.

Gregory Peck, Sir Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando in one person

For his admirers, Dilip Kumar was Gregory Peck, Sir Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando packed in one person. In one of his interviews, he mentions that he was inspired by Jimmy Stewart and Ingrid Bergman. His dialogue delivery reminds me of Ingrid Bergman, particularly her slow and calculated choice of words. He proved to the Bollywood actors of the time that performing does not require shouting or over-acting. Since most of the actors who joined the film industry were theater performers, they tended to be loud and over dramatic.

His first film Jawar Bhata ( 1944) was a flop and so were a few other movies. His first hit was Jugnu (1947), in which he was paired with another le

The CD Deshmukh Auditorium at India International Centre (IIC) was packed with about 100 audience members, most of them elderly, eager to hear their beloved star’s life story. “We came because we belong to that generation,” said Asha Gambhir, who was out on a ‘nostalgic trip’ with two friends.

Ghauri began the story with the arrival of cinema in pre-Independence India. At the time, Kumar’s father, Lala Ghulam Sarwar Khan—called Aghaji by his children—lived in Peshawar’s Qissa Khwani Bazaar — a ‘Market of Storytellers’. He was a fruit merchant who wished his son to be a learned member of society, earning a marker of class that surpassed mere wealth.

Aghaji wanted his son to enrol in the civil services and earn the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE), a high honour during the British Raj. 

In Ghauri’s narrative, Aghaji saw cinema as a degeneration of social values and the traditional way of telling a story as a dastaan or a qissa. When Prithviraj Kapoor, son of his neighbour Dewan Basheswarnath Singh Kapoor—who possessed the much-desired OBE badge—took up acting, he voiced his disappointment frankly.

As luck would have it, World War II forced Aghaji to relocate his family to Bombay, home to one of the busiest film industries around.

Also read: Dilip Kumar was the First Khan of Bollywood, the Prince Salim of our hearts: Shobhaa De

From Yusuf to Dilip

Kumar didn’t have a lifelong dream of becoming an actor; he wanted to pursue soccer. But he was handsome, charming, and well-spoken, and the industry found its way to him. Ghauri and Rahman enacted an amusing exchange between a young Kumar and Raj Kapoor that hinted at what was to come.

“O laale, tussi bade handsome ho, actor ban jao (My friend, you’re very handsome, become an actor),” read out Ghauri as Raj Kapoor.

“Are dialogues kaun bolega? Bataur tumhare m