His most-remembered performances had distinct tragic undertones. He became the poster boy of aborted ardour. He induced intensity into loving and losing in a way that pain became indistinguishable from pleasure. Yet a generation later Dilip Kumar made the part his own. In the pre-independence era, Pramathesh Barua and KL Saigal had swayed a million hearts as Devdas. Kumar was so immersed in the selfdestructive protagonist of Devdas (1955) that he had to undergo psychiatric counselling. An obsessive perfectionist, he learnt to play the sitar for a song sequence in Kohinoor. His brooding intensity and comic flair influenced Bollywood A-listers such as Rajendra Kumar, Manoj Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan. Kumar, whose real name was Yusuf Khan, even refused the part that made Omar Sharif a Hollywood star in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia.

Secure in his craft, he acted only in 60-odd films in a career spanning more than five decades. As academic Meghnad Desai wrote in his book, Nehru’s Hero, he “reflected the best of this country at the best of its times”.ĭilip Kumar’s best encapsulated the finest in popular cinema. The Peshawar-born actor’s passing away marks the closure of an affectionate and passionate chapter in the life of post-independent India. Kumar's demise brings an end to the great triumvirate - Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand being the other two - who lorded over the Hindi film industry and a multitude of hearts in the 1950s and 1960s. And he was a rare icon of excellence in a young, independent India. He was the actor other actors wanted to be. He could make dialogues sound like music: soft, slow and sonorous. But Dilip Kumar, who passed away at 98 at a Mumbai hospital on Wednesday following “prolonged illness,” was more. Fans coined a title for him: Tragedy King.

When that heart splintered, you could see every shade of sadness in those immersive eyes.

In the early years of his film career, he often played the defeated lover in doomed love stories creating the celluloid template for the melancholic male heart.

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