Bathinda: Indian screen legend Dilip Kumar was a fanboy of Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, whose daughter, 79-year-old professor Salima Hashmi, recalls Yusuf Khan’s reciting her father’s Urdu couplets from memory whenever she rewinds a tape from Mumbai.
Speaking to the Times of India from Lahore, she recalled Dilip Kumar’s 1989 visit to Karachi with his wife, Saira Banu, and brother, Ahsan Khan, for a charity event to raise money for the patients of thalassaemia. She said: “He called my mother, Alys Faiz, to ask if he could come to our house in Lahore to do personal condolences for the demise of my father, although he had sent a message at Faiz Saab’s passing away in 1984. He requested to make it a private affair but the word got out and his admirers poured in from all over. Poet Qateel Shifai and our family doctor also queued up.”