Dilip Kumar: The sole supernova in Galaxy Bollywood

Yusuf Khan from Peshawar, aka Dilip Kumar, was completely believable in a wide range of roles in a span of 12 years at the height of his career covering 62 films in nearly 50 years

From the time films began to be made in 1900, stars the world over assiduously cultivated distinctive images. In the Golden Age of Hindi cinema Raj Kapoor was always a Chaplinesque innocent. And Dev Anand was ever the happy-go-lucky urban imp. But there was one outlier. Picture these vignettes: 

• A debonair young man at a piano sings “aaj kisi ki haar hui hai, aaj kisi ki jeet” (somebody lost today, somebody won). He has just learnt that the heiress he loved is actually long enamoured of someone else.
• The heir to the Mughal throne runs a feather along the face