When Dilip Kumar Turned Murderer
Bollywood legends have been an integral part of our modern cultural history. Legends about a certain celebrity whose career was sabotaged by a contemporary who was also a relative (the Lata-Asha rivalry) or how an actor killed the career of another actor out of jealousy (Amitabh-Jaya theory) have been in circulation for the longest time. These stories, these modern myths, have found their believers in people like my mother. An ardent fan of the movies, my mother is full of such stories and many of them hardly make any sense.
She would repeatedly tell me how Dilip Kumar used Madhubala or how Parveen Babi was used by Amitabh Bachchan. While Babi was in love with him, he only wanted to have ‘fun’ (by which she means sex). And this is what, according to my mother, pushed Babi to the verge of insanity. How much truth can be found in these stories is perhaps a question better left unasked. Because where’s the fun in that?
Such stories were exchanged at dinner table conversations or movie nights on Sundays when we would gather in our living room to watch whatever film Doordarshan was playing. It was one such Sunday evening, when Doordarshan decided to show the 1964 black and white classic Dosti. The story was about the journey of two teenage boys, one blind and one crippled. And it launched the short-lived careers of Shushil Kumar and Sudhir Kumar. The film’s songs, while supremely sappy, were a blockbusters then. It was while watching this tediously boring film that my mother gave me the gossip about the two boys.
Did you know, she said, these boys aren’t alive anymore? It wasn’t a hard thing to believe given their age and everything. But she wasn’t done yet. She told me that they were murdered by a big, famous actor of their time. He got insecure of their fame and got them killed. When I asked my mother who that actor was, she told me she can’t be sure but rumour has it that it was Dilip Kumar. For a 10-year-old that gossip was gold, especially because Dilip Kumar had become the bane of my existence, thanks to my mother’s love for his supremely irritating 1968 film Aadami. “Aaj Purani Raahon Se Koi Mujhe Aawaaz Na De,” sang Dilip Kumar and I firmed by belief that he was the one to have killed the two budding actors. It gave me a valid reason to hate him.
However, as I grew up, my hatred for Dilip Kumar subsided. It was impossible to escape his charms in movies like Madhumati, Naya Daur and Devdas. And I completely forgot about the two boys from Dosti. It was only recently that I remembered my mother’s theory when I saw a blog post on my Facebook feed putting an end to this gossip. The post was by a researcher who worked for a programme called Suhana Safar with Annu Kapoor. A listener of the programme had written to Annu Kapoor asking the whereabouts of the the two actors of the film. When the question was sent to the said researcher, it led to a massive hunt. The researcher, like me, had heard the murder conspiracy story and knew nothing more about the actors. After a lot of findings, he stumbled upon a relative of Sushil Kumar who helped him get in touch with the actor.
An interview was then arranged, this July, with the actor. Here’s an excerpt.
“Sudhir Kumar and I became close pals during the shoot of ‘Dosti’. He was around two and half years younger to me and his full name was Sudhir Kumar Sawant. He was a Maharashtrian and lived in Lalbaag, Parel. We were family friends who often visited each other’s homes. Sudhir’s family consisted of his parents, one elder sister Shobha and one younger sister Chitra. He passed S.S.C. from the Aryabhattam School. His maternal uncle (mama) Prabhakar was the chief makeup man at V.Shantaram’s company ‘Rajkamal Kalamandir’.
Prior to ‘Dosti’, Sudhir had acted in the movie ‘Sant Gyaneshwar’ which also released in the year 1964. Later he acted in ‘Jeene Ki Raah’ (1969) and a Marathi movie ‘Ghar Chi Rani’ (1968) besides ‘Laadla’ (1966) but his career failed to take off. He married by the end of the 1960’s decade. But he didn’t get a single movie after marriage and he was almost out of the film world. On the other hand because of my hectic job we started losing touch.
It was in the year 1994 when I met one of my colleagues from Air India in London when I was on the way back to India from Canada. He was also a Maharashtrian. He informed me about the death of Sudhir Kumar which came as a shock to me. On reaching Mumbai I went to Sudhir Kumar’s home. His father had died long back. Both his sisters had gone to their respective homes after marriage. I met his mother, wife and daughter. His mother informed me that during 1993 Mumbai riots; Sudhir suffered an injury to his throat due to a chicken bone being lodged in his throat while eating food.
He couldn’t be given immediate treatment as the area was under curfew. Subsequently his injury went from bad to worse and it became very difficult for him to swallow food. Circumstances turned so bad that he had to be admitted to the Tata Hospital. For months he was given liquid food through pipe but he could not survive. Some years later I again went to Sudhir’s home to know about the wellbeing of his mother, wife and daughter and came to know that they had already left Mumbai long back. Sudhir’s younger sister Chitra lived in Pune and she had taken her mother, sister in law and the niece along.
It is said that false news about someone’s death enhances his/her age. Unfortunately this belief proved to be wrong for Sudhir Kumar as after the grand success of the movie ‘Dosti’ a rumor had spread that Sudhir Kumar and I had been murdered, surprisingly enough I fail to understand even today who was behind this rumor and what exactly was their motive.”
This post does put a lid on the ‘conspiracy theory’ surrounding the death of the two actors, one of whom is still alive. When I gave this information to my mother, she was relieved. She told me it was hard for her to believe that Dilip Kumar could have been behind all this. After all, she said, he was the biggest superstar of their generation and he had no reason to be insecure; and unlike Amitabh Bachchan, did not seem like a cruel man.