Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu tied the knot in 1966, a time when Dilip, at 44, was regarded as the ‘most eligible bachelor,’ while Saira was 22. Their marriage quickly became a hot topic in the media, with magazines and tabloids speculating about their plans for children. Years later, when Dilip briefly married Asma Rehman in 1982, rumors swirled that it was because “Saira could not bear a child.” However, Dilip himself clarified that this was not the reason. He revealed that Saira had been pregnant, but sadly, they lost the baby before birth.
In his autobiography, Dilip Kumar: The Substance And The Shadow, the legendary actor addressed these misconceptions. He explained that it was “wrongly represented that Saira could not bear a child” when he married Asma Rehman. Dilip shared a deeply personal memory about 1972 when he and Saira were expecting a baby. “The truth is that Saira had borne a child, a boy (as we came to know later), in 1972. We lost the baby in the eighth month of pregnancy when Saira developed high blood pressure and the obstetricians attending on her could not perform the surgery in time to save the full-grown foetus, which had been strangulated by the umbilical cord. We took the loss in our stride as the will of God,” he wrote.
Reflecting on his life, Dilip often faced questions about whether he felt unfulfilled without children. He admitted that “it would have been great if we had our own kids,” but emphasized that this absence wasn’t a “shortcoming” for them. Dilip shared that his nieces and nephews brought immense joy into their lives, and he cherished these relationships as if they were his own children. “They were enough to make us feel like parents. As infants they were brought to me and it was mandatory for the babies to sleep soundly on my large chest as if they were on a foam mattress. As they grew up, they came home to play interesting games with ‘Mamu’ as all of them addressed me,” he reminisced.
Dilip fondly spoke about Saira’s enthusiasm during family gatherings, highlighting how she “went all out” to make such moments special. He appreciated the love they shared with their extended family, saying it was “wonderful to love and be loved by them and be there solidly when they need us and vice versa.” Yet, he also noted the passage of time, expressing how he missed his now-grown nephews and nieces who were busy with their own lives. Reflecting on the what-ifs of parenthood, he remarked, “Perhaps if we had our own sons or daughters, they too would have gone to places far away to pursue their dreams and we would have got to see them once or twice a year.”
Saira Banu and Dilip Kumar were married on October 11, 1966, when she was 22 and he was 44. Their marriage spanned five decades until Dilip’s passing on July 7, 2021. Dilip first fell in love with Saira at her 22nd birthday party. In his memoir Dilip Kumar: The Substance and the Shadow, he recalled the moment he saw her in a brocade sari, instantly falling in love.
He wrote, “When I alighted from my car and entered the beautiful garden that leads to the house, I can still recall my eyes falling on Saira standing in the foyer of her new house looking breathtakingly beautiful in a brocade sari. I was taken aback, because she was no longer the young girl I had consciously avoided working with because I thought she would look too young to be my heroine. She had indeed grown to full womanhood and was in reality more beautiful than I thought she was. I simply stepped forward and shook her hand and for us, time stood still.” Shortly after, Dilip proposed to Saira.
Dilip also had a brief second marriage to Asma Rehman in 1981, which lasted two years. In his autobiography, he referred to it as a “grave mistake.”
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