Dilip Kumar Is No More:

It is a deep personal loss to me that Dilip Saab, one of the heroes of my life, passed away a few hours ago.

I discovered him in my mid-teens when I was living in Srinagar, Kashmir. During those years there was not much going on in a teenager’s life except reading books, listening to music on Radio Kashmir, seeing movies, and imagining romances with pretty girls. The last item was more in the realm of imagination than in reality, as the existing morality strongly looked down upon it .

When I saw the first Dilip Kumar movie, I was hypnotized. His emoting, speaking, walking, and everything else was sharp, sensitive, coming deep from his heart. And the tragedy roles he played were in sync with my soul. After seeing a Dilip Kumar movie I used be so moved, that for several days I would be knocked out. It would take me effort to come back to real life.

After seeing his many movies I came to think that he must be a special personalty in his real life. My thinking came to be true after I delved deeply in his real life. I found that he was an intelligent and a sensitive man, who had a strong character. Also, I came to know that that he was very selective in the roles he played, was very good to people, so much so you could not criticize any person in Bollywood and beyond in his presence. If you did, he would come out with many good qualities and deeds that the criticized person had to his credit.

In the last few years I had a wish that he live up to 100, to add aura to his personality.

His life, beyond the cinema, I studied keenly. I found that he knew how to live it, true to his personality. He maintained his artistic personality, knitting it with realism, and constrained to practical difficulties of life. The same qualities of sensitivity, intelligence, and character he used in his movie roles, he also applied to his life. He was selective in his roles, so that he ended up working in less than 60 films; while actors of his level of success would act in more than 100. This was a delineation of his character. He did not want to work in all kind of cheap movies, just to make money.

Using Tagore’s language, Dilip Kumar was greater than his deeds and truer than his surroundings. His name will not only live on in Bollywood, but in India, and beyond.

He was the first hero of my life; subsequently, I added four other heroes, as I grew up. But none of them chipped away anything from the magic of Dilip Saab.

Today my hero has left me, but his life will keep on inspiring me by its sensitivity, tenacity, talent, realism, and strong character.

Maharaj Kaul

https://www.facebook.com/profile/100009422537911/search?q=dilip%20kumar

It was hard to believe when you left us,

A shock to our existences,

A joy-wrencher, a peace-snatcher.

For years you walked on earth with tough-feet,

And carried high-ambition,

But soft ways and words you used with the world.

Though in rough business,

Your concern for humanity never wavered,

Family was your prime focus.

You left a mark for us to look up to,

A way to emulate,

A memory to rekindle our souls.

Suffern, New York, February 23, 2024

www.kaulscorner.com

maharaj.kaul@yahoo.com

 I do not remember when I first heard about Kailash Mehra the singer the first time, but I remember thinking about her seriously in 1990’s when her musical CD Bal Maryo came out. It was a fabulous collection of Kashmiri songs, including the classic bedardi chani, which also is her favorite song of herself. I heard the CD dozens of times. It also introduced the singer Vijay Malla to me, whose singing I have cherished since.

In 2003 we heard that Kailash Mehra was touring U.S. for her musical concerts. My wife felt strongly that we should manage her New York concert. I supported her in her vision, and in that direction, we realized that we should invite her to stay with us. To our good fortune she accepted the invitation, and the date of her arrival from, I think, one of the Midwest cities, was set.

Kailash Mehra’s flight was coming at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. I started two hours before the flight arrival time from my home. I was lucky to find the parking for my car at the airport quickly. This put me in the arrival gate an hour before the flight arrival, a long time to kill comfortably. It was a busy arrival gate where several flights came. Every few minutes I would check my watch to see how much more time I will have to wait to meet Kailshji. Finally, it was announced that my guest’s flight had landed. I waited anxiously for her to come to the baggage arrival carousel, from which I was only twenty feet away. One by one the passengers from the city in Midwest flight came to the carousel and after some search picked their bags and left the arrival building. But I did not see Kailash Mehra. But wait a minute, I had never met her before. How was I then going to recognize her? Well, I had seen her photograph in the concert flyer used in one of the cities she had given a concert in. Arrival passengers around the baggage arrival carousel were thinning out, but where was my Kailashji? Now there were only four passengers looking for their baggage. But which of them was Kailashji? It remained a $64,000 question, as I was not able to match the passengers with the image of Kailash Mehra I had in my head. I started panicking, which is not normal for me. Finally, there was only one passenger left at the baggage arrival carousel. Logically it must be my Kailshji. I started focusing on her keenly. She had a lot gold ornaments on her. She was dressed in shilvar-kameez and chuni, Indian women’s clothing. My brain was shouting to me: that is her, that is her. We were both staring at each other for several minutes, as we were not sure if we were seeing the right person. Finally, I could not take it anymore. I jumped the rope separating the passenger receivers and the passengers. We were the only two people left, as every receiver had paired with his arriver. I rushed toward her in excitement and virtually hugged her, but did not do it out of the fear that an Indian woman would not allow a stranger to touch her. I braked my rushing feet just a few inches from her and folded my hands in the classic Indian hand gesture of namaste. I peered at her intensely and she looked at me with controlled inquisitiveness. Later in my relationship with her I learnt how a controlled personality she was. I wanted to ask her why she was wearing all that gold jewelry but did not dare to do that because of her Indian sensibility. Meanwhile, my brain was busy in figuring out the difference between the Kailash Mehra photo I had seen and the Kailsh Mehra I was seeing.

Once in the car we started to cast off our shyness, she faster than I. I had to keep myself in control lest she think I was a mental lightweight. Once home she relaxed considerably in the company of my wife.

On August 28, 2003, I organized a concert for her in Rockland County, New York. I introduced her to the audience in what turned out to be a very successful event. She sang some of her famous songs to the joy of the tri-State (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut) Kashmiri audience.

Later she and her husband Vijay Kumar Sadhu became very good friends of me and my wife Mohini. In the 2006 visit to U.S. she and Vijayji stayed with us, and I again organized a concert for her, but this time in New Jersey. It was even more successful than the earlier concert. I stayed with Kailashji and Vijayji at their residence in Jammu during one of my visits to India. Our relationship became deeper with time.

But with the passage of further time, she became formal with me. She now addresses me Respected Kaul Sahib in letters. But for me the magic of that first encounter and the subsequent meetings has never been dulled. Behind her present very formal and disciplined persona lies a simple girl who needs affection and attention. That is what I have captured in the photo at the top of this essay I took of her in 2009. But behind her controlled demeanor lies a long-suffering personality. She has seen a lot of hard times in her life but yet she has managed to become a very successful artist in a language she was not born in. I believe her being denied a Padma award is disgraceful on part of the government. Last year I tried to persuade the Jammu and Kashmir Governor to give her that award but it did not succeed.

Suffern, New York, July 24,2023

www.kaulscorner.com

maharaj.kaul@yahoo.com

We hardly knew you Bhajanji,

A year has passed since you unexpectedly left us,

A year of intense suffering and slow-burning pain.

We searched for you in the corners of the world and heavens,

But only in the recesses of our hearts and contours of our minds

We saw your smiles and songs well anchored.

While on earth you were an enigma hidden in a charm,

Your pains and joys were carefully wrapped up,

Only clue to your soul was in your music.

Wherever you are give us a smile from time to time,

As your absence has changed our rhythm and colors,

We are searching for new anchors and new meanings.

But you left the world of music in a better shape than before,

You bought harmony and intensity in its pursuit,

Joy and freedom in its absorption.

Suffern, New York, July 17, 2023

www.kaulscorner.com

maharaj.kaul @yahoo.com

It is something that the world remembers you after death,

But for a moment I would burn our love and reclaim my freedom,

As in our times it is a convenience not a dedication.

It is a wonder that God still has faith in humans,

For they have mutilated the grand design,

And changed living to a process than a phenomenon it is.

The sunrise still reveals the wonder of nature,

But the world runs by a dollar,

Our best hopes are materialistic.

Why have we surrendered to physicality,

Where have we lost the spirit of grand ideas,

Why isn’t sacrifice the great bliss?

What was given to man and what he has done with it

Will remain forever a dagger in man’s heart,

Our loss immeasurable.

Suffern, New York, November 13,2022

www.kaulscorner.com

maharaj.kaul@yahoo.com

Where do we find you Bhajan,

In the shy Wullar waters of Sopore,

Or in the regal Nishat and Shalimar gardens?

Your carefully managed long tresses of hair,

Well groomed mustache and stylish kurta and pajama,

Created the image of a slick socialite or an actor just out of a performance.

What were your secrets Bhajan,

What were your heart aches and ecstasies,

What were your frustrations?

Your enigmatic smile revealed little,

That you had devoted your life to strings from five,

Long burning hours doused in perspiration.

Maybe your Kashmiri Dhun reveals a little,

Sopori Baaj some more,

But your mystery you have taken with you.

Suffern, New York, July 14, 2022

www.kaulscorner.com

maharaj.kaul @yahoo.com

There were times when some people thought

I was a pure specimen of life,

But such adulation was rare and far between,

Most of my life I was a mystery man.

They came to me as I was clean and harmless,

Curiosity was often rife

As how a strange person like me existed,

Or why he existed.

Love was given to me sporadically

As I could never surrender my aloofness,

I was a privileged specimen of some disorder,

A mystery shrouded in an enigma.

Ambition was my engine,

Achievement my goal,

But I did not want humans to judge it,

My ideal was the yardstick.

Heaven and hell were to me the same,

Twain they existed,

One was the prize,

Other its price.

The hardest thing was to live amidst materialists,

The day-to-day artists of existence,

The blind and the deaf,

The greedy and the selfish.

Life by itself does not give anything,

At best it can return you what you put in it,

It is your ideas of life that open the lockbox:

Your vision is everything.

What is love:

A relationship between the observer and the observed,

Held in reverence and grace,

Eternal compact without conditions.

Some of the journey of life is mindless:

Inanities thrown at us without reason,

Imaginations of the crass and benighted,

Dreams of the destitute and vulgar.

How to turn pain into elixir is the challenge of life,

There is no one we can complain to,

The almighty who designed human life,

Is soft on reason and long on imagination.

Stupid I have tolerated but insane I can’t stand,

Life is a long journey of ignoring and compromise,

But the true principle of life is life itself,

Rest is a convenience or mere convention.

I have been victimized by the cheap labeling of the world,

By its false innuendos and vulgar narcissism,

Un-eclectic choices and brutal selfishness,

By a visionless journey and blind faith.

I have seen good ideas mutilated by expediencies,

Imagination crushed by practical solutions,

Good of the community dwarfed by the ambition of one,

Infinity reduced to a momentary thrill.

I have been crushed and beaten by the majority,

Humiliated and tousled by the powerful,

Jeered and lectured by the popular,

Laughed and maligned by the special.

But now I have gained the rest of my freedom,

I have come to the end of my journey,

My sunset beckons me,

I can only look forward and not turn my head.

Why is life so difficult,

It is not so as it comes from nature,

But has been made difficult by the world:

Culture, religion, politics, economics.

Life is a fairy tale but we make it into a project,

We squeeze its music out,

And turn it into an achievement machine,

Results and not reverberations.

Suffern, New York, February 4,2022; Rev: January 14, 2023

www.kaulscorner.com

maharaj.kaul@yahoo.com

 Why are we blindly welcoming the arrival of new year,

Weren’t last few years our pained existence?

Does man have wisdom,

Or is he a natural phenomenon unguidable?

If man is susceptible to illusions

Then why not build a path with them?

Personal resolutions and planning

Are dousing of a grand fire.

Our fate was written in our evolution,

Search for happiness our greatest illusion.

New year is another year in a wrapper,

Don’t squander it in wisdom but live it in your veins.

Suffern, New York, January 4, 2022

www.kaulscorner.com

maharaj.kaul@yahoo.com