New Delhi: Veteran actor Dilip Kumar Wednesday took to Twitter to share some pictures of his ancestral house in Pakistan’s Peshawar, which the provincial government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has recently decided to purchase.
The 97-year-old actor also urged people in Peshawar to share more pictures of his house on the microblogging site.
Thank you for sharing this. Requesting all in #Peshawar to share photos of my ancestral house (if you’ve clicked the pic) and tag #DilipKumar https://t.co/bB4Xp4IrUB
— Dilip Kumar (@TheDilipKumar) September 30, 2020
Kumar was born as Muhammad Yusuf Khan in this house at Mohalla Khudabad in the Qissa Khwani Bazar of Peshawar on 11 December 1922. His relatives lived in the house till 2005, before selling it off for Rs 56 lakh to a local resident.
It was declared a national heritage on 13 July 2013 by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. But the three-storey house had collapsed in 2017 and has since become a dumping ground.
Not only Kumar’s, the Department of Archaeology in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province has decided to also purchase Bollywood legend Raj Kapoor’s ancestral house which lies in the same neighbourhood. Kapoor was born in that house, called ‘Kapoor Haveli’, in 1924.
Kumar’s wife and actor Saira Banu also hailed the Pakistan government’s move. “I wish the provincial government success in its efforts and sincerely hope that this time the dream comes true. Mashallah,” she said.
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‘Full of fond remembrances’
In a blog post in 2011, the Mughal-e-Azam actor had recalled some of the memories associated with his ancestral house.
“I am at once full of fond remembrances of my parents, grandparents and numerous uncles, aunts and cousins who filled the house with the sounds of their chatter and hearty laughter. My mother who was frail and delicate was always in the spacious kitchen of the house and as a little boy I would wait for her to finish her chores so that I could just sit by her side and gaze at her beautiful face,” he wrote.
Kumar believed that the Qissa Khwani Bazar in Peshawar, which is famously known as the storyteller’s bazaar, played a monumental role in his career. “I have lovely memories of Qissa Khwani Bazaar, where I received my first lessons in storytelling, which later provided the impetus to choose meaty stories and scripts for my work.”
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