When Ashok Kumar Questioned Dilip Kumar About His 2 Wives Saira Banu, Asma: 'Do Biwiyon Ko...'
Rishi Kapoor recalled an 'awkward' encounter between Ashok Kumar and Dilip Kumar.
Dilip Kumar’s whirlwind romance with his second wife Asma Rehman didn’t last long, but the drama surrounding their marriage sure did. Rishi Kapoor recalled an incident where, during the shoot of Duniya, Ashok Kumar brought up the topic abruptly and asked Dilip Kumar how he handled two wives.
In his memoir, Khullam Khulla: Rishi Kapoor Uncensored, the actor wrote, “I have an awkward, disconcerting story from our days on the set of Duniya." Rishi recalled how Dilip Kumar had “got embroiled in a scandal during this time". He wrote, “His secret marriage to a lady named Asma was the talk of the town."
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Rishi Kapoor mentioned, “Dilip Kumar, who was an exponent of method acting, was totally prepared to deliver a dramatic dialogue when suddenly Ashok Kumar asked him, ‘Yusuf, mujhe yeh batao, humse ek biwi sambhali nahin jati, tum kaise do biwiyon ko sambhalte ho? (We can’t handle one wife, how are you managing two of them?)’."
“We were all stunned and I braced myself for an outburst. Unbelievably, Dilip Kumar, completely unruffled, replied calmly, ‘Ashok bhaiya, let me finish this scene and then we can talk about it.’ The two stalwarts had a long-standing camaraderie – Ashok Kumar could say literally anything to Dilip Kumar and get away with it," Rishi wrote.
In his autobiography The Substance And The Shadow, Dilip Kumar confirmed that he was briefly married to Asma Rehman, 16 years after he married Saira Banu. He revealed in his book that Saira found out about the marriage through the news reports and was hurt. After all, Dilip — in his own words — had promised to never get married for the second time when he married Saira.
After tying the knot, Asma faced intense backlash from fans, leading her to flee to Canada for some peace. But the media frenzy followed her there too! In a 1983 interview in Vancouver shared by ITMB Shows on YouTube, Asma mentioned that she relocated there after her marriage ended. Asma said that 95 per cent of what was reported about her and Dilip Kumar was untrue.
Dilip Kumar, the once charming bachelor of Bollywood, married Saira Banu at 44 when she was just 22. But after 16 years, he shocked everyone by secretly marrying Asma Rehman, which left him filled with regret. Saira found out about the marriage through the papers and, though she initially didn’t believe it, the truth soon broke her heart.
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