By Hindustan Times
Eight decades after Bollywood icon Dilip Kumar left his ancestral home near the famous Qissa Khwani Bazar in Peshawar city, Pakistani authorities are within the final stages of acquiring the crumbling building in order that it may be preserved as a countrywide heritage site. Tucked away in a corner of
Doma Gali in Mohalla Khudadad, the house with an elaborately carved green doorway has few outward signs that set it apart because the place where Dilip Kumar was born as Muhammad Yusuf Khan on December 11, 1922.
The son of prosperous fruit merchant Lala Ghulam Sarwar, the long run silver screen icon spent several years of his childhood in the house located near Qissa Khwani Bazar or the "Market of Storytellers," where travellers and traders from across Central Asia gathered to swap tales.
In December last year, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the guidelines Minister of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, announced plans to obtain the ancestral homes of Bollywood legends Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor in Peshawar so they may well be preserved as national heritage sites. Officials said the move to procure Dilip Kumar's home was in its final stages.
"The government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is negotiating for buying Dilip Kumar's house with the existing owner. The negotiations are within the final stage," Shuaib Uddin, a senior official of the province's Information Department, told PTI.
"After the home is acquired, it is going to be preserved and maintained by the provincial government because it belongs to a legend of this soil. After the purchase process is complete, a method might be installed place for its maintenance," Shuaib Uddin said.
Local residents said the two-storey building has three rooms and a courtyard at the ground floor, and two more rooms at the first floor. The rooms surrounding the courtyard have arched wooden windows and doors that were popular on the turn of the last century.
Ikramullah Khan, the present owner of the property, uses the rundown building to store goods he sells at a close-by hosiery store. Khan said he had never watched any of Dilip Kumar's movies but was happy that the federal government intended to maintain the home.
"I had demanded Rs. 5 crore however the government has agreed to pay Rs. 3 crore. I AM HOPING everything could be settled soon," Khan told PTI.
In recent days, several other persons have emerged to say that they own the valuables. Local residents said a few of these persons were motivated by the massive amount that authorities are expected to pay for the house.
However, Khan said he had documents to prove his ownership of the valuables. "Dilip Kumar's father gave the home to his brother-in-law Yusuf Qureshi in 1943 and Qureshi sold it the next year. I PURCHASED the home in 2005," he said.
Local residents said several elderly persons of their eighties remembered Dilip Kumar and his participation in class dramas. Others had met him when he visited Peshawar twice within the 1980s. A STORE selling fried eatables near the actor's ancestral house is adorned with several photos of Dilip Kumar in his youth.
In a contemporary post on his blog, the 89-year-old actor wrote that he was moved by the verdict of Pakistani authorities to maintain his childhood home. He said he had many memories of Peshawar, where he received his "first lessons in story-telling."
"I am directly stuffed with fond remembrances of my parents, grandparents and diverse uncles, aunts and cousins who filled the home with the sounds in their chatter and hearty laughter," Dilip Kumar wrote.
"I have lovely memories of Qissa Khwani Bazar, where I received my first lessons in story-telling, which later provided the impetus to select meaty stories and scripts for my work," he said.
Raj Kapoor, the son of acting legend Prithviraj Kapoor, too was born in Peshawar in 1924. The highest floor of Prithviraj Kapoor's five-storey house at Dakhi Nalbandi, Peshawar's highest point, collapsed years ago but 60 rooms still survive.
Some relatives of Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan still live in Shah Wali Qataal area of Peshawar.
