Veteran actress Saira Banu turned a year older today, August 23. She recently opened up about her love and admiration for legendary actor and her late husband Dilip Kumar.
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Saira shared a throwback picture with Dilip Kumar on Instagram while reminiscing about her birthdays.
In her post, she recalled how she was “hopelessly smitten” with Dilip Kumar from the age of 12.
She looked back on the early days of her admiration for the iconic actor and how those feelings eventually became a lifelong love story.
Saira wrote, “Since the very inception of this account, on every birthday of mine, I have found myself wandering back into the rooms of memory, opening one little drawer after another, and bringing out the people and moments that made my birthdays what they were. I have spoken of my beautiful mother, Pari Chehra Naseem Banuji; of my beloved grandmother Shamshad Waheed Khan, of my elder brother, Sultan; and of the innumerable little conspiracies of love they would undertake simply to make one day of the year feel more magnificent than all the others.”
She added, “There was always something wonderfully excessive about my birthdays. The parties had to be the very best of the best. The cakes were not merely cakes; they were architectural achievements towering confections that, I am quite certain, would have given the Qutub Minar a respectable inferiority complex.”
She further shared, “And then there were the presents, each one carrying not merely a price or a ribbon, but the unmistakable signature of someone who had spent time thinking, What would make my girl happy? Well, there were, I confess, two things for which I had always possessed a particular fondness: acting in Indian cinema, and Dilip Sahib. I had been hopelessly smitten with him from the age of twelve. I cherished the most unreasonable hope that, one day, I might meet him or, more improbably still, have the good fortune to share a film with him. He, however, was far less susceptible to my romantic notions, and would invariably decline, insisting that I was far too young for him.”
“Then came Junglee, my grand magnanimous debut, the first Eastman Colour Film which arrived at a time when black-and-white still held court. Suddenly colour itself seemed to have found a new mischief in the cinema. The film became a rage, and with those first few films came the inevitable shifting of our lives from one home, one neighborhood, and one chapter into another. Eventually, we moved to Pali Hill,” Saira further mentioned.
Saira Banu turned 82 on August 23, 2026. Born in Mussoorie in 1944, the veteran actress is best known for her memorable performances in classic Hindi films such as Junglee and Padosan.