Madhubala and Dilip Kumar’s romance has been retold for decades, usually with illness cast as the reason it ended. Madhubala’s sister, Madhur Bhushan, has now challenged that version, and added one physical detail that no biography can fully capture: the two actors lie five to ten metres apart at Juhu Muslim Kabrastan in Mumbai.
A sister’s correction
The account being disputed comes from actor Mumtaz, who recently suggested that Dilip Kumar ended the relationship after learning of Madhubala’s heart condition and her inability to conceive. In an interview with Vickey Lalwani, Madhur Bhushan rejected that sequence. “The statement is completely wrong,” she said, adding that the heart problem arrived later. “She got heart problem much later. Dilip Kumar was nowhere in the picture.”
Madhur also revealed the burial proximity: “They are buried very close to each other. Just five to 10 metres apart.”
A timeline that wavers
The correction is clear about sequence but less certain about dates. Madhur first placed the onset of illness around Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi (1958), then recalled Madhubala fainting and vomiting blood during Bahut Din Huwe (1954). She acknowledged the titles blur. “I don’t remember these film names as Abba didn’t allow all this,” she said.
- 1954: Madhur recalls fainting and vomiting blood during Bahut Din Huwe; doctors suspect something in the chest.
- 1957: The relationship with Dilip Kumar ends during Mughal-e-Azam, with differences involving her father, Ataullah Khan.
- 1958: Madhur’s earlier reference point for the illness is Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi.
- 1969: Madhubala dies at 36 after being bedridden before she turned 30.
Dilip Kumar’s own record
Dilip Kumar’s autobiography, The Substance and the Shadow, offers a second witness against the illness theory. He wrote that Ataullah Khan had planned a studio with the two stars as leads, a proposal Dilip Kumar was uncomfortable with, and that Madhubala and he were no longer speaking by the time of Mughal-e-Azam. He also stated that her heart condition was not responsible for the separation.
The last years
Madhur places the diagnosis after a Chennai schedule, when Madhubala returned to Mumbai and learned she had a hole in the heart. By then she and Kishore Kumar were already involved, Madhur said. Kishore Kumar married her after the diagnosis and took her to London, where a doctor said she had two years to live. Madhubala resisted the verdict: “Sab bakwas karte hai. There is no hole in my heart. I can run, I can dance.” She later fainted during a Mughal-e-Azam sequence, and her health declined sharply. “As soon as she turned 36, she died.”
Kishore Kumar had said in an interview with The Illustrated Weekly of India that he knew Madhubala was “very sick” when he married her. Asked about his conduct during the marriage, Madhur declined: “I don’t want to speak about the kind of attitude and behaviour he had.”
Why family testimony matters
This is more than a feud over an old romance. Hindi cinema’s classic era is reconstructed from memory as much as from archives, so a surviving family member’s account becomes a primary source. The discipline for readers is to weigh it against the written record: Dilip Kumar’s memoir agrees on the central point, even if Madhur’s film-title recall remains imprecise. For anyone revisiting Mughal-e-Azam, the film now carries both the relationship’s final scene and the illness’s turning point.
Source: The Times of India
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