New Delhi, Sept. 20 -- My off-and-on chats with Dilip saab would be purely on acting, his directors, the state of cinema which he felt had 'no more thehraav, ab bahut tezi ho gayee hai' (there are no more pauses, it's all too speedy now).

However, I did find myself in a spot, on a roasting afternoon in May 1982 when Saira aapa, as I called her, sent a telegram to me to drop by at her bungalow in Pali Hill where they had shifted after marriage. The weekly news tabloid Current, edited by Ayub Syed, had scooped the story, complete with a photograph and a facsimile of the marriage certificate, that a year ago Dilip Kumar had married Asma Rehman, a divorced socialite, already married with three children, after meeting her at a cricket match i...