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 Kumar was 98 and had been
ailing for some time, one of the doctors
treating him told reporters.
"He had breathing difficulties...We tried very
hard. We had hoped he would reach 100," the
actor's doctor Jalil Parkar said.
Born Mohammed Yusuf Khan in 1922 in Peshawar,
now in Pakistan, he was known by the screen name
of Dilip Kumar once he joined Bollywood in the
1940s. He is survived by his wife, Saira Banu, a
top Bollywood leading lady in the 1960s and
1970s.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani
counterpart Imran Khan both expressed
condolences, with Modi saying Kumar was "blessed
with unparalleled brilliance".
"For my generation Dilip Kumar was the greatest
and most versatile actor," Khan said on Twitter.
At his residence in Mumbai, Bollywood stars
thronged to pay their respects, among them actor
Shah Rukh Khan, producer Karan Johar and actress
Vidya Balan.
The funeral will be held later on Wednesday.
Authorities in Peshawar in the province of
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa said they were planning to
restore the actor's ancestral home in a narrow
lane of the city.
"We are now working on its conservation,” said
Dr Abdus Samad, director general of archaeology
department.
TRAGEDY KING
After moving from Peshawar to Pune, in India,
Kumar did his first film, "Jwar Bhata" in 1944,
which tanked. His breakthrough role came in
1949, with "Andaz", where he played a jilted
lover caught in a triangle between the woman he
loves and her husband.
That role catapulted him to stardom, and was the
beginning of a decade where he made a career of
playing tragic roles.
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 Bimal Roy’s adaptation of Sarat
Chandra Chattopadhyay’s seminal novel "Devdas"
was the turning point in an already successful
career, catapulting him to super-stardom.
His role as the doomed lover in "Devdas", earned
Kumar the epithet of “tragedy king” - the man
who embodied melancholy on screen.
"An institution has gone ..
whenever the history of Indian Cinema will be
written , it shall always be 'before Dilip
Kumar, and after Dilip Kumar", actor Amitabh
Bachchan said on Twitter.
Kumar said he felt weighed down after years of
playing tragic roles. In the late 1950’s, he
made a conscious attempt to play more upbeat
roles, acting in romantic films like "Madhumati",
"Aan" and "Naya Daur".
Another big career milestone was K Asif’s "Mughal-E-Azam",
in which Kumar played the Prince Salim, son of
the Mughal emperor Akbar.
A magnum opus that told the story of the
prince’s doomed affair with a dancer girl, the
1960 film was one of the most expensive
productions of the time, but went on to become
the highest-grossing film of the year, wowing
audiences with opulent sets and a gorgeous
musical score.
In his later years, although the hits were
harder to come by, Kumar retained his stature as
India's first marquee star, whose face on a
poster was enough for audiences to throng the
theatres.
(Reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai;
additional reporting by Jibran Ahmed in
Peshawar. Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, Raju
Gopalakrishnan and Philippa Fletcher)
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