Dilip Kumar-Saira Bano lost a baby boy in eighth month of her pregnancy: ‘It was wrongly represented that Saira couldn’t bear a child’

Dilip Kumar shared that he and Saira Bano lost a baby in the eighth month of her pregnancy, a few years into their marriage. The two never had children.

By: Entertainment Desk

New Delhi | Updated: October 20, 2024 05:22 PM IST

3 min read

Dilip Kumar shared in his memoir that he and Saira Bano lost a baby boy during eighth month of pregnancy. (Photo: Express Archives)

Dilip Kumar and Saira Bano got married in 1966, when Dilip was 44 and Saira was just 22. Dilip was known as the ‘most eligible bachelor’ at the time, and soon after their wedding, magazines and tabloids could not help but speculate about children. When Dilip married Asma Rehman in 1982 for a short while, rumours suggested that he had done so because “Saira could not bear a child,” but as per the actor, this was not the case. Dilip said that Saira was pregnant with their child, but couldn’t carry the pregnancy to term.

In his memoir, Dilip Kumar The Substance And The Shadow: An Autobiography, Dilip shared that when he got married to Asma Rehman, it was “wrongly represented that Saira could not bear a child.” He then proceeded to share that he and Saira were expecting a baby in 1972. “The truth is that Saira had borne a child, a boy (as we came to know later), in 1972. We lost the baby in the eighth month of pregnancy when Saira developed high blood pressure and the obstetricians attending on her could not perform the surgery in time to save the full-grown foetus, which had been strangulated by the umbilical cord. We took the loss in our stride as the will of God,” he wrote.

Dilip shared that he was often asked if he was unhappy about not having children. He said that it “would have been great if we had our own kids. But it is not a shortcoming for us.” He said that he had many nephews and nieces and he saw them all as his own children. “They were enough to make us feel like parents. As infants they were brought to me and it was mandatory for the babies to sleep soundly on my large chest as if they were on a foam mattress. As they grew up, they came home to play interesting games with ‘Mamu’ as all of them addressed me,” he said.

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Dilip said that Saira always “went all out” during family gatherings and said that it was “wonderful to love and be loved by them and be there solidly when they need us and vice versa.” He missed his nephews and nieces as they were all grown up and busy with their own lives, and mentioned that if he had his own children, they too, perhaps, would be just as busy. “Perhaps if we had our own sons or daughters, they too would have gone to places far away to pursue their dreams and we would have got to see them once or twice a year,” he said.

Dilip and Saira stayed married until his death in 2021.

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