It must have been a warm day of 1966/67 when, during a casual conversation over a fish meal, Ashok Kumar said to Hrishikesh Mukherjee, "You came into industry a little late as a director.

That, in 1936, was the rather farcical start of the career of Ashok Kumar, who was born in October 1911. Undaunted, he went on to establish himself not only as Hindi cinema’s first superstar as ...