World Mental Health Day: Saira Banu Embraces Dilip Kumar's Compassionate Vision

On World Mental Health Day, veteran actress Saira Banu took to Instagram to express a touching homage to her beloved late husband, the iconic actor Dilip Kumar. In her heartfelt post, she emphasized Dilip Kumar's profound dedication to charitable causes.

She takes to Instagram to say, "Long before corporate social responsibility took shape in the corporate world, Dilip Sahib instinctively decided to champion social causes. He felt an actor owed a gesture of gratitude to the people who idolized him and placed him on a pedestal as a star. He chose to take up the cause of raising funds for the National Association of the Blind @mumbainab which was engaged in providing the necessary support to the blind in acquiring skills to manage their lives and make a living.

As part of the preparation for enacting the character of a blind youth searching for his missing sweetheart in Deedar, Nitin Bose, the director, advised him to spend time observing and chatting with a blind man who sat outside a local railway station every day. Sahib and Dadamoni (Ashok Kumar) traveled to the station, found the man, and observed him. The man's grit and his reconciliation with fate thrust on him deeply impacted Sahib.

I am filled with awe when I think of the farsightedness of his concern. In our quieter days, when we got the time to sit in the garden and enjoy brunch, he shared his thoughts on various issues of social concern; one of them was the need to focus on mental health care. He explained to me that it takes tremendous mental strength to bear the pain caused by mental bruises and the experience of starvation, sickness, and the loss of dear ones, and property, savings, etc.

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He foresaw the resort to suicide by jobless people who had no one to pacify them. He talked to his friends in the medical profession about setting up counseling centers and hospitals to treat mental disorders. Today is #WorldMentalHealthDay, I can only pray that those who can do what they can to motivate action from governments and charitable institutions to make mental health as important as general health care in their social objectives because Mental health is a 'Universal Human Right', let us not deny it with our apathy."