At the age of 81, Kumar prefers to be away from media glare but at times it goes beyond his control. And that is what exactly happened when Desai's "Nehru's Hero: Dilip Kumar in the Life of India" was released by the author in Mumbai in the presence of the actor.

Perhaps many of the pieces of information dished out by Desai's book are known to old-timers but they come as a whiff of fresh breeze to the present generation and the coming ones.

The book captures the interest of the readers when it says that Dilip Kumar was imprisoned in the battle against colonial British rule and refused to have breakfast in jail because Mahatma Gandhi was fasting at the same time in 1942.

One is also arrested by the fact that Dilip Kumar, one of the 12 children of a fruit merchant, is the first Muslim male star of Indian films who changed his name from Yusuf Khan fearing that his father would not like the family name to be dragged into films at a time when even watching Hindi films was looked down upon.

Other startling revelations are that Dilip Kumar had applied for a license to run a tea stall in a Mumbai market while trying to establish himself in the film world and that it was Devika Rani who had offered him the three names 'Dilip Kumar, Jahangir and Vasudev' and the actor opted for Dilip Kumar because it sounded somewhat like Ashok Kumar, immensely popular at that time. Dilip Kumar never played the role of a Muslim character in films before the super-hit 'Mughal-e-Azam', says the book.

But the most interesting conclusion of Lord Desai is how Dilip Kumar brought into his acting and life ideals of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, particularly the concept of secularism.