In the early years of his film career, he often played the defeated lover in doomed love stories, creating the celluloid template for the melancholic male heart. When that heart splintered, you could see every shade of sadness in those immersive eyes. Fans coined a title for him: Tragedy King. But Dilip Kumar, who passed away at 98 at a Mumbai hospital on Wednesday following “prolonged illness”, was more.

He could make dialogues sound like music: soft, slow and sonorous. He was the actor other actors wanted to be. And he was a rare icon of excellence in a young, independent India.

Kumar’s demise brings an end to the great triumvirate - Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand being the other two- who lorded over the Hindi film industry and a multitude of hearts in the 1950s and 1960s. An era is truly over. Kumar’s passing marks the closure of an affectionate chapter in the life of post-Independence India. As Meghnad Desai wrote in his book, ‘Nehru’s Hero’, he “reflected the best of this country at the best of its times”.